In Chapter 1 of Research Strategies Badke walks us through the amazing evolutionary journey that information has undergone along with the pros and cons. Before print, information was only passed on orally, this limited the amount of people who had access to it but at the same time it ensured its accuracy because only qualified individuals were allowed to pass on information. With Gutenberg inventing the printing press, information became more secure and accessibility increased, but this did not help those who were illiterate. “Gatekeepers” (a.k.a publishers) controlled what would be printed and what would not, this was mainly based on things such as reliability or entertainment value. The internet came along in the early 1990’s and suddenly anyone in any part of the world had an endless wealth of information at their fingertips. But as Badke puts it “any fool can publish anything he or she wants to say”, thus one must take what they read on the internet with a grain of salt, till it can be validated.
In Chapter 8, Badke tackles “Learning How to read for Research”. I appreciated Badke’s acknowledging how many students lack the time a research paper requires, whether it’s because of the mountains of other assignments, jobs, or just the fact that reading for 114.1 hours is impractical. He offers several insightful tips to save you time and aggravation. For example he tells you how to “get to know the material without reading it all”, and stresses the importance of taking good notes along the entire process. He breaks down a process that for most can be excruciatingly painful.
Throughout Badke has a sense of humor, I for one have always absorbed more information and found learning easier when the one teaching does so with a light heartedness rather than in a rigid, up tight manner.
A rigid upright manner can easily make a book or journal as heavy as a millstone around the neck of one reading it. Coming from a background of engineering and computers I can attest to that and agree fully with you on his delivery.