Education/News/June 2023/Using Wikipedia in education: students' and teachers' view
Using Wikipedia in education: students' and teachers' view
- Research focus
The research was primarily focused on the topics:
- what are students' and teachers' perceptions of Wikipedia;
- how Wikipedia has been used in teaching at the initiative of both the student and the teacher;
- what possibilities do teachers see for integrating Wikipedia into teaching?
- Research results
One part of the research was conducted in 11 general education schools among 9th and 12th grade students and the other part among 49 teachers via 11 focus group interviews.
The research results have already been analyzed. The published article With or without Wikipedia? Integrating Wikipedia into the Teaching Process in Estonian General Education Schools reports the research results regarding the teacher study. The article about the survey of students will be published this summer.
Very shortly, the results of the research tell us that teachers find Wikipedia to be a suitable teaching tool. However, teachers expressed some uncertainty towards Wikipedia, as from the early days of Wikipedia they still think it contains unreliable information. Paradoxically sometimes teachers themselves use Wikipedia texts for preparing their lessons, however, they correctly tell students not to use Wikipedia as an original source but rather as a starting point for further study.
As for the students, most of them use Wikipedia for schoolwork several times a week. They reported that most teachers allow the use of Wikipedia most often in the subject of history, geography, music, and literature. In some schools, students have been taught the right usage of Wikipedia texts and references by their teachers but it is more of an exception. What students find difficult about Wikipedia is a dilemma – how to use Wikipedia in their school work without violating the authorship and copyright rules. As one student put it:
The biggest problem so far in using Wikipedia is probably related to referring to the Wikipedia text. It often feels like Wikipedia already has the best wording and then I have to think for a long time and try how it would be best to put the text in the article into your own words.
The other one said: If you make a straight copy-paste from Wikipedia the words come with their links and it is troublesome to remove the links.
The research project will be completed by November 2023, until this time we are expecting more interesting articles from the research group.