DISQUS

snitko · 1 year ago

Here in Russia some lecturers would complain even about having a laptop in the classroom. I was wondering if such people have any chance to change themselves and for now I strongly believe, that they don't. There's always a number of people, who find changes hard to adopt to and it's more a psychological question why they can't.

Dan Brown · 1 year ago

Well, the thing is no university student should be using wikipedia or google anyway, since the key information for almost every course is found in course and niche specific text books, and though information on the net is good for summaries, it is far eclipsed by the resources students will find in their university libraries and periodicals.

Alexis Brion · 1 year ago

I agree, Dan, information found on Wikipedia or Google searches is not enough for students.

So, why complaining about that? Those sites wont be the resources of the best students.

Sobchak · 1 year ago

She could just jam a wet sock into one of Wiki's intertubes. Take that, wikiality!!

Nick Caldwell · 1 year ago

Well, the article is no longer available at the Argus's website, so it's hard to infer precisely what Tara's actually trying to do. I do know that she's an extremely highly regarded teacher and one who pushes students incredibly hard to excel.

At a guess, the rationale for the banning is that neither Wikipedia nor Google should be relied on as ways to uncover high quality acadmic research: library-specific subject databases almost always return better and more focused results. Increasingly, however, students are depending on Wikipedia as a primary source! Hint: you don't even use physical book encyclopaedias as primary sources for academic papers.

I'd assume Tara simply doesn't want to see those sources in a student's bibliography. If a student ignores this injunction and perhaps uses material from Wikipedia without correct attribution, well, they'd then be guilty of plagiarism.

websalad · 1 year ago

Since when is any text academic or not - a stand alone prophet of truth.

Mix and match people.

ed · 1 year ago

Problem is some students get used to just copying whatever wikipedia says, without really investing time in doing some real research. They are just tools, but some people rely entirely too much on them

Nick Caldwell · 1 year ago

Ed's basically right. Kin Lane's really not. You can generally rely on calculators to at least give the correct results. Wikipedia isn't going to be much use for a specialised discipline like sociology or cultural studies.

Websalad is very funny.

Chrash · 1 year ago

I agree with Mashable's take, but some things to think about, in an educator's defense:
- Content is not made equal. In the case of Google, brand equity and search rankings can significantly mislead a student who doesn't demonstrate discernment.
- Wikipedia is great for primers. I would hope that the expectations of a college professor are such that a data dump does not pass for analysis and critical thought.
- There is software widely used by educators that searches sentences from students' papers and matches it with whatever's on the web. Maybe one aspect of higher education that requires some more attention is the stricter implementation of proper citation and professors using their TA's to really check up on the students they suspect.

Bottom line, instead of raising walls, raise the bar.

Adam Nemeth · 1 year ago

When we took our course on Internet Sociology (it was about internet-based communities, which is now called Web 2.0), we were discouraged for using Google and Wikipedia as a copy-paste source for our homework.

The reason is simple: anyone can google. It does not create new thoughts, nor for you, nor for anybody else. It does not mean valuable work at your side.

It's not google that should be banned: it's the student who should be banned (from the course, not from the uni), when using a top10 google result as a homework's only base material. And I think that's fine even in 2008.

Amanda at i5invest · 1 year ago

One of my college textbooks, Consumer Behavior 9/E, cited Wikipedia in a reference to the European Union. How can professors ban access when our textbooks (or at least this one) footnote it as a resource?

Nick Caldwell · 1 year ago

Amanda, that's probably because marketing is a Mickey Mouse discipline that has no place in a university.

Rosie · 1 year ago

I think it's a bit daft and probably someone (or something) to point the blame of poor quality work at.

I'm not surprised that it is an issue, but if the work being produced isn't good enough then perhaps the students need to be taught how to do good research (a balance between traditional and new). If the work being produced still doesn't produce results then perhaps the students don't belong there (and should fail the course!).

CVOS · 1 year ago

More info on Tara can be found (where else) on the wiki.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tara_Brabazon

s427 · 1 year ago

I agree with Adam Nemeth. Nowadays, you hear more and more students in a mental state of "I can't do this paper, it's too difficult, I found nothing on Google". Google (or Wikipedia) is fine if you want to find basic informations, it's great for the everyday life questions, but if you want to do academic research, it is actually quite a poor resource and the REALLY lazy way to go. When facing the tremendous amount of information that you can find on the web, it's easy to believe that you will find everything you need, that books are dead and libraries are useless. It's easy to think that if you don't find it on Google, then it doesn't exist. That's just not true. There is actually a lot more valuable information outside the web than inside it, and dealing with more and more students who simply don't realize that is quite worrying.

ATOOSA · 1 year ago

finding subject project
hello professor
i am student master computer of iran
i am trying find a good subject for final project (thesis) . in area "Search Engine" in Data mining and i dont have much time.(data maninh is little essential)
do you help me for finding theze?
i want work on subject "Query Refinement with personalized back end in Search engines"
do you think be good?
please help me if you can
if you have a subject please say me I am very thankful OR introduce one person that work this area
thank you
Atoosa Dahbashi