Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Academy/For students and teachers: How to use Wikipedia in a learning environment

Many of our readers are students who understand the power of both the internet and Wikipedia. Due to the prevalence of online sources, it is getting to the point where a student can write a major paper without ever having to set foot inside a library or bookstore to find printed sources. Simply plugging in a search term for a topic on Google turns up potentially thousands of possible sources, while there are also many subscription databases now that allow students to access resources online. One could spend an entire lifetime surrounded by internet information and learn not even one small fraction of the astronomical knowledge available out in the real world.

Part of the knowledge is located on Wikipedia, and the fact that a student can locate information on Wikipedia that can be put to use in a report makes this a tempting first stop for those looking to get a quick start or early finish to a major paper, project, report, or other school-related task. In one sense this is a good thing: since Wikipedia was designed to hold this knowledge and share it with the world this proves that the concept is viable, and that an online encyclopedia can compete with printed encyclopedias. With the availability of the internet in most English speaking countries our knowledge is really only a click away, and that has been a major attraction of our site for quite some time.

In another sense, though, using Wikipedia for school-related work can be fraught with danger, academically speaking, as Wikipedia is a crowd sourced resource that (in most cases) anyone can edit. This means that sometimes information can be inaccurate, incomplete, or even blatantly false. There have been numerous cases where our articles have been corrupted deliberately or where those who should know better have plagiarized Wikipedia for their own benefit, and this has tarnished Wikipedia. It is for this reason that many teachers and professors refuse to allow information from Wikipedia to be used in school-related work.

To be fair, arguably students can safely use Wikipedia as a source if they understand and apply a few important rules. These rules can help a student make the best use of Wikipedia, and should enable them to incorporate information from Wikipedia into a school project in such a way as to avoid the controversy surrounding Wikipedia's reliability as a source.

The first commandment: tertiary, not primary or secondary

The first commandment of using Wikipedia as source is that this is not, was not, and never will be a primary source. There is simply too much drama, too much interference from policy and guideline mandates, too much fluctuation, and in some cases even too much information for it all to be presented here in a way that would permit Wikipedia to serve as a primary source. Nor is Wikipedia a secondary source as we are precluded from conducting our own original research, and as such are required to mainly cite our work to secondary sources; as such Wikipedia is arguably a tertiary source.

As a tertiary source, though, Wikipedia is second to none. We have information on a wide variety of topics that would otherwise be considered passovers for conventional encyclopedias, and a quick glance at our articles on a topic in question can help any student get a feel for the territory that they have been assigned. In this manner, as a tertiary source, you can research a topic and get a better idea about where you should go in a library or online for more information.

Reverse engineering

Another tactic that you can employ on Wikipedia is reverse engineering. This can only be done using articles that hold a rating of B-class or better, but if used successfully should provide a student with a wealth of information without using Wikipedia directly as a source.

Reverse engineering involves locating an article on a relevant topic and looking at the references section and bibliography section. In both of these sections a student should be able to locate a collection of sources (print, electronic, or both) that were used to cite the various facts in the articles in question. These same sources can then be used by a student to build a report, presentation, speech, or other school-related assignment, and a measure of the information the sources can provide can be established by reading the article in question.

By using this method you can honor a request by a teacher or professor to refrain from citing Wikipedia as a source and instead use the sources that were used to bring an article on Wikipedia up to a higher assessment standard as the basis of your research. An additional advantage of this method is that you can see the raw material used to generate the article's information with your own eyes, and can then use that information from its original source as your see fit (for example, to support a certain argument).

When making use of this method be careful that you check the availability of the sources. In some case you may need to make use of the special collections or inter-library loan system of a local library, or you made need specific access to a certain electronic collection (JSTOR, for example).

Wikipedia as a school assignment

If you are a teacher or a professor, you can turn Wikipedia into an assignment for the classroom. The means by which you decide to do this are up to you, but it is possible to have students in a class work either individually or collectively on Wikipedia articles.

This can be a huge advantage to Wikipedia in that it helps add content here, and can help our articles move up the assessment standards we keep on site, which can put an article in to a position where it can be reversed engineered. More information on this can be found at Wikipedia:School and university projects and Wikipedia:WikiProject Classroom coordination.