Abstract
The Internet provides students with information from a great number of online sources. Wikipedia is one of the most frequently suggested by search engines and popular students’ reference websites. The purpose of the research was to study students’ use and attitudes of Wikipedia and to find out the patterns of Wikipedia use as an information source for academic purposes amongst different student groups in a Ukrainian university considering the language used. The results revealed that the overwhelming majority of students used Wikipedia and most of the respondents used it for academic purposes. Students were likely to value Wikipedia’s being short and informative for writing assignments at the beginning of their work. However, the findings suggest that Wikipedia’s usage is restricted by the coverage and completeness of the Wikipedia content in students’ native language and the level of their knowledge of English. We found that students’ major, year and mode of study as well as teachers’ approval can also relate to their use of Wikipedia in relation to university studies.
Highlights
Despite how obvious as it is to implement modern computer and information technologies into the classroom, there are debates about using some Web-based tools and resources, e.g. Wikipedia, for academic purposes
The purposes of the research are to study students’ use and attitudes of Wikipedia in a Ukrainian university with students mostly speaking Ukrainian and Russian and to query if there is any consistent pattern
The use of Wikipedia was not found to strongly differ according to the years or modes of study, we can trace a little increase in the number of those using Wikipedia less frequently from year to year
Summary
Despite how obvious as it is to implement modern computer and information technologies into the classroom, there are debates about using some Web-based tools and resources, e.g. Wikipedia, for academic purposes. Through Wikipedia Educational Programme and Wikimedia projects, it is perceived as a valuable writing assignment enhancing student learning in a study area (Lerga & Aibar, 2015; Freire & Li, 2016; Walker & Li, 2016). The results of previous research show that the number of students using Wikipedia on the whole and for their academic studies can vary significantly – from approximately thirty to almost ninety percent in the American and Australian studies, respectively – whereas the scope of purposes remain practically the same (Pew Internet & American Life Project, 2007; Lim, 2009; Head & Eisenberg, 2010; Huang, Shi, Chen, & Chow, 2016; Selwyn & Gorard, 2016; Soler-Adillon, Pavlovic, & Freixa, 2018). The study asks if different groups of students have the same or different attitudes about using Wikipedia for studying, as well as which language Wikipedia is
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