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Professors To Ban Students From Citing Wikipedia
Inisheer writes "History professors at Middlebury College are tired of having all their students submit the same bad information on term papers. The culprit: Wikipedia — the user-created encyclopedia that's full of great stuff, and also full of inaccuracies. Now the the entire History department has voted to ban students from citing it as a resource. An outright ban was considered, but dropped because enforcement seemed impossible. Other professors at the school agree, but note that they're also enthusiastic contributors to Wikipedia. The article discusses the valuable role that Wikipedia can play, while also pointed out the need for critical and primary sources in college-level research." What role, if any, do you think Wikipedia should play in education?
Wikipedia should be the one stop reference for undergrad level education. That way, students don't have to pay for expensive dead tree books that they rarely open.
Professor should log on, edit something in the wikipedia reference to the current project so it is wrong, and wait for the papers to come in. Then they can give poor marks to the unquestioning students. Hopefully they'll remember to think, check and not just lazily take someone else's word for it for the rest of their lives.
This has everything to do with control of information and knowledge by the professor's and big business education and much less to do with Wikipedia. If the professor's think something is inaccurate on Wikipedia, they can fix it. Access to good sourceable information in regards to history is not as available as one would think. Professor's feel that they need to remain the gatekeepers of knowledge to keep they jobs secure.