I read the article from the Chronicle about the Wikipedia. It's interesting and kind of ironic that not only Rasmussen College students use heavily the Wiki, but that my University of Florida students, who are supposed to be more "serious" and "academic", also tend to use it at the beginning of the semester. On the second essay, though, that they are assigned, they quickly eliminate the source from their papers. I tend to agree with the Chronicle statement and the owner of the WIKI.
On the other hand, though articles taken from "general encyclopedias" should not be used in serious papers, specialized articles from "subject" or "discipline-oriented" encyclopedias CAN be used, and should be used, especially if they are signed articles. The information contained may be useful in the introduction or background of the paper. So encyclopedias are also valid sources to use in a serious academic essay.
GOA9: Progress Report
2 days ago
4 comments:
I almost put Wikipedia on the same level as Encyclopedia Britannica. Almost - in that EB has quite a bit of media-rich content and primary source data that you cannot find in Wiki.
However - when you get right down to it - I really push students to these sources so that they can further identify key search terms and concepts for a paper - not for actual "meat".
Are we ever going to be able to get our students to stop Wikipedia? Probably not. But can we be realistic and say - "If you are going to use it, you might as well use it effectively?" Absolutely.
I agree. This week, the Success Strategies course was about Information Literacy. My poor students were forced to listen to my library-geek talk yet again!
Muwahaha ... librarian power!
Anywho....someone mentioned Wikipedia as an online encyclopedia. I used the Evaluating Resources worksheet to talk about how to evaluate ALL resources and directly talked about looking at the differences between a print encyclopedia and Wiki. When it came to the "Who", some were astonished to learn that their "to-go-site" wasn't a reliable source for scholarly information.
I am of the same opinion as Emily - I too go to Wikipedia for certain things, and I admitted that in class. What I did stress in class was identifying the PURPOSE for finding information. That seemed to get their attention.
I also believe that Wikipedia has its place; however, I make a point of explaining to students what Wikipedia is and why they should not CITE it or use it for the meat of the paper. Most of the time they are shocked to find out that it can be edited and added to by anyone. Gotta go for the shock value whenever possible. I think at the conclusion of our discussion most students get it - at least, I hope they do.
I'd always been suspicious of Wikipedia until last year when I started to learn more about it. I still would never recommend it as a source to be cited but I do think it's important to be honest with students about it.
First, there was the Nature article that came out comparing Britannica with Wikipedia showing that the difference in factual errors between various scientific entries weren't significantly greater in Wikipedia. Then, as I was researching literature on Web 2.0/Library 2.0, I noticed a lot of librarians reference Wikipedia entries when searching for definitions of certain technologies. There are definitely some areas a user is going to find more complete, up-to-date information on Wikipedia than they would find in peer reviewed journals. This is especially the case in the certain areas where there is a huge online community constantly evaluating the entries found in Wikipedia.
Again, students should be aware of why citing Wikipedia is frowned upon while recognizing that it still may have some of the best information available depending on the subject. Otherwise they might end up as stunned as I was to discover so many references to Wikipedia in the allegedly more "academic" journals.
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