Wikipedia’s Role in the Classroom: An Examination of the Dangers of Cyclic Misconceptions
Throughout all of my years as a student, across every classroom environment, one thing has never changed: teachers have always asserted that I should stay away from unreliable websites like Wikipedia and tend towards dense, pedantic scholarly articles as sources in my research. However, I would always end up arriving at Wikipedia regardless, finding everything I needed to know about my topic all in one place. Certain research indeed demands rigorous analysis, but younger students should place more emphasis on learning as opposed to hyper-credibility.
Wikipedia even has the potential to go beyond being a source and provides teachers with a unique opportunity to optimize their lesson plans to create critical learners for our new age. The site is the world’s largest source of free information, and it isn’t going away any time soon. Although educators currently label Wikipedia as an unreliable, off-limits site in the world of youth education, the resource has the power to be the fundamental cornerstone of a student’s curiosity when used carefully and critically. Through more detailed lesson plans and a better understanding of how to utilize the site, teachers can harness Wikipedia as a tool of media literacy, research, and exploration for their students.
Teachers commonly consider Wikipedia an unacceptable source at any level of academia. Some schools have gone so far as to ban the site altogether. Why? Many claim that students should never use the site in their research due to the possibility of misinformation. Indeed, any forum with user-contributed work could potentially contain inaccuracies, malicious contributions, and biased perspectives. By allowing students to use Wikipedia as a source in their research, teachers relinquish their control in verifying the legitimacy of every project. However, it is completely illogical to deny students access to millions of free articles without explaining and giving hands-on experience with Wikipedia’s shortcomings. Instead of banning the site, we have the opportunity to proactively guide students to be literate in their consumption of media online.
At a basic level of education, we should simply let students use Wikipedia as their main source of research. Any student below high school age would greatly benefit from Wikipedia due to the site’s digestible presentation of complex topics. Wikipedia’s categorized format makes it easy to split up information into discernible “chapters” that guide the reader from a basic understanding to a more advanced grasp. Furthermore, every Wikipedia page cites its sources, making it much easier for students to cross-reference the web to learn how to verify information. Think of Wikipedia as a gym: a place where students can go to train themselves to become better researchers. In starting students off with Wikipedia from a young age, we give them the tools to explore denser sites later in their careers. One possible application of Wikipedia in a younger classroom could be a virtual scavenger hunt, where students learn how to decipher information across a multitude of pages to come up with the correct answer to a problem. In this way, students learn from a young age that research can be something fun.
Nobody is stopping students from accessing these articles outside of the classroom, but in refusing to allow access to the resource in an academic setting we remove the guidance required to make the most out of the information on each page. Instead, we should turn our attention towards teaching students how to best leverage their access to untapped information to gain as much knowledge as possible. For example, a teacher might allow students to use Wikipedia in their research so long as they also provide the secondary source used to obtain the information in the article. Ultimately, by perpetuating the ideology that Wikipedia has no place in the classroom, educators are stifling the curiosity of their students.
Wikipedia connects millions of articles in a web of facts, meaning that you could go anywhere from an article about Angel’s Flight in Los Angeles to the nutritional information about Froot Loops in just a few clicks. In an oddly beautiful way, the pages on Wikipedia represent the interconnectedness of our world today. By letting students explore the countless pages on the site, educators provide the ability for each individual to investigate what they find interesting.
Many argue that an alternative to Wikipedia in lower-level research is Encyclopedia Britannica since only registered academic authors are allowed to contribute to the site. While the information may be of a higher quality, Encyclopedia Britannica only has 32,640 pages. That’s dwarfed in comparison to Wikipedia’s 58,993,030 pages (Wikipedia). Wikipedia’s power lies in the sheer amount of information that it contains. On the whole, the site is a far more adaptable resource with pages about virtually any subject.
Additionally, Wikipedia is free for all. In my high school research paper about the Cold War, I required the specific launch specifications of the Soviet’s Sputnik satellite. Every database I encountered had a paywall, limiting my access to the quality information I needed. When I opened Wikipedia, I found what I needed right away. It’s invaluable to have access to such a wide array of particular pieces of information without any price. In this way, Wikipedia has the potential to be a resource that individuals around the globe can utilize to obtain a quality education on virtually any concept for free.
The way that Wikipedia can stay free is through its many passionate contributors. Although many believe that Wikipedia’s open-source platform will attract bad actors, Jimmy Wales, one of Wikipedia’s founders, argues the contrary: in his interview with Lex Fridman, he describes Wikipedia’s community. “It’s just like, kind of a fun, wonderful, quite geeky hobby, but people enjoy it.” (Lex Fridman Podcast #385 0:06:45). Many users contribute as a passion and dedicate themselves to maintaining the integrity of the site. I was fascinated by the process of contributing to a page, so I created an account myself to experience what it was like to edit a page. On my first day of editing, I improved two pages that already had over 1,000 collective views. I found it so exciting to put my name onto something that I know will last far longer than myself.
In this way, contributors work together as a community of passionate researchers to contribute to a larger public forum. In its infancy, Wikipedia was niche enough to where there weren’t enough monitors to prevent vandalism. Now, tens of thousands of users edit the site every day, where their contributions can range from minor copyedits to adding whole paragraphs to less developed pages. Wikipedia has even developed a recommendation system, where verified moderators can flag pages for revision when they see something that needs to be altered. New users are then notified that they can make a change, and as a result, have access to hundreds of pages with specific instructions on how to improve them right away.
Since Wikipedia is made up of a large, passionate community committed to the maintenance of free information, the likelihood of false information and vandalism is much lower than it once was. As soon as we recognize Wikipedia’s evolution and destigmatize the usage of this powerful tool in academia, students will have access to more information than imaginable.
But what if Wikipedia could go beyond simply being a resource for research? Wikipedia could provide students with a way to make a meaningful impact through their projects. We can turn students from consumers of media to creators of media by assigning them to edit pages on the site. I believe that we need to reimagine the research paper as a whole: for far too long we have forced students to follow the same structure of their projects when we could be exposing them to an experiential, more wholistic way of learning that will create a tangible, traceable evidence that they contributed to society’s knowledge on a certain topic forever. Malavika Shetty, a senior lecturer at Boston University, touched on Wikipedia’s usefulness in the present day during her feature on the Writing Remix Podcast: “Wikipedia is one of the largest writing projects in the world right now.” (Writing Remix Podcast #46 0:06:52) The fact that students can take part in this collective effort for knowledge means that they can make a lasting impact on a topic forever. I anticipate that this new form of learning will not only assist students in developing their research skills but will go further to motivate them to present higher-quality work. Teachers now can eliminate a dreary, monotonous research project and replace it with an assignment that will motivate students to take pride in their work.
Today, Wikipedia stands as one of the most influential sites for free knowledge on the internet. We should appreciate the fact that thousands of passionate individuals can come together to contribute to the collective human understanding. Although the site has its drawbacks that have spurred debate and controversy, we need to learn to utilize this tool in a way that improves the critical thinking skills, curiosity, and pride of students around the globe.
Works Cited
Dissinger, Daniel, and Katherine Robison. 46: Teaching with Wikipedia w/ Malavika Shetty. Writing Remix Podcast, 28 May 2022, https://writingremixpodcast.com/2021/02/19/episode-46-teaching-with-wikipedia-with-malavika-shetty/. Accessed 17 Sept. 2023.
“Encyclopædia Britannica.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 12 Sept. 2023, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica#:~:text=The%20encyclopaedia%20is%20maintained%20by,exclusively%20as%20an%20online%20encyclopaedia.
“Jimmy Wales: Wikipedia | Lex Fridman Podcast #385.” YouTube, YouTube, 18 June 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=diJp4zoQPqo&ab_channel=LexFridman. Accessed 17 Sept. 2023.
“Size of Wikipedia.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 1 Sept. 2023, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Size_of_Wikipedia#:~:text=As%20of%2016%20September%202023,of%20all%20pages%20on%20Wikipedia.
