How to do effective internet research for university students
Article by Theary,
In the world of modern technology, students as well as profession is advancing their way of finding information and source for their study. Most students these days prefer going online rather than going to library for information on some particular subject for their study. Hence, in order to do effective internet research, what should students do? The following tips are some advices that would take you to the information you want to find.
- Know what you are doing.
Be clear about what you are doing is the first priority you need to have. You should have clear and specific topic in mind before you go online. You know what information you want to find, and what purpose you are going to do with it. If you do a research about that, siting is really important.
- Choosing internet searching engine
Even though most of students would go Google when finding information, there are always another way around. You can either go to Yahoo or Bing besides Google. On the other hand, YouTube can also be one of the source that provides you good information, but it is not easy for siting later on.
- Write specific words to your search engine
Of course, when you go online, you have variety of choice. Only one word can affect the result of your search, so you have to be careful with what you ask the internet. You have to know your keyword of your topic. Be short and precise, and be sure that you do not write a 100-words sentence in there. If you want to find words as a group, you should put quotation mark around the phrase.
- Find a credible source
Normally, you do not find information in a blog and write it in your paper. It does not work like that. You have to look really careful into credible source of information. The source you may take from could be a research paper of government, or may be some organization or NGO that are working in the field of your research topic. Try as hard as you can until you find a credible source. Plus, you have to give credit to your source (siting them) when writing in your paper too.
- Create your own archive
It is very important to keep your finding during your research progress. When you find some information or source that you think benefit to you, do not forget to save that link or name of website. You never know when you will need those information again. You can do that by create your own folder in your PC, or save to Drive in order to keep them safe.
- Wikipedia’s Help
You are told not to site from Wikipedia, right? However you seems to find so many useful information from that sites too. The thing is Wikipedia is an editable source where anyone can just go and edit. However, this site can help you too. There are sources provided there too, so that you may find useful source from Wikipedia.