Use of Information Resources by Undergraduate Students and Its Relationship With Academic Achievement

¶ … Library Resources vs. Wikipedia," authors Colon-Aguirre & Fleming-May (2012) illustrate that modern scholars are very often more likely to look for quick solutions to research issues, such as exploiting Wikipedia which is not peer reviewed and therefore has always been synonymous with a lack of truth or evidence. There are a myriad of reasons why students are so much more likely to access easy information like Wikipedia rather than going through the trouble of studying that campus's library resources and the researchers tried to ascertain some of the reasons directly responsible for the growing dependency on internet materials. In this study, twenty-one undergraduate students from a public university in the United States which is not named in the study for the sake of anonymity of the participants were questioned about their study and research practices. What started out as a statistical evaluation of the percentage of students who use internet-based research as their primary means of data acquisition as compared to the number of that population who were more heavily dependent on book-based and library centered research became, through the direct involvement of the undergraduate student participants a deeper discussion as to why the modern era's students tend to seek out technologically advanced research methods as well as why they seek out free information sources such as Wikipedia rather than relying on subscription or paid research services such as Jstor. The intention of the original research, according to the research question originally posed was to examine Wikipedia specifically as an internet source, but the responses of the participants altered the eventual focus of the research.

Obviously, this is an interesting question to raise as all teachers and academicians whether it be at the college or lower level have noticed a growing propensity in students to rely heavily on internet materials. One need only go into a library on a school campus and notice that it is primarily the campus computers being used or the silence as study center being utilized. Many of the actual books that sit on the library's shelves have gathered dust from years of disuse. I appreciated the original question posited by the researchers but I found it somewhat unprofessional that they allowed the dialogue with students to so heavily alter their analysis without performing research themselves apart from the surveying. If they wanted to discuss the student's discussion of Wikipedia or Google in terms of its ease of use and how it requires less on their part, that is fine and quite interesting, but I was disappointed that the researchers did not take this further and try to ascertain whether this propensity was symptomatic of a growing trend throughout academic research. It would be interested in polling further and finding out exactly why it is that students would use a source like Wikipedia which they know to be considered not academic and that the information found on such sites is not only unverified by academic sources, but it often found to be completely erroneous. I believe that there is merit in this research and it is a field of inquiry that requires attention. Therefore, it should be read by other scholars interested in the fields of library science and in understanding modern academic research.