Without question, numerous difficulties have arisen from the reality that students from secondary school through university levels compose papers and other assignments on their computers and often use information just a few clicks away on the Internet to complete their work. While the Internet is an incredible educational tool at all levels, students need to be cautious when using information taken from the Internet in their papers.
The most obvious trouble the Internet can get students into involves academic integrity. Obviously, the Internet makes plagiarism (lacking original value) quicker, easier, and perhaps more appealing to dishonest students. However, many well-meaning and otherwise honest students are finding themselves in hot water because they sincerely don’t understand how to use or credit online sources. When research is pulled from physical books and journals, citation is a standardized and straightforward process. But the lines are blurred to many students when it comes to information they find on the Internet.
Out of an abundance of caution, students should always cite sources they use even if they aren’t lifting text directly from someone else’s work. To be even more cautious, students should as often as possible cite from primary documents only and not from difficult-to-credit secondary sources on the Internet.
Plagiarism and citation problems aren’t the only things students should worry about when it comes to using the Internet as an academic tool. There appears to be a tendency of students to view sites like Wikipedia as indisputably authoritative, but even the site’s founder argues against directly citing from it and admits that, like all encyclopedias, it is not a definitive resource and can contain errors.
While many students find Wikipedia to be an invaluable Internet tool for finding useful information for their papers — and it indeed is an excellent research tool — its articles, after all, aren’t written or edited by experts. Much false information can find its way into Wikipedia either unintentionally, maliciously, or due to bias.
However, various studies have indicated that Wikipedia is no more inaccurate than traditional resources. It’s also worth noting that Wikipedia articles can be edited and corrected quickly if errors are found, whereas this isn’t possible with most traditional resources.
Students would be well advised to read primary sources (articles from newspapers, journals, etc.) cited within Wikipedia articles and use and cite those as opposed to using content from Wikipedia or other similar sites directly in their papers.
