We live in an increasingly crazy information world. The rise of the World Wide Web in the early 2000s, while a great benefit to the exchange of knowledge and ideas, unleashed a lot of information that had not gone through any external review. In the earlier publishing world, editorial review and peer review had performed a gatekeeping task to preserve some measure of quality. While gatekeeping still happens in publishing, just about anyone with an Internet connection can post ideas without any gatekeeping at all.

Social media has made immediate publication easier. But, without quality control, the number of conspiracy-oriented, false, or just poorly thought out notions, has multiplied. Social media, for all its benefits, is a  purveyor of a lot of shoddy material.

Then there is the world of scholarship, the knowledge base of higher education, which has continued mantaining quality control and gatekeeping.  How does this realm function within the larger world of information? In fact, how do we even define scholarship, identify it for our research, and evaluate it effectively? This module will try to help you answer those questions as well as guide you into planned and effective research.

The textbook for the module is: 

Research Strategies: Finding Your Way through the Information Fog, 7th ed. (Bloomington, IN: iUniverse.com, 2021). This edition must be used, because earlier editions are out of date.

Research Strategies is available as a paperback and in various e-book versions. See http://williambadke.com/GetTheBook.htm for more avenues to obtain the textbook.

Please move on to the instructions section for information about assignments and a list of due dates.

If you have any questions at all, contact me through the box on the left or through badke@twu.ca