In class we broke down the barriers of the internet. The intent was to cultivate new teaching strategies and learn where valuable resources are. One of those resources being Wikipedia. This goes against everything I was ever taught. Constantly, educators would tell me "Do not use Wikipedia. It's not a credible source". After today, I am seriously questioning every research paper I have had in my last 18 years of schooling.
One of the largest take aways I have from the in-depth look we had with Wikipedia was their grading rubric. This rubric creates a solid foundation to prove the accuracy and the reliability of the given resource. As you look at a Wikipedia page it is essential you look for the grade of the article. If you see anything with an "A" in it then you can successfully add it as a citation and resource. This is largely due to the rigorous peer review the article page has been through. If there is a star in addition to the letter grade then there is no question of the credentials of the page. If I would have known this when I was in my undergrad it would have been a huge game-changer for me. Primarily because Wikipedia can be an amazing resource and an impeccable place to find sources from related articles.
Even though I have all of this information, it is still questionable to me. After learning this in class I continued researching Wikipedia on my own. One source I found that was updated 4 weeks ago still cites Wikipedia as unreliable and weak. However, they also mildly contradicted themselves in their video with some of the data they presented. When they said "Remember: A wiki is a community-edited document, one which anyone can add to or change. That's not exactly scholarly or peer-reviewed, because the reviewers aren't necessarily people who have studied an area." Even though this was said in the written portion, they said in the video that most credible sources are referred articles. This essentially means they are peer-reviewed which on Wikipedia everything is.
(Source: https://libguides.ccac.edu/HIS213/scholarly )
So the question for me is, will I use Wikipedia on scholarly works? The answer is complex but I generally think I would. The large stigma for me goes back to 4th grade hearing Mrs. Armstrong tell the whole class not to use Wikipedia. If I ignore that and recognize all the amazing things that can be done with this website then I can successfully use it.
Hi Cory,
ReplyDeleteI think you make a really good point about using Wikipedia if we would've understood it earlier. I too was constantly told not to trust this site because people could change the information in a heartbeat. It never registered to me that textbooks could never be altered, because I never thought about it, and their information is almost always outdated even before it is published. At least we know now. One thing you could use from this is to adapt the Wikipedia rubric in terms of your own grading standard. It already has some solid key words and language in there. Might as well use it!
Cory. I have to start off by saying that I love your title. I honestly think that Wikipedia is really a tricky subject for me. One of the ideas that I have to use Wikipedia is for background knowledge. If students use the resource right then I think it is a really valuable tool in helping students to do quick research. However, when it comes to the topic of high quality scholarly journals I think I would tell my students to avoid wikipedia. i think that using Wikipedia as a reference in a citation page is okay, but when actually citing in text students should not use it.
ReplyDeleteI think this is great. I told my mom about this because when she was teaching she told her class to stay away from Wikipedia because this was long enough ago that it was unreliable and couldn't be trusted. I told her about the grading scale, but she was still suspicious about it because anyone can change anything. I think it goes to show that what we hear stays with us even outside of that that half life of knowledge. Textbooks never seem to be challenged though they stay static for years with errors or misconceptions. Would I use Wikipedia a resource? I don't know, maybe as a launching point since they list their references and I can see that myself. Maybe an A++++ article like Cleopatra, it's hard to say. It's hard to be a careful consumer when we learned so differently!
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