Students in the University of Denver’s Media, Film, and Journalism Studies Department composed 24 Wikipedia articles last year, covering everything from the gold standard to San Juan Mountains to bimettalism, an antiquated monetary standard.
Journalism instructors Lynn Schofield Clark and Christof Demont-Heinrich said students were told to check their sourcing carefully, just as they would for an assignment at a local newspaper.
“I tell students to use it as an information portal … and you can see what information has been sourced and see that they’re reliable sources,” Demont-Heinrich said. “Wikipedia can be a great resource.”
Research published in March 2010 in the journal First Monday showed that eight out of 10 students surveyed said they used Wikipedia for background knowledge. Fifty-two percent of respondents said they frequently used the web-based collaborative encyclopedia, “even if an instructor advised against it.”
Twenty-two percent said they rarely or never used the site. Only 17 percent of student respondents said they used Wikipedia because it was more reliable than other websites.
About 2,300 students responded to the survey, according to the First Monday web site.
Davis said Wikipedia should serve as a starting point for college research, and just as a student wouldn’t include a paper encyclopedia on his or her citation page, Wikipedia entries shouldn’t be cited either.
“There are certainly Wikipedia articles that are of better quality than others, and we realize that,” she said. “As in any information source, it’s important to investigate it and determine whether or not it’s reliable. … There certainly are good and bad parts to Wikipedia.”
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