Step 2: Gain background knowledge

Gaining background knowledge is a key part of learning. It may not be something you are tested on, or even assigned to do however background knowledge provides context for what you read and learn.

When you gain background knowledge, you are looking to understand:

• Vocabulary
• Main ideas and theories
• How your topic is part of daily life and our world

When building background knowledge, you often use easily accessible sources that are written to help you understand a topic. While you may find some sources that you’ll use later in the deep dive process, the goal here is not to identify sources for a project or paper, but rather to make sure you know enough to conduct a deep dive!

The sources you’ll use for background likely include:

• Web searches
• Social media
• Publications like newspaper sites, magazine sites, and general information sites
• Reference material like dictionaries, encyclopedias, and more

These sources are all written for the general adult population and should be easy and quick to read. You likely do not need any special knowledge to read these sources.

A background search is WIDE and gives you a brief look at many pieces of information. You do not spend much time on any one specific topic within your main topic. So if you were doing a deep dive on a technology-related topic, you would learn what it is, its associated terms, and how the technology is used. These are separate ideas; you may read 1 to 3 (or more) sources for each.

During this step, you should expect to read at least 10-15 sources QUICKLY, identifying key ideas and terms and moving on. Your goal is to BROADEN what you know about the topic. You will want to keep track of the good sources of info, as you may need them for work later in the process.

As you read about the topics for your work, you should keep a list of these potential sources (or at least the ones that are or could be helpful). Your potential sources list (which is really background readings that could be helpful) should be kept in a document.

Consider keeping track of:

• title of the source
• link to the source
• what the source is
• what the source contains (very brief summary)
• your rating of usefulness of the source.
  For example, you might say “not very useful” or “very useful”) as you want to keep track of everything you considered and read. This can prevent you for searching for something you read but discarded.

These are your working notes and you should create them for every project you do, regardless of what your instructor tells you to do! The format for these should be something useful to you and that makes sense to you. Reminder: you may have already started this process with your instructor. You might be asked to hand this in or you may not be but having the background sources that you looked at is often helpful later in the process.

Building background knowledge prepares you for the deeper reading that comes next.