A key skill that every college student must learn is the ability to research information effectively. Colleges correctly place a heavy emphasis on the need for students to learn and practice this skill throughout their studies. Why? Because graduates who have strong research skills are less swayed by the ebb and flow of "the next best idea". They are able to sift through the plethora of information that now exists at our fingertips, analyze it, and come up with an educated decision on what to do. It could even be argued that this is the most important life skill a college student learns.
While college educators would almost unanimously agree with the paragraph above, there is less agreement on what constitutes effective research. One such debate has to do with the use of Wikipedia. In short, should college students be allowed to use Wikipedia as a research source or as part of the research process?
Before attempting to tackle this question, it is important to remember the criteria that is commonly used when evaluating a quality source. These criteria are commonly referred to with the "crude" acronym of CRAAP where the letters stand for currency, relevence, authority, accuracy and purpose. Currency refers to the timeliness of the information. Is the information current? Or is it out of date? Relevence refers to the importance of the information in regards to what you are studying. Does the source relate to the topic? It can also refer to whether or not the information is at an appropriate level. In other words, a fifth grade source, while relating to the topic, is probably not the best source for a college level essay. Authority refers to the source of the information. Is the author an expert on the subject matter? The fourth criteria is accuracy. Is the information correct, truthful, reliable? Is the information supported by evidence? Has the information been reviewed or refereed? Finally, the last criteria is purpose. Purpose gets to the reason the information was published. Purpose has a lot to do with bias. Is there an agenda behind the information that might make the conclusions suspect or at least needing confirmation from another source? Bias is a common problem with many Internet cites since most cites are created with an express purpose to either sell a product or promote a particular ideology.
How does Wikipedia do on these five criteria? It does very well in terms of currency and relevence. As encyclopedias go, Wikipedia is arguably the most current and most relevent since it is updated constantly and it has over 365 million readers worldwide (Wikipedia, 2013). However, these two criteria have never been the achilles heal of Wikipedia. The areas of concern are always in terms of authority, accuracy, and purpose. This is due to the open source nature of Wikipedia. Anyone can post to wikipedia (expert or not) thus the content may not always be accurate and it has more potential to be abused by those with an agenda. For these reasons, college professors often discourage students from citing Wikipedia.
For sake of argument, let us assume that we should discourage students from citing Wikipedia for the reasons mentioned in the previous paragraph. Does this mean that Wikipedia does not have any place in the research process? An important issue to consider when deciding whether or not to encourage students to use Wikipedia actually has to do with our defining what the "research process" is. If we define the process narrowly to only include peer-reviewed articles or published books, then Wikipedia should not be considered (nor should any other encyclopedia or reference work). However, if we are encouraging students to learn to use reference works as part of the research process then Wikipedia can become a very important resource that perhaps we should be teaching our students to use effectively instead of calling it taboo. In fact, Wikipedia might be "the" ideal resource for teaching students about evaluating their sources.
Over the years Wikipedia has made great strides in authority, accuracy and purpose (Reavley, 2012; Murley, 2008; Clauson, Polen, Kamel Boulos, Dzenowagis, 2008). It is also "easy to use, freely available, and students find helpful information in it often enough to reinforce their belief in Wikipedia" (Murley, 2008, p. 593). Perhaps it is time we taught our students how to use it properly since they are going to use it anyway.
Scott
References
Clauson, KA, Polen, HH, Kamel Boulos, MN, Dzenowagis, JH (2008). Scope, completeness, and accuracy of drug information in Wikipedia. Ann Pharmacother 42(12):1814. Retrieved on July 1, 2013 at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmen/19017825.
Murley, D. (2008). In defense of Wikipedia. Law Library Journal. 100 Law Libr. J.. 593. Sandra Day O'Conner College of Law, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona. Retrieved on June 30, 2013 at http://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?collection=journals&handle=hein.journals/llj100&div=45&id=&page=
Reavley, N.J., et. al. (2012). Quality of information sources about mental disorders: a comparison of Wikipedia with centrally controlled web and printed sources. Psychological Medicine. 42(8):1753-1762. (abstract accessed online June 30, 2013, at http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22166182.
Wikipedia (2013). Wikipedia. Retrieved on June 30, 2013 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia#Quality_of_writing.
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5 Comments
as
Below is an excellent blog produced by a GCU librarian that further explains the benefits and dangers of using Wikipedia.
http://blogs.gcu.edu/blog/2010/12/17/wikipedia-what%e2%80%99s-the-big-deal/
Thanks go out to my colleague, Professor LeAnne Prenovost, for sharing this blog with me.
Scott
Hello Scott:
Thank you for your thoroughly researched blog about the virtues and vices of Wikipedia. Although Wikipedia may be the bane of many college instructors, it can be a valuable tool for novice researchers. Given the large amount of information and data available to our students, learning to discern the quality of information is a principal skill we should teach future researchers. While in previous epochs of academic research issues were mainly about accessing and finding information, the student population today should focus on ascertaining reliable and valid research findings (Bird, 2010). One thing I like to do is to encourage students to access the references listed on most Wikipedia posts. The accuracy and validity of many Wikipedia post may be questionable, however, the references used to create the posts are often from peer-reviewed sources - the shibboleth for academic researchers. The important thing, I think, about the usefulness of Wikipedia is that it we should indicate to our student that it is a good starting point for research, but not one that should be included in their in-text citations or references pages. The means in which students ascertain information is not the paramount issue, but their ability to sift through the minutia of online information to find accurate, reliable, and valid research is essential. Thus, the Wikipedia can serve as a starting point in the research process, but more in-depth research is required to ensure reliability and validity of information found. How do you address the Wikipedia question in your classroom?
Thanks,
Eric
Reference:
Bird, S. J. (2010). Responsible Research: What is Expected?. Science & Engineering Ethics, 16, 693-696. doi:10.1007/s11948-010-9248-9
Eric, thanks for your response to my post on the virtues and vices of Wikipedia. Personally, I encourage students to use Wikipedia as part of the research process for both my ungrad and graduate students. I think it has just as much value, as a reference tool, as other encyclopedias.
The first key is to constantly remind our students that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and should be used as such. The second key is to train our students to look at all resources with a critical eye, even peer-reviewed journals. We do a disservice to our students when we imply that all peer-reviewed articles and journals contain accurate information while implying that Wikipedia and other open source resources do not.
For an interesting critique of higher education and the whole peer-reviewed system, I recommend Charles Sykes 1998 classic, ProfScam: Professors and the Demise of Higher Education. Of course, one must also be critical of Sykes critique as well.
Thanks again for responding to my post.
Scott
Hi Scott,
There is some validity to the crowdsourcing aspect of Wikipedia. Crowdsourcing is basically using many eyes to solve a problem (Doan, Ramakrishnan, & Helevy, 2011). Howe (2008) explained that Wikipedia entries are not usually written by one person, but a community of persons who contribute their expertise. It is because of these masses that the content is policed very carefully, and tends to be corrected when an error is present. I do agree that this is a good starting point for novice researchers to find sources and direction for more academic resources. Baytiyeh and Pfaffman (2010) studied those who monitor Wikipedia to keep it free of errors and showed that they have an intrinsic motivation to keep the site as free from error as possible, with no monetary reward involved. Another studied showed that Wikipedia is actually almost as accurate as Encyclopedia Britaanica (Giles, 2005). I think in this day and age, we are going to see crowdsourcing in many areas. This is also related to the open source review process used in JIR. Very interesting stuff!
References
Baytiyeh, H., & Pfaffman, J. (2010). Volunteers in wikipedia: Why the community matters. Journal of Educational Technology & Society, 13(2), 128-140.
Doan, A., Ramakrishnan, R., & Halevy, A. Y. (2011). Crowdsourcing systems on the world-wide web. Communications of the ACM, 54(4), 86-96.
Giles, J. (2005). Internet encyclopaedias go head to head. Nature, 438(7070), 900-901.
Howe, J. (2008). Crowdsourcing : Why the power of the crowd is driving the future of business. New York: Crown Business.
Rick, thanks for your response and for explaining crowdsourcing. The term was new for me so I now feel even more educated. I do believe and recognize that I have a strong bias towards crowdsourcing (even before knowing the term). More eyes tend to create a better product (as long as there is also supervision which Wikipedia and JIR both have).
Thanks again for your response.
Scott