U. of Texas Professor Praises Wikipedia

Scholars often take swipes at Wikipedia, claiming that it dumbs down education and encourages intellectual laziness. Some professors have even banned their students from using it for research. But in an article this week in Science Progress, a scholar at the University of Texas at Dallas argues that such bans are irresponsible.

David Parry, an assistant professor of emerging media and communications at the university, writes that students need to become familiar with new and non-static forms of communication. He encourages his students to read Wikipedia’s “history” and “discussion” pages, saying they explain how articles were produced. And he says the online encyclopedia’s entry on global warming does a good job of explaining both the controversy and the science surrounding the issue.

“Like it or not, the networked digital archive changes our basis of knowledge,” Mr. Parry writes “and training people for the future is about training them for this shift.”—Andrea L. Foster