It is important to break down the requirements of your assessment task before you start searching for information so that you can plan your approach.

BIO232 - Let's take a look at the subject outline - assessment 3 (River project):

You will investigate relationships between macroinvertebrate composition, density and diversity and current speed and other environmental variables in a reach of a typical lowland river, through field sampling, processing samples and identifying animals in the laboratory, analysing the data in sophisticated ways, and writing up a scientific report.

At first, you may feel a little overwhelmed by all of these requirements. However, with some thought and planning, you can come up with a research plan that will suit this assessment task.

Let's start thinking about what terms you will use when searching for information. To do this:

• Identify the key concepts of your topic (watch the topic analysis video for assistance); and then
• Brainstorm as many synonyms and similar terms/phrases as you can.

This is a useful exercise because the language used to describe your topic may vary from source to source, and you don't want to miss out on a good source because it uses a different term to the one you are searching on.

Let's use this topic as an example:

BIO323 - Relationship between macroinvertebrate composition, density and diversity and current speed and other environmental variables in a reach of a typical lowland river. 

Tip: Online dictionaries and thesauri can help you identify synonyms. 

Write down the key concepts from your topic and have a go at brainstorming as many alternative keywords and phrases as possible.