Wikipedia – From the Popular Source of Information to the Pedagogical Tool

Abstract

This paper presents a research with a goal to interview students about their attitude towards using contents from the Internet encyclopedia – Wikipedia. The research tasks are related to determining students’ attitudes about the quality and reliability of the content on Wikipedia, depending on their gender and academic success, meaning average grades during studies. The research results, based on 186 respondents – students from the Faculty of Philosophy and the Faculty of Fine Arts, show that students use information from Wikipedia for academic purposes, but they have doubts considering its reliability and credibility. The research confirms there are many statistically significant differences between students’ attitudes related to the independent variables of the research – gender and average grades. The conclusion of the research is that with better academic achievements, the degree of Wikipedia use for academic purposes decreases, and the degree of the critical approach to contents on the Internet encyclopedia increases.

Keywords

• Wikipedia
• Students
• Attitudes
• Source of Knowledge