socialmedian: Students Advised by Professors not to Use Wikipedia

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Students Advised by Professors not to Use Wikipedia

Submitted by Louisgray from Google Reader

Sep 04, 2008

Summary

I have just bumped into an interesting post on Powerset blog about a small survey they have carried out to see students’ attitude towards Wikipedia. Powerset is a semantic search engine recently acquired by Microsoft. The first product launched by Powerset is the tool to search Wikipedia to get more relevant results using the power of natural language processing technologies.

The reason for this study is that the guys at Powerlabs noticed substantial number of feedback emails sent from various .edu domains so they started to wonder if Wikipedia and Powerset-powered search of its content were getting popular among the students community. To get some evidence they simply performed a small survey (with 200 college students participating) to get to know what students think of Wikipedia and how they use it.

The survey confirmed the suspicion: students love Wikipedia and often rely on it in their studies yet professors seem to be very unhappy about it. To be more specific, 90% of respondents said they had used Wikipedia content to complete an assignment. What’s more,

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Comments (11)

Bob Sibdu,

Sep 04, 2008

I've always said this - don't trust Wikipedia as the sole source for anything. Take it in context w/other sources.

Stephentimothy,

Sep 04, 2008

My fellow graduate education students and I were explicitly told by our research methods professor not to include Wikipedia as a source in our course project, because it isn't "peer reviewed." I agree with Bob: I have never used it as the "sole source" for anything; but it often provides useful links to more "credible" sources.

Scottwheaton,

Sep 05, 2008

I was told this my first semester of college. Great info but not entirely 100% credible.

Adelinejoie,

Sep 05, 2008

Even as we do research, we don't just rely on one source. It applies to Wikipedia as well, isn't it? I used Wikipedia a lot for faster confirmation of certain things, its pretty accurate as an outline. But if its for school, I would definitely search more in depth and have many supporting references.

Profy,

Sep 05, 2008

@Bob: That was the point of the post: Wikipedia can be used as a point of entry to see where you can find further information, not as the destination for all information.

Profy,

Sep 05, 2008

@Stephentimothy and @Scottwheaton: Thank you for confirming the title of the post with your own experience. And it is also good to see that no one here even contemplates using Wikipedia as a source for research instead using it as a guidance on where to go next.

Rampantheart,

Sep 06, 2008

OMG!I have been using Wikipedia all my life!

Fixator,

Sep 06, 2008

The main "problem" in my view is that children at elementary level are encouraged to use Wikipedia and Google. This leads to problems later in education.

Scottwheaton,

Sep 07, 2008

@Profy: Just figured I'd confirm that this has been the case for some time now. Yes, have always valued wikipedia for surface-level info that points me in new directions.

Hyperkinesis,

Sep 08, 2008

One could also get "bad" data from the library! What if a student used a book by David Icke, or a similar kooky writer because it was available in the library? in what way does a printed source have more authority than wikipedia? Instead, academics should perhaps focus on how to get their students to develop critical thinking abilities, rather than dismiss wikipedia because it is not "peer reviewed".

Scottwheaton,

Sep 08, 2008

Great point, critical thinking abilities solve the entire issue with non-credible sources. Being intelligent enough to decipher what is quality and what isn't is key.