A new study conducted at a California liberal arts college found that students don’t look first at Wikipedia when given a research assignment. They don’t even go to Google or Yahoo. Instead, most students look at their course readings, talk to professors, and use their library’s web site and databases. Hurrah for US research skills? Not exactly.
The study appears in the current issue of First Monday, a peer-reviewed online-only journal dealing with digital culture. Researchers at St. Mary’s, a small liberal arts college in California, took a look at what students did when confronted with a new research assignment from a professor. The findings aren’t especially surprising: the first thing students did was to get confused and procrastinate. Once they finally settled down to work, though, the surprises began.
Some professors have lamented the fact that too many students dive right into Wikipedia or fire up general search engines when searching for scholarly information. The St. Mary’s study found, though, that 40 percent of students surveyed first went to their course materials for background information and citations.
Next up was the library web site, where 23 percent of students went first. Search engines were the first destination for 13 percent of students, and 12 percent went to the professor. Only 3 percent tried Wikipedia. Students were also (thankfully) aware that blogs weren’t scholarly sources, and all of them noted that they would not include blog data in a research paper.
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