Maybe there's a point about Google - but Wikipedia shouldn't be used as a basis of academic work. No encyclopedia should!
walter wimberly
· 1 year ago
When teaching I encourage my students to search Google/Yahoo/ect. but to also take everything with a grain of salt. Just because something ranks first, doesn't mean it right. When they would ignore me, I'd thump their grade for turning in something that was incorrect telling them to check their sources.
I'd allow Wikipedia for homework and basic papers, but not research papers as it is harder to verify sources and has not been peer reviewed from an academic standpoint.
marshal sandler
· 1 year ago
I think Dave and Walter are among the excellent ! Many people feel that fact checking is just extra work, when in fact it is the basis for teaching anything ![Opinion] Look at Scobie he lets it fly and then tortures his critics by making them decide whether he is correct or "Ok With Corrections!" I am 71 was educated at a private high school by the bare knuckles crowd! A c+ taught you the value of research !
dbarefoot
· 1 year ago
I don't think students should be allowed to cite Wikipedia unless they also cite a supporting primary source (possibly also cited by a Wikipedia article). I think this professor's real point is to ensure that students think critically about information sources.
Rosie
· 1 year ago
How about failing them if they don't produce the quality of work required? Seems like Google/Wikipedia/'the Internet' is being used as an excuse for having dumb students.
Perhaps the students need better guidance on the standards required.
The attack (I believe) is on the internet in general (Google connects searches to sites), but off the top of my head I can think *lots* of ways technology can be used to learn better (and perhaps enjoy it as well).
Dan Schawbel
· 1 year ago
I don't think there should be any restrictions. As long as students cite sources it will be obvious how much research they are doing.
JeffU
· 1 year ago
I remember when research papers in high school were supposed to be x pages long but there were no restrictions on what font size you could use. I felt like such a rebel when I squeezed an extra page or two out by going to 13 point.
Jonathan Sutherland
· 1 year ago
Hey Robert, I was marked down at University for using PowerPoint in a presentation in 1998. The professor was not impressed with the new 'modern/fangled' things.
ojbyrne
· 1 year ago
In my day...taking it back a few more years - they made us use slide rules instead of calculators for high school math. With the same justification. My mad slide-rule skillz have served me well since then (not!).
Julie
· 1 year ago
The real problem is that students aren't taught proper research skills. The Internet makes it easy to to do research, but students need to be taught how to weigh sources and verify facts. I don't think my own son ever had to do a really proper research paper until college.
Now back in MY day (she says, shaking her cane for emphasis) we wrote ten-page long research papers for semester projects. In public school. If we'd have had the Internet at the time, online research (even properly done) wouldn't have been adequate for that sort of project. These days 1000 words is a long paper.
(Just so you know that I didn't quite grow up in the Dark Ages, we had a teletype with a 150 baud connection to the university.)
searchengines
· 1 year ago
This brings up the issue about the future of the INVISIBLE WEB as a resource.
While Wikipedia does cite other referenced articles - but Google is often usually well rounded in what usually come up on the first page. Detailed information can be attained, but one has to be a professional researcher and willing to analyze at least the first one hundred results to get bits and pieces from the relevant sites.
Getting deeper more detailed information about a subject will often require visiting niche websites such as science or law journals.
However - unless you are willing to travel to a reference library to get hard copies - most of those sites are subscription based because they do not have the commercial appeal of the popular sites.
Budget minded students may be reluctant to subscribe unless there will be a frequent need for the resource.
Ian Betteridge
· 1 year ago
Robert, there's a massive difference between your experience with using a computer to write and banning using Google.
For academic work, Google is a BAD tool for students to get into the habit of using as their primary method of research. It encourages you to pick up on sources because of their popularity, rather than their accuracy or relevance. It encourages skim-reading, rather than deep work, which is what you're trying to encourage with academic study. And, unfortunately, it makes it far too easy to parrot what someone else is saying rather than using sources and thinking for yourself.
kevin
· 1 year ago
It seemed retro (was that a word in 1985?) to hook a daisywheel printer up to a Fat Mac to fake typewriting, but that's what we did.
Daan Jansonius
· 1 year ago
Instead of banning these incredible resources - which are here to stay! - teacher should educate their students how they can use them for exploratory research.
I agree that Wikipedia should never be used as a reference in academic context (let alone in a US Courtroom!) and Google may not bring up the most relevant/important pieces of information, but as long as the students are aware of the benefits and downfalls they should be free to use these tools.
Why send someone to the basement of the library if it's on the internet?
Good point about grading tougher too. If students use superficial information, mark them down.
Alfred Thompson
· 1 year ago
Back when I was a student (I'm older then Robert and probably most of his readers) we were always very limited on the use of encyclopedias. I don't see why Wikipedia should be any different. And while using a search engine is probably a reasonable start for research I think what professors are rightly banning is really the taking what ever you find there at face value. I don't see a problem with that at all.
And if you think "just grade harder" is easy well I think you need to spend some time teaching a course and grading papers. Spend a semester teaching a real course (even in elementary school) and you will learn a lot. Trust me on that one.
Steven Buelow
· 1 year ago
Scoble - Good stuff. I come from a social sciences background and research was my bread and butter - Now I'm in the technology industry and I think what some business leaders/managers consider "researched" to be ludicrous. For instance, you'll find out a really important business decision for a company made be made on research from anecdotal and Wiki-dotal experiences. It's dangerous.
JeffU - Thanks for bringing be back to the old size 13 font days. Good stuff.
Ian Betteridge - Using a tool like google may be bad, but it certainly shouldn't be restricted. I do agree though, google search isn't random, not is it unbiased.
Cheers
zach wise
· 1 year ago
I agree with Scoble. I've seen studies that show that the accuracy of a collective group of peers is generally much greater than that the accuracy of a few "experts". That's the power of wikipedia: if something is incorrect, someone else has the ability to edit the content. I'm tired of professors that think their opinion is the only correct one because they're an "expert" in their field.
Mihaela (prprof_mv)
· 1 year ago
Banning Google and Wikipedia is not the solution, just like burying one's head in the sand isn't. Instead, we should teach students how to work with these tools (and others) to do proper research. Finding information is not a problem for students, but evaluating, synthesizing, and using it as a basis for decision making are skills we (educators) need to help them with.
@comment #10, most universities subscribe to online databases, so enrolled students have free access to full-text journal articles.
vhxn
· 1 year ago
I am also enjoying the feel of Google and Wikipedia. its a nice one.
something2chewon
· 1 year ago
My poor son has limited net access and that is throttled into uselessness. the vista laptop he is using is lightyears ahead of anything his teachers have, but it's not due to funding, it's because teachers used to be the conduit for information, and many now feel threatened by the free flow of it. Viva la Revolucion!
robojiannis
· 1 year ago
Why blame the information source, when the student is not using it correctly?
Jerry
· 1 year ago
Encouraging this type of research is what allows people like Al Gore to win the Nobel Peace Prize.
Christina
· 1 year ago
Although it sound draconian (and it is), if a professor wants to force students to use actual research tools (and Wikipedia isn't and never will be), banning the outright use of the sites is the only way to actually accomplish that. I'm a student - if you don't set the parameters just so - especially for research sources - you will end up with utter crap as the results (I have watched peers do this for years). While banning Google might be a bit much - banning Google as a primary source seems totally acceptable to me.
None of my profeessors outright ban Google, but I guarantee that if I tried to use Wikipedia as or a generic Google queery as a source for ANYTHING, I would be laughed out of the classroom and given a failing grade. And that would be deserved. Plus, let's not forget that almost every college or university has access to systems like Lexis-Nexis (I can even access that from home using my student ID login - I have to be on campus to access West Law, but Lexis is a God-send) and other research databases that are not only much better and more reliable, but frankly, as easy to use as Google or Wikipedia anyway.
Students use Google and Wikipedia because they are lazy and they want to avoid real work -- if banning those sources is the only way to get them to actually learn/work/research, how can you fault that?
Tino
· 1 year ago
Cripes. Banning Google is like banning the card catalog. Google isn't a source of information, but just an index of it. Banning Wikipedia itself might make a bit more sense, but not because it's 'unreliable'. You can't cite paper encyclopedias, either. They (and Wikipedia) are, from a research point of view, just a more-heavily annotated index to the raw information.
Part of the problem with the students is probably that high-school and most undergrad 'research' projects are really just playing at it. When you're writing a 10-page paper on the Causes Of The American Civil War, your treatment of the subject is necessarily going to be so superficial that you don't actually need more information than you can find in Wikipedia.
The goal of these assignments is not to get them to do original research, but to teach them the rules and conventions of the genre. The point of actual research, though, is to synthesize *new* knowledge, rather than just summarize what a bunch of different sources say. That the students aren't expected to generate new knowledge from their research undermines the whole exercise a bit, and likely leaves some of them confused about the point: hence quotes from Wikipedia.
Eric Rice
· 1 year ago
Heh Google searches lead to wikipedia, else, it's a great resource for finding sales on %topic% at %ecommerce site%, which makes for riveting reading.
Loren Heiny
· 1 year ago
Ian: Are you as concerned about students using scholar.google.com?
An online index of publications and access to the publications themselves online can be a very efficient way to research/learn/study.
What we need is more, open content online, and even better access to it--not the other way around.
dreadsword
· 1 year ago
The inclusion of a book in a school's reference library doesn't convey any more about its credibility than does google about the inclusion of a page in its index.
Thus the question is one of teaching research skills - which should be applied equally to books found in the stacks, wikipedia pages, or google results.
TimWalker
· 1 year ago
Several points:
--Amen to those who say the point should be to teach some critical thinking. I tell my students that they *can* use Wikipedia -- it's great e.g. for looking up the date of a WW2 battle -- but that they *must* take it with a grain of salt. How much has it been updated? Is it sourced? Etc. It's a chance to teach them something broader about what we take as a legit source, rather than passing judgment against Wikipedia per se. Dan at #5 is right on -- when you make the students cite, you can tell how much work they've done.
--Re jacking up text to 13 point. We're onto this one, folks. ;)
--Re #10: Many university students DO have access to these deeper journals etc. The good students who come to my office hours get reminded of this frequently.
--Re #19: "The inclusion of a book in a school’s reference library doesn’t convey any more about its credibility than does google about the inclusion of a page in its index." In the abstract, this is true. In the practical world, though, it's demonstrably false. Reference librarians as a group are MUCH better trained and MUCH pickier than that.
Robert Scoble
· 1 year ago
Christina: it's funny that you contradict your point within one paragraph! See, you don't need to ban its use. Just make its sole use laughable.
And any teacher who can't tell that you only did a Google or Wikipedia search for your research should be fired immediately anyway. If I were grading papers the first thing I'd do with each paper is to try a Google search to see how many common sources came up. High commonality would see a failing grade from me. Note that's not a "ban." Just saying that you gotta go further if you wanted to pass in my class.
Corrupted Mind
· 1 year ago
Two points. Firstly, the point that quite a few people are missing is "Research" is a skill, it is often counter-intuitive and often about what you don't find as well as what you do find. Searching on Google or wikipedia is not the same as it is more difficult to search a context. Also, much good research is done whilst traveling in the wrong direction and the Q&A style resources that the web offer hardly allows you to meander across topics and subject areas wherever your interests take you. Secondly, Google and Wikipedia are excellent when you are asked to answer a question in a field where answers are readily available but where there are no answers or no field to speak of a Google/Wikipedia based approach to research will not illuminate a path informing you how to set about trying to answer that type of question.
superbunker
· 1 year ago
If this teacher really wants to stick to their guns, they should also ban every public domain book which was used to fill Wikipedia. And every book indexed by Google.
While they're at it, maybe they should ban every book that's been read by electric light (AKA "the Devil's Sunshine")
P
· 1 year ago
The amazing way people ignore or miss the point she was making, simply jumping on the bandwagon of "how can they ban the internet?" kind of proves her point about the inability of tech-reliant students to think critically doesn't it?
superbunker
· 1 year ago
"people ignore or miss the point"
The counterpoint being made is that Google and Wikipedia contain references to scholarly works and "real" paper-based books. They even contain the entire contents of many scholarly works.
If a teacher doesn't know how to instruct her students in the use of research tools for scholarly purposes, it's not the fault of the research tools -- it's the fault of the teacher.
Christina
· 1 year ago
Robert, How did I contradict myself? I said that banning Google seems a bit much, but banning it as a primary source (which is what I think this professor is doing) seems perfectly reasonable. And yes, it is draconian to ban something, but that might be the only way that this teacher is able to enforce a no-Wikipedia sourced paper rule that doesn't mean automatically failing anyone who is using it. Granted, if you have to go to those lengths to get students to actually work, you are probably a pretty craptacular professor - I don't disagree with that, but the overall sentiment that Google and Wikipedia should not be primary sources for college research is something I fully support.
P
· 1 year ago
The article isn't clear, but it seems that the professor is both banning the "use" of these sources and the "citation" to these sources.
The former is a bad idea, but the latter is okay.
Using online tools is a good way to find excellent primary and secondary sources to cite in research and studies. Citing to these sources is an abomination. They don't come with the badges of reliability and authority necessary to build a thesis of thought upon.
kevin
· 1 year ago
Students should be able to use whatever tools are at their disposal unless the purpose of the assignment is to force students to learn how to use a specific type of resource.
Sounds to me like an old fart that doesn't realize the steam train is not going to stop. We just need to teach young people how to ride it effectively.
Susan F. Heywood
· 1 year ago
Teaching online at the university level, I suggest to my students that they can use Wikipedia to begin their research, particularly the bibliography sections, then investigate the sources listed and other primary sources in the process of conducting research for a formal academic paper.
In my the classes about writing research papers, a large part of the grade for a paper is based on the use of sources to support the student's ideas, so using only Wikipedia would result in a low grade for a paper.
Part of our discussion in these classes is about Wikipedia, how it works, why this can cause inconsistency in content quality and/or bias in some cases, using the bibliography to track primary sources, and how to evaluate credibility in all sources.
Rather than banning a new tool, educators should help students understand how it fits into the overall picture, in this case, media literacy.
Curt Monash
· 1 year ago
If it were just a matter of banning CITATIONS from Wikipedia, it would make perfect sense. The provenance of information is highly relevant to its reliability, and reliability is a important factor in determining citability.
But Google? That's like sending them to the library and banning the use of the card catalog.
CAM
Kenny
· 1 year ago
Today total editing time for articles in scientific and professional magazines last at least one year. For book that time is longer. So if you want access to the fresh information, internet is the only place where you can find up-to-date scientific and technical information.
Chris Routledge
· 1 year ago
Robert
You'd be surprised how many professors would love it if they never had to teach again. Especially here in Northern Europe in January where getting out of bed before 10am is a struggle.
I've written and edited encyclopedias for money and I wouldn't like to think that anything I wrote was being used as the last word on anything. Grade tougher is one way, but then you get into problems with the economics of higher education. It costs money to fail people.
Chris
Jake
· 1 year ago
In middle school, I've had some teachers not allow us to type assignments. I guess this is bad, but I simply cannot think as well when I handwrite assignments and they turn out all choppy. I end up just rewriting them after I type them... :-\
Michael
· 1 year ago
I was at Tara recent inaugural lecture at the University of Brighton and taped the lecture (6.5 MB WMA file). You can find the link at http://nomadx.org/content/view/1810/63/
All Comments
I'd allow Wikipedia for homework and basic papers, but not research papers as it is harder to verify sources and has not been peer reviewed from an academic standpoint.
Perhaps the students need better guidance on the standards required.
The attack (I believe) is on the internet in general (Google connects searches to sites), but off the top of my head I can think *lots* of ways technology can be used to learn better (and perhaps enjoy it as well).
Now back in MY day (she says, shaking her cane for emphasis) we wrote ten-page long research papers for semester projects. In public school. If we'd have had the Internet at the time, online research (even properly done) wouldn't have been adequate for that sort of project. These days 1000 words is a long paper.
(Just so you know that I didn't quite grow up in the Dark Ages, we had a teletype with a 150 baud connection to the university.)
While Wikipedia does cite other referenced articles - but Google is often usually well rounded in what usually come up on the first page. Detailed information can be attained, but one has to be a professional researcher and willing to analyze at least the first one hundred results to get bits and pieces from the relevant sites.
Getting deeper more detailed information about a subject will often require visiting niche websites such as science or law journals.
However - unless you are willing to travel to a reference library to get hard copies - most of those sites are subscription based because they do not have the commercial appeal of the popular sites.
Budget minded students may be reluctant to subscribe unless there will be a frequent need for the resource.
For academic work, Google is a BAD tool for students to get into the habit of using as their primary method of research. It encourages you to pick up on sources because of their popularity, rather than their accuracy or relevance. It encourages skim-reading, rather than deep work, which is what you're trying to encourage with academic study. And, unfortunately, it makes it far too easy to parrot what someone else is saying rather than using sources and thinking for yourself.
I agree that Wikipedia should never be used as a reference in academic context (let alone in a US Courtroom!) and Google may not bring up the most relevant/important pieces of information, but as long as the students are aware of the benefits and downfalls they should be free to use these tools.
Why send someone to the basement of the library if it's on the internet?
Good point about grading tougher too. If students use superficial information, mark them down.
And if you think "just grade harder" is easy well I think you need to spend some time teaching a course and grading papers. Spend a semester teaching a real course (even in elementary school) and you will learn a lot. Trust me on that one.
JeffU - Thanks for bringing be back to the old size 13 font days. Good stuff.
Ian Betteridge - Using a tool like google may be bad, but it certainly shouldn't be restricted. I do agree though, google search isn't random, not is it unbiased.
Cheers
@comment #10, most universities subscribe to online databases, so enrolled students have free access to full-text journal articles.
None of my profeessors outright ban Google, but I guarantee that if I tried to use Wikipedia as or a generic Google queery as a source for ANYTHING, I would be laughed out of the classroom and given a failing grade. And that would be deserved. Plus, let's not forget that almost every college or university has access to systems like Lexis-Nexis (I can even access that from home using my student ID login - I have to be on campus to access West Law, but Lexis is a God-send) and other research databases that are not only much better and more reliable, but frankly, as easy to use as Google or Wikipedia anyway.
Students use Google and Wikipedia because they are lazy and they want to avoid real work -- if banning those sources is the only way to get them to actually learn/work/research, how can you fault that?
Part of the problem with the students is probably that high-school and most undergrad 'research' projects are really just playing at it. When you're writing a 10-page paper on the Causes Of The American Civil War, your treatment of the subject is necessarily going to be so superficial that you don't actually need more information than you can find in Wikipedia.
The goal of these assignments is not to get them to do original research, but to teach them the rules and conventions of the genre. The point of actual research, though, is to synthesize *new* knowledge, rather than just summarize what a bunch of different sources say. That the students aren't expected to generate new knowledge from their research undermines the whole exercise a bit, and likely leaves some of them confused about the point: hence quotes from Wikipedia.
An online index of publications and access to the publications themselves online can be a very efficient way to research/learn/study.
What we need is more, open content online, and even better access to it--not the other way around.
Thus the question is one of teaching research skills - which should be applied equally to books found in the stacks, wikipedia pages, or google results.
--Amen to those who say the point should be to teach some critical thinking. I tell my students that they *can* use Wikipedia -- it's great e.g. for looking up the date of a WW2 battle -- but that they *must* take it with a grain of salt. How much has it been updated? Is it sourced? Etc. It's a chance to teach them something broader about what we take as a legit source, rather than passing judgment against Wikipedia per se. Dan at #5 is right on -- when you make the students cite, you can tell how much work they've done.
--Re jacking up text to 13 point. We're onto this one, folks. ;)
--Re #10: Many university students DO have access to these deeper journals etc. The good students who come to my office hours get reminded of this frequently.
--Re #19: "The inclusion of a book in a school’s reference library doesn’t convey any more about its credibility than does google about the inclusion of a page in its index." In the abstract, this is true. In the practical world, though, it's demonstrably false. Reference librarians as a group are MUCH better trained and MUCH pickier than that.
And any teacher who can't tell that you only did a Google or Wikipedia search for your research should be fired immediately anyway. If I were grading papers the first thing I'd do with each paper is to try a Google search to see how many common sources came up. High commonality would see a failing grade from me. Note that's not a "ban." Just saying that you gotta go further if you wanted to pass in my class.
While they're at it, maybe they should ban every book that's been read by electric light (AKA "the Devil's Sunshine")
The counterpoint being made is that Google and Wikipedia contain references to scholarly works and "real" paper-based books. They even contain the entire contents of many scholarly works.
If a teacher doesn't know how to instruct her students in the use of research tools for scholarly purposes, it's not the fault of the research tools -- it's the fault of the teacher.
How did I contradict myself? I said that banning Google seems a bit much, but banning it as a primary source (which is what I think this professor is doing) seems perfectly reasonable. And yes, it is draconian to ban something, but that might be the only way that this teacher is able to enforce a no-Wikipedia sourced paper rule that doesn't mean automatically failing anyone who is using it. Granted, if you have to go to those lengths to get students to actually work, you are probably a pretty craptacular professor - I don't disagree with that, but the overall sentiment that Google and Wikipedia should not be primary sources for college research is something I fully support.
The former is a bad idea, but the latter is okay.
Using online tools is a good way to find excellent primary and secondary sources to cite in research and studies. Citing to these sources is an abomination. They don't come with the badges of reliability and authority necessary to build a thesis of thought upon.
Sounds to me like an old fart that doesn't realize the steam train is not going to stop. We just need to teach young people how to ride it effectively.
In my the classes about writing research papers, a large part of the grade for a paper is based on the use of sources to support the student's ideas, so using only Wikipedia would result in a low grade for a paper.
Part of our discussion in these classes is about Wikipedia, how it works, why this can cause inconsistency in content quality and/or bias in some cases, using the bibliography to track primary sources, and how to evaluate credibility in all sources.
Rather than banning a new tool, educators should help students understand how it fits into the overall picture, in this case, media literacy.
But Google? That's like sending them to the library and banning the use of the card catalog.
CAM
You'd be surprised how many professors would love it if they never had to teach again. Especially here in Northern Europe in January where getting out of bed before 10am is a struggle.
I've written and edited encyclopedias for money and I wouldn't like to think that anything I wrote was being used as the last word on anything. Grade tougher is one way, but then you get into problems with the economics of higher education. It costs money to fail people.
Chris
Regards
Michael