Katt Blackwell-Starnes's List: Beyond Google

• • Significant emphasis on invention and Wikipedia--more specific types of invention: search terms, background, and definition.

• We investigated the use of Wikipedia for course–related research in five related areas:

    
  1. How frequently college students use Wikipedia.
   
  2. What motivates students to use Wikipedia.
   
  3. At which stages of research students use Wikipedia.
   
  4. How Wikipedia is used in relation to other information resources.
   
  5. What predictors reveal which types of students are more and less likely to use Wikipedia.
• focus groups
• 86 students
• 20 to 30 years old
• completed at least one semester at the institution
• humanities or social sciences.
• 3.44,
• mean GPA
• Student survey
• 2,318 responses
• PASW (Version 17.0) as a statistical tool for calculating frequencies, cross tabulations, and logistic regressions.
• beginning of the research process.
• Students reported that they frequently, if not always, consulted Wikipedia at some point during their course–related research (see Figure 1).
• obtain background
• summary about a topic
• helped them get started (76 percent); (2) featured an easy to use interface (69 percent); and, (3) helped them find the meaning of terms and use of language used about certain topics (67 percent)
• Wikipedia’s greatest value to students may be its ability to alleviate common frustrations students initially have with conducting research
• Students reported they could not begin their research process until they had an idea of what they were going to write about. They did not think that they could approach an instructor about an assignment, until they knew more about their topic. They did not use a scholarly research database early on, given the specificity of academic journal content.
• entries were easy to understand
• helped students figure out search terms
• included hypertexted citations
• up–to–the–minute information
• Most respondents (70 percent) reported using Wikipedia at the beginning of the research process
• Another focus group participant called Wikipedia “my presearch tool.
• Google (i.e., for finding sites other than Wikipedia)
• Wikipedia
• The full model containing all predictors of Wikipedia usage had a (Nagelkerke) R–squared value of 20 percent. In other words, 20 percent of all the variance in the use of Wikipedia can be accounted for by these variables, using this model.
• the strongest predictor of using Wikipedia was being someone who also used Google for course–related research

• the predictors from our model about Wikipedia use are as follows:

    

  1. Respondents who were Google users were 10 times more likely to use Wikipedia for course–related research than respondents who did not use Google (controlling for all other factors in our model).

    

  2. Respondents majoring in architecture or engineering were almost three times more likely to be Wikipedia users, compared to social sciences majors (controlling for factors in our model). While respondents majoring in sciences were more than 1.5 times more likely to use Wikipedia, compared to social science majors (controlling for all other factors in the model).

    

  3. Those enrolled in two–year campuses were less likely than those in four–year institutions to report that they used Wikipedia.

    

  4. Those who consulted librarians were less likely to report using Wikipedia than those did not consult librarians.
• Argument papers, the bread and butter of humanities and social science courses, may be unfamiliar territory for them. And the resources needed to complete these assignments may be unknown to them, too.

• We also found students enrolled in four–year institutions were more likely to use Wikipedia than students in our sample enrolled in two–year institutions (i.e., community colleges).

    

  This finding suggests respondents from two—year institutions may have received more hands–on training about how to conduct scholarly research than at four–year institutions, given the curriculum and accreditation requirements in community colleges.
• Wikipedia’s information utility is tied to four Cs it delivers — currency, coverage, comprehensibility, and convenience.
• hyper currency combined with a sheer range of coverage
• breadth of coverage
• credibility
• less of a criterion
• Some students in the focus groups told us if they doubted a Wikipedia entry, they did some fact–checking elsewhere — a news clip on YouTube to “see if the two things added up.” Other students reported looking for Wikipedia’s editorial notes
• Students’ driving need for background context makes Wikipedia one of the predictable workarounds that many students use, especially during the first stages of their research process.
• The need for context–sensitive presearch sources and coaching services appears to be in high demand. There is a need for solutions that logically bridge the early stages of research to the rest of the research process and deliver the kinds of efficiencies students have come to expect (e.g., the “four Cs”).
• When students have critical questions about narrowing down topics, figuring out search terms, and obtaining background information appears to be a critical time of need. It is a period of initial curiosity, but also one rife with inevitable frustrations in search of solutions. Our findings lead us to believe that support and solutions from multiple outlets, not just one tool, service, or individual, may work the best.

39 more annotations...