Good Information for Learning

Goals

  1. Describe good information in the context of learning.
  2. Skillfully get good information when you are learning.

What?

Good information is information about a topic that meets seven criteria: super-useful, true, accurate, complete, easy-to-understand, well-organized, and justified.

Why?

Getting good information for learning is worthwhile for several reasons.

  1. Builds accurate knowledge – It helps you form a clear and correct understanding of a topic.

  2. Improves decisions – Better information leads to better thinking and smarter choices.

  3. Saves time and effort – You avoid confusion, errors, and relearning caused by bad or incomplete info.

  4. Boosts confidence – When you’re learning from solid information, you’re more likely to trust your progress.

How to Get Good Information

Principles

  1. There are good sources of information. However, most sources (say 90%) are not at a high enough level of quality.

  2. Good sources of information can be identified.

Framework

  1. Get information from multiple high-quality sources of information.

  2. Cross check the information between these sources; this is called triangulation.

  3. Put the most trust in information that is consistent across sources.

Tips

  1. Inquiry Questions: Ask great questions whose answers provide the good information that is relevant to the topic you are learning. See Inquiry Questions-5W2H.

  2. Research. Skillfully blend three kinds of research: secondary research, prima6ry research, and internal research.

  3. Iteration: Repeat the previous actions until your information meets the seven criteria for “high quality”.

Inquiry Questions

An inquiry question is any question that drives curiosity and investigation such that it provokes you to seek out information and understanding.

For learning, these inquiry questions are useful. Here is a summary.

  1. What: What does this mean? How is this defined?

  2. Why: Why is this worth learning? Why is this true? Why was this invented?

  3. How: How do I apply this? How do I recognize when to apply this? How do I know when I’m good at this?

  4. Who: Who needs to learn this? Who applies this?

  5. Where: Where is this applied? Where is this information coming from?

  6. When: When should I apply this? What can I apply this?

  7. How Much? How much time does this take to learn? How much will I apply this? How hard is this to learn?

Secondary Research

Secondary research involves getting information that is already known from other people via conversations, reading textbooks, watching YouTube videos, listening to lectures, asking questions, doing web searches, and so on.

Here are some key actions of secondary research relevant to learning.

  1. Credible Sources of Information Credible Sources: Get information from credible sources. A source is credible when four criteria are met: high probability of being true, accurate, and complete plus the sources justifies why their information should be trusted by giving citations, explaining limitations and such.

  2. Triangulation:

  3. Documentation:

  4. Source Quality:

  5. questions that guide one on what to look for.

  6. Research. Skillfully doing three kinds of research:

    1. Secondary Research: getting information that is already known.

    2. Primary Research: getting information by direct means such as observation, experiments, reading historical documents, calculations, models, and so on.

    3. Internal Research: brings to the surface information that you or members of your group know by brainstorming, writing, or other means.

  7. Iteration: Repeating the previous actions until the information found is high quality.

Information is described as “good information” when the following seven criteria are true.

  1. Useful: The information is super useful.

  2. True: The objective statements in the information have a high probability of being true. That is, there are few or no factual errors. A claim is true if it corresponds with reality.

  3. Accurate: The information paints an accurate view of reality. Note that information can be true but highly misleading because only selected facts are presented.

  4. Complete: The information is complete. There are not major pieces of information missing.

  5. Easy to Understand: The information is easy to understand by the target audience.

  6. Well Organized: Easy to see how the information is organized. Easy to find answers to question.

  7. Justified: The information has been justified or proven to be true by using methods that are accepted by the consensus of people who make up the most appropriate professional communities.

How to Get High Quality Sources

  1. With respect to your topic, figure out the community that is most knowledgeable about this topic. Examples:

    1. If the topic involves plumbing, the most relevant community is licensed plumbers and people who teach licensed plumbers.

    2. If the topic involves vaccines as in the Covid 19 vaccine, the most relevant community is people who have studied vacines and published their findings for many years.

  2. Figure out the consensus of the most relevant community and look for sources that present this consensus. Or, if there is not a consensus looks for sources that describe the main trains of thought.

Once you have found a few high quality sources, use their citations to identify other high quality sources.

Avoid unknown sources or sources with potential bias unless these sources present information that aligns with the consensus of the most appropriate professional community.