Dear class,

With the easy accessibility of the internet in campus, it’s not surprising to see many of you using internet as the primary source for research and learning. After all, one just needs to key in a search term in any search engine of one’s preference and the information will be found. While online research looks useful, there is one pitfall that most of us are unaware of, which is the lack of structure in our learning.

Let’s consider an example. When we want to learn more about communication skills, it’s easy for us to type in “Communication skills” as the search terms in a search engine, and we get the information that we want. However, the information that the search engine pulls out for us comes from all types of sources. Lack of credibility aside, we also face the issue of having to define what it is that we really want to know about communication skills. And without a structure for learning, it is easy for us to get lost in the tons of information and data that is prevalent in the internet. This is the reason why textbooks still exist in the face of the internet, for they provide the structure that is so crucial to our learning.

Textbook acts as a precursor to our learning, providing the basic structures that guide our learning. Of course, one textbook is insufficient to cover a subject matter that we wish to learn. So, we should source for several textbooks. By providing a structure for learning, textbooks adds depth to learners’ learning. This means that books often enable learners to learn more about a particular subject matter than any online articles can hope to achieve. However, online information adds breadth to learners’ learning, in the sense that online information often provides more perspective on a particular subject matter than any single textbook can hope to accomplish (after all, it is impossible for the author(s) of a textbook to cover the entire scope of a subject matter as compared to countless information sources on the internet, no matter how wide-ranging their knowledge is).

So, how do we combine the use of textbooks and the internet for learning?

I propose that we start with a few textbooks and based on the topics of interests in these texts, we can proceed to source for information on the internet. In this way, we are learning through a properly defined structure (with depth) while enhancing our understanding with information on the internet (thus increasing the breadth of our study).

All of you are fortunate to have a library and internet access in campus, so the abovementioned approach is one approach that you might like to consider when it comes to enhancing your learning experience.