You knew that sooner or later one of us would end up doing a Wikipedia post, didn’t you?
Yes, it’s a resource with some potential pitfalls for students. In fact, I’ve been known to point my students to Wikipedia Brown and the Case of the Captured Koala to illustrate one of those pitfalls: sometimes, the information it contains is inaccurate. It’s precisely this sort of problem that led the History Department at Middlebury to ban citations of Wikipedia in student work.
Well, of course college and university students shouldn’t be citing Wikipedia in their work, any more than they should be citing any other encyclopedia–as was noted in an Inside Higher Ed article on the citation ban at Middlebury. And yes, Wikipedia does have a wider range of contributors–some very knowledgeable about their subject, others less so–than more traditional encyclopedias, and it’s good to caution students about that.
I’m in the camp that thinks it’s fine for students to use Wikipedia as a tool to (a) get a quick overview of a subject and (b) find suggestions about other resources that would be appropriate for citation in college-level work. I haven’t experimented with assigning my students to contribute to Wikipedia, as Professors Martha Groom and Dean Taciuch have.
But I do tell my students that it’s fine to use Wikipedia for background. I also show them the history and discussion pages of an article (so they get a sense of how it works), and point out both the self-correcting potential of Wikipedia (which David Parry noted a couple of years ago in an article at Science Progress that also raised some important points about digital literacy) and the speed with which it can be updated (to take an example: Senator Kennedy died very late on August 25; I taught a class at 8:00 am the next day–and his page had already been updated).
A colleague of mine (one of our awesome librarians) has a post at her blog that I’m in full agreement with, and that goes well beyond what I’ve said here. I’ll summarize it (inadequately) thus:
Sometimes Wikipedia’s a useful source, and sometimes not, but it’s worth checking. It covers some topics that are difficult to find in other reference works, and can point students to good, reliable sources.
But seriously, go read the whole thing.
How do you approach the Wikipedia issue with your students?
The image in this post is by Flickr user piston9 and CC-licensed.
Comments
1. Jason B. Jones - January 29, 2010 at 02:11 pm
I teach them how to cite the permanent version of the page. It makes a huge difference.
2. Jessica - January 29, 2010 at 02:35 pm
I follow Alan Liu's policy with my students: http://www.english.ucsb.edu/faculty/ayliu/courses/wikipedia-policy-short.html It's really reasonable and tells students how to cite the version they are looking at, etc.
3. Nels P. Highberg - January 29, 2010 at 04:02 pm
I require my students to read Wikipedia all the time, and it's one of my favorite sites of all out there. Of course, I also have two sets of encyclopedias, one from 1963 and one from 1986, in my living room. I love photocopying entries from those two sets of encyclopedias and then having them read the Wikipedia entry on the topic.
4. Martin - January 29, 2010 at 05:03 pm
A useful site for students is Again But Slower (http://againbutslower.com/), which compares standard and simple versions of Wikipedia articles. Simple versions are good for an even quicker overview, but an even worse resource to cite in work!
5. Alan - January 29, 2010 at 06:39 pm
I don't really have any problem with students checking out Wikipedia. I do it myself and I think it can be a good exercise in precision citation (learning to cite not just the page, but the time-specific version). My main dissatisfaction with Wikipedia is that rhetorically it is a mess. The flow of sentences is often quite bad and the overall framework for presenting a complex topic can also frequently be inefficient. While I haven't done one yet in class, I think a good Wikipedia exercise might be to not just examine how a page evolves, but also how the writing itself succeeds or fails.
6. Nels P. Highberg - January 29, 2010 at 09:27 pm
When I teach Professional Editing, I have my students edit a Wikipedia page for this exact reason.
7. Traci Gardner - January 29, 2010 at 09:33 pm
I walk students through various parts of an entry and talk about how to use the information to evaluate the credibility of the entry. There's more info in a blog entry I wrote last July, inspired by the many changes that were being made to the Michael Jackson entry following his death.
8. Paul Richert - January 30, 2010 at 10:07 am
Wikipedia even has a page about how to use it which I include in my syllabus and discuss with my students before they do each research and writing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Researching_with_Wikipedia
9. Aeon Elpis - January 30, 2010 at 05:40 pm
Because the students all have at least some familiarity with Wikipedia, I use it as a resource to talk about how knowledge is produced through conversation and agonism (discussion tab). I also use it to introduce the dangers of groupthink (the Colbert elephant incident) and to overview some of the key questions they should ask in evaluating evidence. I remind that they should choose the best evidence available to make a case, and Wikipedia usually works best as an entry-point to find where to turn for better evidence. If a student were writing about a highly contentious topic and cited a discussion from the discussion tab, though, Wikipedia might actually be the best source. Because I am interested in students learning to judge what counts as "best" for themselves, I do not ban it outright. I do rely on it as a common topos, and I find great utility in its popularity.
10. Traci Gardner - January 30, 2010 at 09:01 pm
Aeon, This comment got me thinking:
If a student were writing about a highly contentious topic and cited a discussion from the discussion tab, though, Wikipedia might actually be the best source.There may be an entire writing activity there... I'm seriously going to play with that idea and see what I can come up with! Traci
11. Rana - January 31, 2010 at 02:53 pm
I have no problems with students using Wikipedia to get a general overview of a subject; indeed it would be hypocritical of me, since I use it that way myself. If I need to, I remind them that it's just a starting point, not a final authority.
As for students using it for more in-depth research, I avoid the issue entirely by assigning tasks that require the students to engage with specific sources or types of sources. About the only problem I've seen, really, is the occasional student who is tempted to cut-and-paste Wikipedia entries into either papers or online take-home exams, and that's not really a Wikipedia problem, but a plagiarism problem.
12. Dave Morgan - February 01, 2010 at 12:40 pm
I think it's an AMAZING assignment to actually REQUIRE your students to edit a Wikipedia entry. Wikipedia maintains a list of "stubs" - entries that need work. Give your students a list of appropriate stubs for your course and tell them to add to the entry. Two good things about this assignment- First, you know they can't use Wikipedia to complete it!! But more importantly, they learn something about the editorial process and citation requirements of the site.
13. Dominik Lukes - February 02, 2010 at 02:44 pm
I absolutely agree. All university-level teachers (particularly at the PG levels) should have students work on improving Wikipedia when appropriate (I know some who've done it with great success even though I haven't taken the plunge myself). It's not just good for the students but good for the global community.
I'd even go as far as to say that there should be grants out there for little collaborative projects involving students and teachers to create entries around lesser-known topics. I was even toying with the idea of putting such a project together myself for British philosophy of education but was told that nobody would ever fund that. Perhaps, I was too easily persuaded to give up.
14. William Patrick Wend - February 04, 2010 at 05:16 pm
I tell my students that beginning their research via Wikipedia to get a general overview of a topic is a solid idea. Like many other reference sources, I wouldn't rely on it.
A helpful hint I give them as well is to check out the footnotes on each page at the bottom. The links there can often be very useful for finding out more information and, perhaps, in a more scholarly direction.
15. William Patrick Wend - February 04, 2010 at 05:18 pm
I am really strongly considering adding an "edit a Wikipedia page" to my Comp I course next time.
Add Your Comment
Commenting is closed.