English. 2nd Version

Teachers and Wikipedia– a story of love or hate? Einar Spetz, Sweden

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 ..............................................................4 Table 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?................................................9 3. 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, Så fungerar Wikipedia [How Wikipedia works] (2008) and How Wikipedia works and how you can be a part of it by 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 a majority 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 this field 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 Borås 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-schoollibrarians-help-improving-quality-of-wikipedia’s-content/ 2 EXACT, acronym for EXpertise, Authority and Control on the Internet (EXACT): a study of the formation of source credibility in Web 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, Järfälla, Upplands Väsby and Vallentuna and Stockholm. I visited three of the schools (in Stockholm, Vallentuna, Upplands Väsby). 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 am now 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 the 1970s, 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 final is based on the remaining 266 completed questionnaires.

Table 1. 266 respondents, distributed by school Schools by municipality

Number of respondents

Percentage of all Percentage of respondents male respondents

Percentage of female respondents

No answer / other answer (Gender unknown)

Botkyrka

19

7,1%

1,1%

6,0%

0,0%

Danderyd

18

6,8%

4,1%

2,6%

0,0%

Järfälla

9

3,4%

1,9%

1,1%

0,4%

Stockholm, city school Stockholm, suburban school

53

19,9%

8,6%

11,3%

0,0%

46

17,3%

9,8%

7,5%

0,0%

Upplands Väsby

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

Number Percentage

1940s

1950s

1960s

1970s

1980s

Other answer / no answer

48

63

57

64

23

11

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 Questionnaire Wikipedia is an internet based encyclopedia. It is available in several item 1.1 languages. The English version is the largest. It has over 2.5 million articles. The Swedish version has over 290 000 articles. When was the last time 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%

266

100,0%

Total

Table 4. Teachers using other encyclopedias Questionnaire item 1.2

Alternatives

During the last 30 days, did you use any of the following encyclopedias? 266 respondents

Percentage of 266 respondents

NE.SE 3

98

36,8%

Landguiden4 Other internet-based encyclopedia (not Wikipedia) Used Swedish Wikipedia version at least once during the last 30 days (Question 1.1)

28

10,5%

67

25,2%

177

66,5%

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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 Questionnaire item 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 / no answer

27

10,2%

266

100,0%

Total

Table 6. Teachers' view on pupils' confidence in Wikipedia according to the respondents Questionnaire How reliable do pupils at your school consider the content of the Swedish item 1.4 version 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%

266

100,0%

Total

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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 Not reliable at all Other answer / no answer

94

35,3%

9

3,4%

30

11,3%

266

100,0%

Total

Table 8. Advised pupils to use Wikipedia? Questionnaire item 1.6 Alternatives

Have you advised pupils to use the Swedish version of Wikipedia? If so: how long ago was that? 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 Other answer / no answer

162

60,9%

10

3,8%

Total

266

100%

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Table 9. Advised pupils against using Wikipedia? Questionnaire item 1.7 Alternatives

Have you advised pupils against using the Swedish version of Wikipedia? If so: how long ago was that? 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 Never advised against Other answer / no answer

20

7,5%

157

59,0%

20

7,5%

Total

266

100%

Table 10. Advised (fellow)teachers? Questionnaire item 1.8 Alternatives

Have you advised (fellow)teachers to use the Swedish version of Wikipedia? If so: how long ago was that? 266 respondents

Percentage of 266 respondents

Last week

5

1,9%

Last 30 days

9

3,4%

Last 6 months

9

3,4%

Last 12 months

8

3,0%

Never advised

221

83,1%

Other answer / no answer

14

5,3%

266

100%

Total

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Table 11. Editing and writing texts yourself on Wikipedia? Questionnaire What is your opinion on that you yourself can write and edit texts on the item 1.9 Swedish 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 Other answer / no answer

50

18,8%

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 regarded Wikipedia'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. 9

48 percent of the teachers are at least “quite positive” about 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 of it. San Francisco: No Starch Press Guldbrandsson, Lennart (2008). Så fungerar Wikipedia: allt du behöver veta om hur man bidrar, om kritiken och 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 angelägenhet för biblioteken? Available in Swedish through Stockholm County library's website: http://www.regionbiblioteket.se/upload/_Dokument/wikipedia.pdf

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