Inside Higher Ed :: A Stand Against Wikipedia
- Quote: As Wikipedia has become more and more popular with students, some professors have become increasingly concerned about the online, reader-produced encyclopedia. While plenty of professors have complained about the lack of accuracy or completeness of entries, and some have discouraged or tried to bar students from using it, the history department at Middlebury College is trying to take a stronger, collective stand. It voted this month to bar students from citing the Web site as a source in papers or other academic work. All faculty members will be telling students about the policy and explaining why material on Wikipedia — while convenient — may not be trustworthy.
Note: So quoting Britannica with nine planets is ok? Surely there will be trickle down to K-12 if there isn’t already.
– post by willrich
Hey, someone had better tell them that the OED was a bit of a group effort, on that basis, there may be some inaccuracies or miss spelings there too.
I *heart* Wikipedia, but c’mon: who in the world cites an encyclopedia in a college level paper?
again, and again, one more example of a “Preach…don’t teach.” mentality. Go Middlebury, you are winning a battle, but losing the war.
I’m with Megan, I was told explicitly by professors in freshman level classes not to use encyclopedias, all those many years ago, and although Wikipedia can be superior in many ways to encyclopedias, that’s what it is. I was supposed to use texts by academics instead. We were also not supposed to use TIME (except for examples in courses on current politics/events), but stick to academic journals. I’m curious as more academic papers and journals are going online, if Middlbury will keep up the ban on “Internet” sources?
They are not the only school of higher education to take this stand on wikipedia. I wrote about a similar story this summer on my blog.”My cousin, a professor at a California State University, was rather outspoken about the fact that the university has banned Wikipedia. Any paper with a reference to Wikipedia can not receive a grade any higher than a “Bâ€.” (archive July “Wiki”)
In addition, though and even more scary was a news article I read about a college that wanted to (or was) banning laptops in the classroom because the teachers said the students were distracted by them. I apologize that at the moment I can’t find the link. I believe the article was from last June.
Found the link:the article http://chronicle.com/free/v52/i39/39a02701.htm
The blog entry: http://www.schooltechleadershipblog.org/
Banning laptops in classrooms
The Chronicle of Higher Education ran an article on banning laptops in college classrooms. The author noted, “Professors worry that as wireless networks and laptops become ubiquitous, students will direct about as much attention to the front of the room as airline passengers do to a flight attendant reviewing safety information.”
Jayson Richardson
It actually raises the larger question of what, exactly, we’re teaching our students? Do students think critically about their sources (including Wikipedia)? Or blindly accept the first thing they read as “true?” Instead of banning (scary word, that!), we should be guiding students to embrace the wealth of information, sift it, make judgments and critical decisions about what is appropriate — and then cite accordingly.
I would love to see a professor incorporate into their curriculum a project for Univ. students to go in and write and correct enteries! Now thats the way to acknowledge, address and fix a problem while giving their students real world applications of why higher education matters. How about that for some trickle down!
Who is the arbiter of truth anyway? Sounds like you academics think there is some all knowing source that common folk don’t know about.
The purpose of education is to question the answers not to answer the questions!
Wikipedia is truly amazing. This article is rubbish, i say rubbish !
Wikipedia is truly amazing. This article is rubbish, i say rubbish !
Chris makes a good point, because as a history undergrad, one of the first upper-division courses was historiography, and you had to compile an short history of an event based on translated primary sources. This would be a perfect wiki project to do.
Dave, they don’t think they are all knowing, but spending some time with primary sources in the original language is thought to count more than a common frame of thought. I can give you examples where history academics have been unfair to “outsiders” (Barbara Tuchmann), and times when academic disdain has been IMHO, well-earned (Dan Brown). Wiki does seem to have the participation of some experts which probably partly accounts for its quality level.
In our school, we will continue to use Wikipedia as ONE of many sources for students. We will teach them to compare Wikipedia to other sources in order to check for accuracy. We will not allow higher education to dictate what we allow our students to use in the classroom. I plan on hiring the best teachers I can find, but they also need to believe in the power of the read/write web, and they must be prepared to use this tool with their students. Those universities who do not agree with this can send their teacher candidates elsewhere.
Dave, I’m guessing your at the secondary level, and this to me seems appropriate, because you are teaching them a critical approach to sources, which is what we all want.
We all talk about the positive aspects of web info here (okay not always, I exagerate), but seriously, think about the downside of all this information being out there with none of the usual filters (librarians, etc.) to help folks wade through it. That (and perhaps some wishful thinking) has allowed parts of the Muslim and Arab-world to find items like the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” on websites, and not be aware that in most Western countries it was proven to be a hoax, fogery, etc. decades ago, and no seriously thinking person would use information from a website that cited it as a “historic” document (unless as a “red herring”)This needs to be considered when we are talking about sources and how to have students use them.
I was wading through the entry on Jesse Jackson on Wikipedia and the discussion page would be worth a quarter in a historical seminar class. It was more interesting than the entry itself.
I am a PhD student and I regularly consult Wikipedia…to find primary sources linked to their articles on a particular subject. I never use Wikipedia citations in my papers (unless it’s in a specific reference to the website itself). A recent example was finding the link to the U.S. Supreme Court records concerning legal action surrounding the Children’s Internet Protection Act (CIPA) – I would have never thought to look for it without Wikipedia and might have wasted an our or more using search engines if I had.
Banning Wikipedia is not only unrealistic, it is similar to book burnings! Isn’t higher education supposed to be this wonderful experience of learning with an open mind? It sounds like the tenured faculty across the nation needs to get a grip with Web 2.0.
During the my last two years as a teacher, part of my AP Biology curriculum was to add to the “body of knowledge” on Wikipedia. I had several students go well above the requirements for the course with this assignment – just another example of how technology use can motivate students. Now that assignment has morphed itself as part of the Microcomputers in Education course I teach to first year teachers.
Wikipedia is “not the devil” (to steal a line from Momma in the Waterboy).
B Brown:
This isn’t saying students CANNOT use wikipedia, they just can’t use it as a cited source.
I liked the suggestions about using wikipedia as a historiography exercise. It’s interesting to me that in the work I’ve done on Wikipedia, most of the “controversial” comments seem to be in the history posts, and the few I’ve seen in science have been about history or historical interpretation of a scientific concept/event. I found it interesting that it was a History department that implemented this.