How Students Use Wikipedia

College students love Wikipedia, and a study published in the journal First Monday offers details on how they use the Web encyclopedia. Among the findings of a survey at six different colleges:

• A majority frequently used it for background information, but less often than they used course readings and Google.
• Architecture, engineering, and science majors were more likely to use Wikipedia for course research than were those in other majors.
• Wikipedia is generally used in combination with other information, not alone.