A few days ago in class we had a discussion about Wikipedia. Our discussion was based on an article by Scott Jaschik entitled “A Stand Against Wikipedia” where he discussed the ban of Wikipedia by Middlebury College. Several classmates share the same viewpoint that I do about the use of Wikipedia and other Wiki sources. I believe Wikipedia is a great place to begin researching a topic especially if a student does not have any background information about the subject. Wikipedia provides other educational resources for the topic and can help individuals refine their search. However, I think that Wikipedia should not be used as a primary source because the information can be incorrect due to the fact that anyone can go to the site and add or change information on it.
The faculty at Middlebury College really pushed for the ban of Wikipedia because students were putting incorrect information from the site in their papers and on tests. This argument against Wikipedia reminded me of a Jewish Studies course I took last semester. Before our midterm exam, we received a review sheet with numerous vocabulary terms and essay topics. To save time, many students in the class looked up the vocabulary terms on Wikipedia instead of going back through all of their lecture notes. The majority of these students ended up receiving a C or lower on the midterm because the Jewish terms on Wikipedia were not accurate definitions.
I do not disagree with Middlebury College for putting a ban on Wikipedia, but I do disagree with the way they went about it. I think that it is important to inform students why it is not a good idea to use Wikipedia in papers and to explain to them the difference between a bad source and a good source. Banning an informational website without giving students an explanation as to why is not teaching them. I think Steven Bell made a really good statement when he said that “I think our goal should be to equip students with the critical thinking skills to judge.” He believes a better approach to getting students to use better resources would be to “triangulate” Wikipedia. Students could use Wikipedia, but then use other educational sources to see if the information provided in Wikipedia is accurate.
1 comment:
I think that the information provided on sites like conservepedia is much more deserving of scrutiny than that which is provided by wikepedia. Not to say that Wikepedia is a legitimate source of data for college level papers, bu it seems to work fairly hard at keeping subjective information and opinions out of the picture. On the other hand, it seems like Conservepedia was more about maintaining a veiwpoint than providing true information.
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