Wikipedia is what kind of source

I came for understanding. At the graduate student level, students also demonstrated a disposition toward evaluating the resource at the article level:. That will also help determine if the Wikipedia article itself is helpful or not.

Because if the references here are good, the article itself should be good. At the advanced educational stages, our adult participants echoed behaviors described in previous studies. Is it realistic to shame student Wikipedia users, to perpetuate rules of thumb our students described learning? They tell us that parents and teachers consistently reinforce the importance of avoiding its use. Few students at any level are able to articulate the real-life and authentic difference between works consulted and works cited.

Not all articles are equally vetted or equally done. This is the nature of wikiness and perhaps students and teachers may need to understand and appreciate the relative values of this collaborative system of work for what it is. While editorial authority may not occur at the brand level, it may be clearly and actively present at the document level. Article references serve to enhance trust and credibility, especially if those references carry the authority from respected institutions, scholars and experts.

Longer articles with more citations and more contributors are typically more accurate than shorter ones. The record and reasoning for edits enable us to quickly judge the neutrality of individual contributors and the objectivity of the article at that point in time.

In real life few of us jump into scholarly articles when exploring a new area of knowledge. We need context and vocabulary before we enter an academic conversation. In the old days, before the social web, we would advise students not to cite general encyclopedias, but we encouraged use of these tools for background knowledge as part of the workflow of inquiry.

We explored the varied types of writing that may be contained within these sources. These discussions involved strategies for developing context knowledge, keeping current, using data, seeking evidence to make arguments, balancing opinion. Of course, cues about container or source type are far less obvious in a digital landscape. Our research team uses the term container collapse , to describe. One surprising finding was that many students could not identify Wikipedia as an encyclopedia, choosing instead to label it as a blog because of its openness.

Might it be time to stop Wikipedia shaming and bring its academic usefulness into the light? Is this shaming preventing the potential for scaffolding a variety of approaches to Wikipedia for its use at different educational levels and at different points in the research workflow of our students? Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, but it is different. It is sometime more and sometimes it is less. Context, disciplinarity and type of use play a role in how we view it and how we use it.

Perhaps the early argument should not be about whether to use Wikipedia, but instead when and how to use it as part of our big-picture scaffolding of knowledge practices and dispositions. It may be time for educators to consider a far more nuanced and sophisticated approach to a tool that is nearing its twentieth birthday. Study citation: Buhler, A.

Follow containercollapse on Twitter. Some additional resources for supporting resource container identification and evaluation. Abilock, D. True—or Not? Educational Leadership , 69 6 , Connaway, L. OCLC Next. Head, A. First Monday, 15 3. Mothe, J. Be aware: just because something is cited in a Wikipedia article does not mean it is "scholarly" or appropriate for your assignment. When in doubt, ask a librarian or your professor. Well-formed Wikipedia articles have a list of useful and often scholarly sources listed at the end of each page under "References", "Bibliography", or "Further Reading.

In some cases, however, you may need to search for the item yourself. For books: Search the library by the book's title. Social Democrat Hunchakian Party. In this case, you should rely on—and cite—Wikipedia. Use your judgment. Remember that all sources have to be evaluated. Increasingly Wikipedia information will be referenced with academic references. Hopefully when you see a fact in Wikipedia you will be able to quickly verify it with an online, academic source, which you can cite instead of Wikipedia.

Connors State College is not liable for the information stated above. This can be avoided by following two simple rules: Do your research assignment properly. After all, it is hard to imagine that millions of anonymous users could accurately maintain a factual and unbiased living encyclopedia. A cultural bias has seemed to have washed over many entries on the site, as general consensus replaces cold, hard facts.