Difficult for Today\'s College Students to Imagine,

¶ … difficult for today's college students to imagine, but a generation ago, writing an undergraduate research paper involved at least one prolonged visit to a bricks-and-mortar library. The student would consult the printed tome titled Guide to Periodicals and follow up with a search of periodical backfiles. It was often a tedious and time-consuming way to work, and it could be frustrating if the journals needed were not part of the library's collection.

Fast forward to 2011, when students enjoy not only the use of online library resources but online institutions of learning as well. This generation of college students is computer-savvy, important to a population that is often busy juggling obligations at school, home and the workplace. It is important to find reliable information fast so that assignments can be completed in a timely manner and allowing students to work anytime and anywhere. Wikipedia is a resource that provides that advantage.

Though even Wikipedia's founder, Jimmy Wales, urges college students to refrain from total reliance on Wikipedia, there is a growing community of supporters who believe it is a viable choice. As Chandler and Gregory (2010, p. 247) point out, there is continual updating of the information. They agree that "[w]hile it certainly should not be the one and only source for undergraduate research, Wikipedia may have appropriate uses in the college classroom." Wikipedia is based on "tried-and-true" resources and goes through an editing and revising process just as any academic writing does, albeit with an all-volunteer staff. College faculty worry that students will accept Wikipedia's offerings wholesale and without question, but as Chandler and Gregory further point out (p. 249), if the goal of education is to teach critical thinking, why not include Wikipedia on the list of approved resources and let students evaluate its credibility on their own?

Conclusion

At Pennsylvania's small, liberal arts Lycoming College, history professors Cullen Chandler and Alison Gregory reversed a policy banning Wikipedia and challenged students to not only use the resource but to contribute articles of their own. The results of the experiment exceeded the faculty members' expectations, as they observed students learning both intentional and unintentional lessons. Students gained a better understanding of what Wikipedia is and what it is not; by being better informed about the content and process, there were in a better position to make good decisions about using this resource.

As has been demonstrated, errors occur in resources such as Encyclopeaedia Britannica, considered by many to be infallible. Although it does not happen often, mistakes in so-called "respectable" resources can take a long time to correct. Mistakes caught on Wikipedia, by contrast, can be rectified immediately by knowledgeable individuals in the cyber community. The growing popularity of Wikipedia ensures that there is a great body of knowledge on which to draw. It is an open source site with contributors from all over the world, ensuring diversity of perspective in the writing. Every article uploaded to Wikipedia is time-stamped, enabling reading to track the progression of an article and its various incarnations on its way to becoming a solid, credible source of information.