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Teachers and Wikipedia

a story of love or hate?

Einar Spetz, Sweden

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Table of Contents

1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................2

1.2 Conducting the study.................................................................................................3

1.3The questionnaire.......................................................................................................3

2. Results.................................................................................................................................4

Table 1. 266 respondents, distributed by school ..............................................................4Table 2. 266 respondents, distributed by birth decade.....................................................4

Table 3. Teachers' usage of Wikipedia's Swedish language version....................................5

Table 4. Teachers using other encyclopedias....................................................................5

Table 5. Wikipedia's reliability according to the respondents............................................6

Table 6. Teachers' view on pupils' confidence in Wikipedia according to the respondents. 6

Table 7. Other teachers' confidence in Wikipedia according to the respondents................7

Table 8. Advised pupils to use Wikipedia?.........................................................................7

Table 9. Advised pupils against using Wikipedia? .............................................................8

Table 10. Advised (fellow)teachers?.................................................................................8

Table 11. Editing and writing texts yourself on Wikipedia?................................................93. Comments ..........................................................................................................................9

4.Bibliography.......................................................................................................................10

Annex 1 Results, summary

Annex 2 Questionnaire

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1. Introduction

In the following, I will report the results of a study on secondary school teachers' usage of

Wikipedia and their attitude to this internet encyclopedia whose content is created by its users.

The result is based on questionnaire answers from 266 teachers working at upper secondary

schools in the greater Stockholm area. The survey was conducted during the autumn and winter

2008/2009.The survey is thematically related to a previous study - Wikipedia's faults and shortcomings - a

concern for libraries? (2008)1 This previous work also included a user study, then the interviewees

were high school pupils. Both studies have been carried out on the behalf of Stockholm county

library.

The initial study included a general discussion on Wikipedia and libraries' relationship to it. A year

ago one objective was to present a material that introduced Wikipedia to the Swedish library

community. Over the past year, several books specializing on Wikipedia have been published: to

mention a few: Lennart Guldbrandsson's book in Swedish, S fungerar Wikipedia [How Wikipedia

works] (2008) and How Wikipedia works and how you can be a part of itby Phoebe Ayers (et al.)

(2008) New titles in the same genre pop up continually. Andrew Lih's book The Wikipedia

Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World's Greatest Encyclopedia (2009) is awaited

with great interest, also outside the Wikipedian circle. These three are all informative reference

books. Unlike them, this report is limited to experiences from 266 teachers and how they perceive

the Swedish language version of Wikipedia.

Why is it valuable to find out how secondary school teachers use Wikipedia and what they think of

theuser-produced encyclopedia? My interest was awakened while interviewing pupils in the

previous study, when 98 percent of them claimed having used Wikipedia, and 87 percent had

done so at least once within the last thirty days. The interest to discuss high school pupils usage of

Wikipedia proved great, when I, at various conferences have lectured on this topic, usually with amajority of school librarians in the audience. This eagerness, though, has often been

overshadowed by the interest to the debate teacher's relationship to Wikipedia. I dare say, that

teachers generally are believed to relate somewhat strict to Wikipedia, supposed to warn pupils

from using this encyclopedia within an educational context. A rather widespread opinion, is that

teachers would use grade-related sanctions in case pupils rely on Wikipedia texts to much. In the

previous study, 65 percent of the high school pupils answered "not reliable" or "not reliable at all"

when asked "How reliable do you think your teachers think that the Swedish version of Wikipedia

is?"

Wikipedia arouses emotions at school. It seems to be a story of either love or hate. There are

many opinions, but there seems to be an absence of hard facts. Thinking wishfully, I hope thisfield will be a subject to extensive scientific scrutiny. There are interesting ongoing initiatives, like

the EXACT project, which is shared between the University College of Bors and the University of

Gothenburg.2 Given that more initiatives will occur in the future, the reader is kindly asked to

consider this study as an initial mapping of the area, a first attempt of documentation.

1Regrettably, the previous study is available in Swedish only:http://www.regionbiblioteket.se/upload/_Dokument/wikipedia.pdf.

A short version is available on this blog: http://einarspetz.wordpress.com/how-can-regional-networking-between-school-

librarians-help-improving-quality-of-wikipedias-content/

2 EXACT, acronym for EXpertise, Authority and Control on the Internet (EXACT): a study of the formation of source credibility inWeb 2.0 environments for learning

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1.2 Conducting the study

This study is based on answers from 266 secondary school teachers at seven high schools in

Stockholm County. They worked at seven schools in six different municipalities: Botkyrka,

Danderyd, Jrflla, Upplands Vsby and Vallentuna and Stockholm. I visited three of the schools

(in Stockholm, Vallentuna, Upplands Vsby). At the remaining schools, I have had the help of

librarians, teachers and headmasters. Where ever I turned, I met nothing but helpfulness and I amnow grateful to a number of people.

The areas around the schools are different in a number of aspects, such as degree of urbanization

and socio-economic status. The schools differ also in terms of grade average, number of teachers,

ownership, number of students. It could certainly be fruitful to ponder what impact these

mentioned factors have on the individual teacher's approach towards Wikipedia. However, I have

chosen not to include this kind of correlations in the investigation. What impact gender and age

have on teachers' attitude would have been possible to establish. However, I chose only to account

for respondents' gender and age as figures. This reflects a personal preference, I find it less

interesting to determine, for example, to what extent male secondary school teachers, born in the1970s, advice school pupils not to use Wikipedia and to compare that with other subsets belonging

to the population. I have had no ambition to achieve a gender balance of respondents, or to

achieve specific proportions between categories of teachers. Subgroups and details are not in

focus: the material as a whole is. However, the outcome at each school is reported in Appendix 1.

The fashion the survey was conducted might have affected the amount of statistical loss. It may

have been the most committed teachers who answered most questionnaires at the schools where

I could not be present, while less interested teachers easily could chose not to participate. This

kind of loss was negligible at schools where teachers filled out forms at larger staff meetings.

There and then, no teacher refused to participate, though of course some of the interviewees did

not answer all the questions. It is plausible, that some staff members were unable to participate

due to sickness or other reasons.

At one school (situated in Haninge municipality), the questionnaire was reformatted so badly,

that some of the response options and check boxes fell out. The responsibility for this technical

hitch was of course solely my own. I decided not to include answers from the incorrectly

formatted questionnaires in the results. The results of Haninge investigation, however, are

reported in Appendix 1. In addition to the schools mentioned above, 39 teachers in the county

Dalarna have also answered the questionnaire. The result from the school in Dalarna county is

summarized in a separate column in Appendix 1.

As this study is completed, the source material,every filled out questionnaire, were handed over

to the principal, the Stockholm county Library, where the material is available for inspection.

1.3The questionnaire

The survey was composed of multiple choice questions. The respondents choose between two to

five alternative answers. In all there were eleven questions, two background questions - about

gender and birth decade and nine of them connected to the Swedish language version of

Wikipedia. The inquiry is attached as Appendix 2.

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Questions 1.1 - 1.2 concerned the teachers' own use of Wikipedia and two other reference tools. In

1.3-1.5 respondents were asked to rank, to what extent they rely on Wikipedia. The respondents

were also asked to estimate the extent to which their students and fellow colleagues rely on

Wikipedia. 1.6-1.8 applied to what extent teachers feel, that they advise their teacher colleagues

and pupils to use or not to use the encyclopedia in question.

2.0 Results

The study was based on questionnaires filled out initially by 341 respondents. 36 malformed forms were

excluded as well as 39 forms filled out by respondents outside of the Stockholm area. Thus, the result finalis based on the remaining 266 completed questionnaires.

Table 1. 266 respondents, distributed by school

Schools bymunicipality

Number ofrespondents

Percentage of allrespondents

Percentage ofmale

respondents

Percentage offemale

respondents

No answer / otheranswer (Gender

unknown)

Botkyrka 19

7,1%

1,1%

6,0% 0,0%

Danderyd 18

6,8%

4,1%

2,6%

0,0%

Jrflla 9

3,4%

1,9%

1,1%

0,4%

Stockholm,city school

53

19,9%

8,6%

11,3%

0,0%

Stockholm,suburban

school

46

17,3%

9,8%

7,5%

0,0%

Upplands

Vsby

76

28,6 %

13,2%

15,0%

0,4%

Vallentuna 45

16,9%

7,1%

9,8% 0,0%

Total

266

100%

45,9%

53,4% 0,8%

Table 2. 266 respondents, distributed by birth decade

266 questionnaires

1940s

1950s

1960s

1970s

1980s

Other answer /

no answer

Number

48 63 57 64 23 11

Percentage

18 %

23,7% 21,4%

24,1%

8,6%

4,1%

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Table 3. Teachers' usage of Wikipedia's Swedish language version

Questionnaireitem 1.1

Wikipedia is an internet based encyclopedia. It is available in severallanguages. The English version is the largest. It has over 2.5 million

articles. The Swedish version has over 290 000 articles. When was the lasttime you used the Swedish Wikipedia version?

Alternatives

266 respondents Percentage of 266 respondents

Last week 105 39,5%

Last 30 days

72 27,1%

Last 6 months 38 14,3%

Last 12 months

14 5,3%

Never used W.

37 13,9%

Other answer /

no answer

0 0,0%

Total 266 100,0%

Table 4. Teachers using other encyclopediasQuestionnaire item 1.2 During the last 30 days, did you use any of the

following encyclopedias?

Alternatives

266 respondents Percentage of 266

respondents

NE.SE3

98

36,8%

Landguiden4

28

10,5%

Other internet-based encyclopedia

(not Wikipedia) 67

25,2%

Used Swedish Wikipedia version

at least once during the last 30

days (Question 1.1)

177 66,5%

3 NE.se is Wikipedias No. 1 competitor in Sweden and often the yardstick in terms of quality comparison.4 Landguiden is a database specialised on country information, like CIA World Fact book

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Table 5. Wikipedia's reliability according to the respondents

Questionnaireitem 1.3

Wikipedia's content consists of articles that anyone can write and edit.How much do you trust what the information there? How reliable do you

think the content is on the Swedish version of Wikipedia?

Alternatives

266 respondents Percentage of 266 respondents

Very reliable

10 3,8%

Quite reliable

168 63,2%

Not reliable

50 18,8%

Not reliable at all

11 4,1%

Other answer / noanswer

27 10,2%

Total

266 100,0%

Table 6. Teachers' view on pupils' confidence in Wikipedia according to

the respondents

Questionnaireitem 1.4

How reliable do pupils at your school consider the content of the Swedishversion of Wikipedia?

Alternatives

266 respondents Percentage of 266 respondents

Very reliable

125 47,0%

Quite

reliable

110 41,4%

Not reliable

7 2,6%

Not reliable at

all

1 0,4%

Other

answer / no

answer

23 8,6%

Total

266 100,0%

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Table 7. Other teachers' confidence in Wikipedia according to the

respondents

Questionnaire

item 1.5

How reliable do teachers at your school consider the content of the

Swedish version of Wikipedia?

Alternatives

266 respondents Percentage of 266 respondents

Very reliable

5

1,9%

Quite reliable

128

48,1%

Not reliable

94

35,3%

Not reliable

at all

9

3,4%

Other answer /

no answer

30

11,3%

Total

266 100,0%

Table 8. Advised pupils to use Wikipedia?

Questionnaire

item 1.6

Have you advised pupils to use the Swedish version of Wikipedia?

If so: how long ago was that?

Alternatives

266 respondents Percentage of 266 respondents

Last week

24 9,0%

Last 30 days

27 10,2%

Last 6 months 26

9,8%

Last 12 months

17

6,4%

Never advised

162

60,9%

Other answer /

no answer

10

3,8%

Total

266

100%

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Table 9. Advised pupils against using Wikipedia?

Questionnaire

item 1.7

Have you advised pupils against using the Swedish version of

Wikipedia? If so: how long ago was that?

Alternatives

266 respondents Percentage of 266 respondents

Last week 13

4,9%

Last 30 days

36 13,5%

Last 6 months

20 7,5%

Last 12 months

20

7,5%

Never advised

against 157

59,0%Other answer /

no answer 20 7,5%

Total

266

100%

Table 10. Advised (fellow)teachers?

Questionnaireitem 1.8

Have you advised (fellow)teachers to use the Swedish version ofWikipedia? If so: how long ago was that?

Alternatives

266 respondents Percentage of 266 respondents

Last week5

1,9%

Last 30 days

9 3,4%

Last 6 months9

3,4%

Last 12 months8

3,0%

Never advised

221

83,1%

Other answer /

no answer

14

5,3%

Total

266

100%

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Table 11. Editing and writing texts yourself on Wikipedia?

Questionnaireitem 1.9

What is your opinion on that you yourself can write and edit texts on theSwedish version of Wikipedia?

Alternatives

266 respondents Percentage of 266 respondents

Very positive 30 11,3%

Quite positive 98 36,8%

Not positive 56 21,1%

Not positive at

all

50 18,8%

Other

answer / noanswer

32 12,0%

Total

266 100,0%

3. Comments

A slightly higher percentage of women answered the questionnaire. Distributed by respondents'

birth decade, most respondents were born in the 1970s. Two thirds of respondents claimed. that

they had used the Swedish language version of Wikipedia at least once in the last 30 days. 36.8

percent claimed that they, in the same period, had used Wikipedia's number one competitor:NE.se. The difference in terms of availability could here be weighted to Wikipedia's advantage.

67 percent of the teachers participating rank Swedish Wikipedia's content as at least quite

reliable. 22.9 percent of the respondents had no or little confidence in Wikipedia's content .

88 percent of the teachers expressed, that their pupils believe that Wikipedias content is at least

quite reliable. Regarding pupils' trust in Wikipedia, only 8 respondents (3 percent) chose one of

the two lower categories concerning reliability. Teachers generally perceive themselves as more

critical about Wikipedia compared with how teachers regard pupils' confidence in this particular

encyclopedia. 50 percent believed that teacher colleagues were sceptical towards Wikipedia's

content. In the previous study, 35 percent of the pupils claimed, that their teachers regardedWikipedia's content as at least quite reliable. It appears that students perceive teachers as more

critical to Wikipedia than teachers themselves state that they are. Likewise, a majority of teachers

believe that their colleagues are more critical to Wikipedia than what they themselves claim to be.

A clear majority of the teachers claimed, that they are neither advising, nor advising against

pupils use of Wikipedia. 20 teachers did not answer the question whether they had advised

against students from using Wikipedia. 83.1 percent of the respondents claimed, that they never

had advised colleagues to use Wikipedia. The question is whether teachers think it is a good idea

advising their colleagues to use a source, that many of teachers believe other teachers disrespect.

It can be that the outcome of the questions 1.6-1.8 reflects that source-critical considerations are

discussed only to a small extent, between teachers and pupils and between fellow teachers.

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48 percent of the teachers are at least quite positiveabout writing and editing on the Swedish

language version of Wikipedia. In all, a fair conclusion based on the results would be that Swedish

upper secondary school teachers use and trust Wikipedia rather than love it or hate it.

4. Bibliography

Ayers, Phoebe, Matthews, Charles & Yates, Ben (2008). How Wikipedia works: and how you can be a part ofit. San Francisco: No Starch Press

Guldbrandsson, Lennart (2008). S fungerar Wikipedia: allt du behver veta om hur man bidrar, om kritikenoch kvalitetssatsningarna. [New ed.] Ronneby: Hexa

Lih, Andrew. (2009). The Wikipedia revolution: how a bunch of nobodies created the world's greatest

encyclopedia. 1st ed. New York: Hyperion

Spetz, Einar, (2008). Wikipedias fel och brister : en angelgenhet fr biblioteken? Available in Swedishthrough Stockholm County library's website:

http://www.regionbiblioteket.se/upload/_Dokument/wikipedia.pdf

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http://www.regionbiblioteket.se/upload/_Dokument/wikipedia.pdfhttp://www.regionbiblioteket.se/upload/_Dokument/wikipedia.pdf