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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?
I wonder how many of those professors had actually been misinformed. I've had a handful of professors state information that I found out later to be in disagreement with a larger community. Most of them don't like to be told or find out that they are wrong. On the other hand, I don't blame them for doing this. Wikipedia might be a good place for determining what books you could find good information in, but not as the reference itself.
With City Wikis like Bloomingpedia, a lot of the information is gathered from observation and personal research and there isn't much else to reference. I'm wondering how referencing then will pan out, if it ever needs to be done.
It's a great starting point, but you can't trust the information completely. Use it to get you aimed in the right direction and then go from there.
Citing an encyclopedia was frowned upon back when I was in college. Wikipedia is like an encyclopedia but with an even worse feature, the information can change at any given time. I would not want to cite something and have a professor or his assistant look it up and see that it was different from what I wrote in the paper.
Why the hell are COLLEGE students citing encyclopedias in papers in the first place? That's what you do for those papers in sixth grade on why Tony Hawk is awesome or whatever, but if you're older than 14, you shouldn't be citing an encyclopedia (or *pedia) of any sort. That's just a sign of poor research skills.
In education? Everything. I've learned so much about topics I never had the means to easily research, or things I never knew existed. The amount of knowledge on Wikipedia is fascinating and a dream for someone who loves to learn. It can be a blessing for students.
In academics? It is obviously not suited for citing factual information, but it certainly helps students formulate and nurture ideas and theories. It can help point them in the right direction, and it can also lead them towards more factual sources.
A ban on citing Wikipedia is expected, but Wikipedia is far too powerful to dismiss as not having a role in education.
For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.
-- In the beginning was the WORD, and the WORD was UNSIGNED, and the main(){} was without form and void...
An encyclopedia, regardless of type, is a poor replacement for a textbook. If you buy a book you rarely open, then you should be 1) studying harder, or 2) not buying your books until the 3rd week of class when you're sure you need them. ;)
Agreed! An encyclopedia is not a "primary source" of information, especially in scientific disciplines. While an encyclopedia may be fine for a high school paper, half the point of a University is to learn to use the Library to do serious research and delve deeper than what could be found in an encyclopedia. Encyclopedias, including Wikipedia, are useful to give a basic introduction to a topic and point someone towards useful references, but at the College, students should be digging deeper than an encyclopedia.
But that's information archaeology. While interesting, and possibly useful, by pointing you to other (primary) sources, in the same way the main article should. The real point is that (particularly in a history department) they're teaching scholarship, which means going deeper than quoting from any encyclopaedia.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
I've taught at the university level, and I can assure you it isn't sufficient. Rational arguments won't do it, as far as the students are concerned, everything that isn't forbidden is permitted. If Wikipedia isn't explicitly banned, students will ignore your "just do the right thing" and will continue to insist that Wikipedia is a perfectly valid and reliable source.
Students are lazy and going to the library is work. Many have never used anything besides Google and Wikipedia for research; they don't know how to efficiently track down sources and references. As other posters have pointed out, in my day it was [paper] encyclopedias, this is just a variation on the theme. They were forbidden (with good reason) when I was a student, and they should be forbidden now for the same reasons.
-JS
Vanity of vanities, all is vanity...
...that they could use it as a starting place for planning out their research. It is excellent for that. You can very quickly find worthwhile generalities on most subjects, and often encounter trivial but useful details not easily found elsewhere, just because some geek for that topic took the time to care and fill out the article. Generally, because it is an encyclopaedia, it is particularly useful for finding the connections and boundaries between topics--in other words, for building up an outline and setting research priorities.
Of course, I made it entirely explicit that one cannot cite wikipedia directly in a research paper, just as they couldn't cite the Britannica or the CDROM encyclopaedia they have at home. I was stunned when these supposedly literate, intelligent, creative 19 year-olds had trouble grasping the concept of primary sources--proof to me that public education is really a thinly disguised low-security vocational prison.
Damn those pesky terrorists
I absolutely encourage students to use Wikipedia - just not to cite it. It's a great way to find sources, but it's not a primary source. And we only want to see primary sources cited.
The best scholars have shortcuts to information. Wikipedia is such a shortcut, nicely organized. There are colleagues who frown upon any use of Wikipedia, but they are just snobs, and pissed off that they didn't have such a tool when they were grad students.
Academia contains a shocking number of small-minded people who are scared to death of their students actually learning anything. They really want to pull up the ladder behind them, would just as soon never see one of their students get a PhD. As long as they have a steady stream of cheap grad-student labor to use as research assistants, they keep the most destructive aspects of their own insecurities hidden. Fortunately, there are enough decent department heads and chairs that know this to make sure a reasonable number matriculate, and that a reasonable number of those get jobs.
There are lovely aspects of a life in academia. But there's an ugly underside, too.
You are welcome on my lawn.
What problem-solving skills would aardvarkjoe use? I would prefer if "problem-solving skills" did not involve copyright infringement or computer network misuse. Or should "problem-solving skills" involve changing the subject, turning a report about a given topic into a report about the holes in a school's journal subscriptions?
Your inability to think of a solution does not imply that no solution exists, unless you set the criteria as "get the journal from this school library without influencing them in any way to obtain it on their own." May I suggest some solutions using a barometer?There. You now have 9 solutions which use a barometer. I am sure that, even though the school appears to be slightly underfunded, you will be able to obtain more tools than a mere barometer. I have found that telephones, friends (as available), the internet, and money work even better than barometers in many situations.
SWM seeks new sig for a brief fling