6 Critical consumption

Figure 4 Information overload

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Image of a pile of slips of paper with 'What', 'Where', 'When', 'Why' and '?' on them.

Figure 4 Information overload

In Week 5 you explored your information landscape. As part of this, you learned some tips and techniques for finding and filtering information quickly, and dealing with information overload. You were introduced to two frameworks (PROMPT and CAN) which help you ask the right questions of information and people you come across online. Some useful starting points were highlighted, including Wikipedia. Although Wikipedia is not regarded as a reliable academic source, it can give a helpful overview of a topic. You just need to be aware of its limitations.

You had the opportunity to apply your learning to some real-life scenarios.

In Week 7, you found out how information landscape can evolve. For example, making more use of social media to keep up to date with interests and using research skills to move forward with career aspirations.

By putting into practice the frameworks for evaluating information, you can become more confident about deciding who and what you can trust online.

Research online

Being able to carry out research online is a very useful skill and part of learning to study independently. It will help you when preparing assignments and to back up your arguments when discussing study topics with others, whether that’s online or face-to-face.

In this course, you have mainly focused on searching the internet. However, not all information is freely available on the open web. Some of it is hidden in company intranets or online subscription resources.

If you decide to study at university, your university library is a key place to find information. Online libraries, such as The Open University’s, make available articles, books, images, music and videos, as well as many other types of resources on all kinds of subjects. By getting to know your online library you can:

• find information for assignments from a variety of sources that you would not otherwise be able to access
• find different viewpoints on a subject
• read the full text of the books and articles that might not be freely available on the internet
• be confident that the information you find is of a high standard, because it has been written and reviewed by experts in the field.

A US survey of teachers (Purcell et al., 2013) found that 91% of teachers surveyed reported that ‘judging the quality of information’ is the top digital skill students need for the future.

In earlier weeks, you learned how to evaluate information you find on the web. Although the quality of information you’ll find in a university library is high, you should still always question what you read. As you progress with studying and get to know your subject, you will become aware of different schools of thought and develop your own opinions. Your critical thinking skills will help you to question what you come across in all sorts of other situations too, including the workplace.