(Wikipedia.org)

When Dartmouth sophomore Rembert Browne cited Wikipedia in a research paper last year, his professor requested that he replace it with a more permissible scholarly source. Despite the site’s immense popularity, the question of Wikipedia’s validity as an academic resource goes beyond the Dartmouth faculty.

There is a great danger in relying too heavily upon a source in which anyone can write as an authority on any subject. However, Wikipedia entries and other online resources, such as Google, can make college classes more interactive.

The internet allows for more spontaneous academic conversation, which is a healthy digression away from rigid curriculums. If a topic or historical figure arises in class discussion, a professor can easily jog his or her memory via the Web. These servers become the Genies of the classroom. But they are only academically useful and reliable as a main resource in the presence of knowledgeable professors, who can serve as filters and discern the accurate information posed.

I have been in many classes at Penn where professors have resorted to the Web to show a visual or familiarize students with a subject. The result is that classes feel more personal as students can direct the course of the conversation. For this reason, Web sites that may be inappropriate to cite in an academic paper can be valuable resources in the actual classroom.

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