The ESL Teacher C · Nomad Educator

If you are a university student chances are you already know most of what is in this post. But maybe it’s been a while since you’ve been on the benches and need a refresher or you’ve never had a comprehensive class on this topic and this is a welcome synthesis.

Because we live in a crazy era of information overload, it has become imperative to have some skills to deal with the volume of data we are exposed to on a daily basis. So in this post I’m listing skills and methods to 1-source information, 2-parse through it, and 3-organize it.

Table of contents

• Information sources
• Information parsing
• Information citing
• Information organizing

Information sources

This skill helps you look for the information you want in the right places. So some things you want to consider is: Do you need a superficial answer or a serious source? Do you need the specific advancements on a topic or a bird’s-eye view? These details will determine where you will look, in other words, which database you’ll consult.

The difference between superficial and serious sources is that the serious ones were peer reviewed, so they have been held to a high level of scrutiny. Does that give full authority to the document, no, we must always exert some amount reasonable doubt and personal criteria on any data we encounter (☞ tell me if you’d like me to write about how to develop your critical thinking).

*Pro tip: when looking for scholarly articles, university libraries have good information on their website about different publication journals. They may sort them by field of study, but if you know which journals to search, you can delve through their list of databases directly.

If you are a university student, your institution provides access to all databases. If you are no longer a student, they might have subscriptions for affordable prices if you are their alumni. A friend or family member still at school could share with you.

Also some sites that rebel against this monetization of knowledge might give you access to scholarly articles for free, but they are probably just a myth and I’m sure something like a Google search would garner no results about it.

Information parsing

Now that you have chosen a database, you want to make your search.

Wether you are doing a superficial search or a serious one, you will want to be as efficient as possible.

Start by knowing how to use the right keywords and syntax ( ☞ here is a post about boolean search).

If you are doing a serious search, you will want to do the same, but through the ‘advanced search’ mode of your search engine. Google scholar offers it, scholarly databases have it, library directories give you the option.

From the advanced search mode you will write your keywords, and also set up filters. Filters help you narrow down your results to avoid the pages and pages of useless ads and irrelevant information. Things to look at are the following:

• One thing you must tick off is the “peer reviewed” option.
• Choose wether you want excerpts to skim through, or full articles to read the research.
• You might want the latest data, so you’ll want to filter by date.
• Maybe you want a particular author, set that up too.

Having 10 results is a good rule of thumb for a precise search. If your results are too few, adjust keywords and syntax because changing anything else will only make your results weak.

*Pro tip: ask your librarian. They are wizards at finding information and articles and relevant sources 🧙 Trust this!

Information citing

So you found relevant information, useful for your homework or your own projects: make sure you save the bibliography, in other words the information that would allow you to find the source again and others to find and consult it if they wish to make up their own mind about it.

New to citing? Librairies will have guides to help you cite your sources in the style you need (yep, there’s more than one way depending on the field of study). You can also get a book, I still have mine from my first ever Research Methods class. The internet can also provide guides.

You’ll also want to make sure you store those bibliographies in an organized fashion. There are two free software that I personally love using, EndNote and Zotero (☞ more about these powerful tools here work in progress). I used EndNote for the longest time, but recently switched to Zotero because it allows you to not only organize your sources, but also store the documents, take notes on them, and the most important for me: it is compatible with Obsidian.

*Pro tip: if you search in scholarly databases, they probably allow you to extract the bibliography in the style you need.

Information organizing

Your sources are saved, now what did you want to do with all these answers you got? Is it for a homework? To satisfy curiosity? Make a review of the knowledge in a field of study? Find sources on which to base your own writings?

Whatever the reason, organize what you have learned. Obsidian is the software I use to store, organize and connect my knowledge (I’m more than happy to tell you more about why it’s such an important and powerful tool work in progress).

It’s great to store your data and to have it organized, but if that is all it does, the effect might be that you never look at that information ever again, except if you have to rewrite on the same topic at an ulterior time.

Tools like Obsidian allow you to interact once more with your data, build on top of the it, and make connections throughout the notes you’ve already taken to show you how everything is linked. I favour this particular tool because it shows those connections through graphics that are elegant and beautiful. Data has rarely been so sublime if I may say.

A summary of what I talked about

So there you have it, in this post you learned how to access, filter, organize and link your data.

Questions/Comments

☞ What are your favourite research tips and tricks? Share it in the comment section.

☞ Do you want to learn more? Tell me if you want anything to be visited more in depth.

☞ Are these tips something new to you, or are they fairly common place?