What are effective strategies for summarizing online research to inform decision-making?

1 Define your purpose

Before you start your online research, you need to have a clear idea of what you are looking for and why. What is the problem you are trying to solve? What are the key questions you need to answer? What are the criteria you will use to evaluate the information you find? Having a specific and focused purpose will help you narrow down your search and avoid irrelevant or distracting sources.

2 Use reliable sources

When conducting online research, it's important to evaluate sources critically to ensure that they are reliable. You can gauge the credibility of a source by assessing its authority, accuracy, currency, and coverage. Consider who the author or publisher is and what their credentials and reputation are. Evaluate if the information is factual, logical, and supported by evidence. Ensure that the source is current and relevant to your topic. Additionally, make sure that the source provides enough depth and breadth of information for your purpose and addresses different perspectives and counterarguments.

3 Organize your information

Organizing information from different sources is essential for any purpose. To help with this, you can use outlines, tables, and charts. An outline will structure your summary and help identify gaps or overlaps in your information. Tables can be used to compare and contrast sources, analyzing their arguments, evidence, strengths, and weaknesses. Charts such as flowcharts, mind maps, or Venn diagrams can be used to visualize information and reveal relationships and patterns among it. This will help draw your own conclusions and generate new ideas.

4 Write your summary

Once you have organized your information, you are ready to compose a summary. A summary should be a concise and accurate reflection of the main ideas and findings of your online research, without including your own opinions or interpretations unless explicitly indicated. To write an effective summary, you must use your own words to paraphrase the information from your sources, employ transitional words to link sentences and paragraphs, and cite sources properly according to the style and format required by your purpose. Doing so will help you avoid plagiarism and demonstrate your understanding of the information.

5 Review your summary

The final step of summarizing online research is to review your summary and check for any errors or improvements. To guide your review, ask yourself if the summary is clear and concise, accurate and complete, objective and balanced, well-structured and organized, and properly cited and formatted. Following these strategies can help you summarize online research effectively and use it to inform your decision-making. In fact, summarizing online research is a skill that you can practice and improve over time, thus becoming a better problem solver.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?