The Wikipedia Dilemma

By Noah Geisel

This school year, millions of students will participate in the time-honored tradition of writing research papers. They will formulate a thesis statement and seek out evidence from reliable sources that supports their claims. In recent years, this seemingly straightforward premise has been complicated by the definition of what constitutes reliable sources.

Some of these students will be told by their skeptical instructors that they may not use any information found on the web. I worry about the sustainability of this approach as newspaper, magazine and traditional book publishing are dwindling and some libraries are moving toward closing their stacks altogether.

Many more students will be told that Wikipedia is not a reliable source. For some, this is a no-brainer while for others it is a travesty. The key question in this debate has nothing to do with Wikipedia or any other source. What we need to be asking ourselves is: What is the point of the research paper? Five, fifteen and fifty years from now, do we want students to know the information they learned from their research topics or is the real value in what future graduates will be able to do, namely seek out information, evaluate it for relevance and accuracy and, ultimately, analyze and synthesize it in order to make an informed argument? If you are in the former camp, you can stop reading now and skip down to comments section to tell me how foolish I am.

For those of us in the latter camp, I believe we need to re-think our approach to defining reliable sources. We need to ask ourselves if we are doing students any favors by compartmentalizing for them which sources are authoritative and reliable and which are not. Even if we coach our students to steer clear of Wikipedia, fringe media and news sources they have never heard of, we are not shielding them from seizing on erroneous information. Three examples:

1. Investigative journalism found in such mainstream sources as The New Republic, Harper’s and Rolling Stone may safely be considered reliable. If you are going to tell your students what is and is not reliable however, just make sure they avoid articles written for these magazines by Stephen Glass, who was fired from them all in 1998 when it was found that he had fabricated all or parts of dozens of stories on topics as important as the Clinton White House and the D.A.R.E. program.

2. For a few hours one morning last March, many were duped into believing that Cheif Justice Roberts was resigning from the Supreme Court. Georgetown Law professor Peter Tague, an indisputably authoritative source, assured his class that he had inside information that Roberts would be resigning and within minutes the news had been picked up by a number of “reliable” news organizations, based on the students' tweets and FB updates. Thirty minutes later, Tague revealed to his students that it was a prank intended to show them that even reliable sources could disseminate inaccurate information.

3. While eating at a chain restaurant last summer, my friend at the head of the table had a different tip total everyone needed to chip in than I did. I asked him to double-check his math but he smugly pointed to the tip calculator printed at the bottom of the receipt and boasted that the computer had already done the math for him. Five people then pulled out their cell phones and jaws dropped as we discovered that the tip calculator was not a reliable source. The 18% calculation was actually over 25%.

A teacher’s blanket assertion that Wikipedia and other web-based sources are not reliable is troubling as it falls prey to the very trap we want our students avoid: not thinking for themselves. Clive Thompson has an article in this month’s issue of Wired in which he presents research suggesting that students today are not effective at searching for information. He minces no words in assessing the problem: “...the ability to judge information is almost never taught in school.”

It is essential that as we prepare students for post-secondary success in the 21st Century, we use the research paper as an opportunity to teach critical thinking skills not only in employing sources to support their opinions but in evaluating the sources. In the case of Wikipedia, there are plenty of academic entries that have been compiled by reliable sources and peer reviewed for accuracy. These should be fair game as sources. The answer to the Wikipedia Dilemma is not in telling students where they should and should not look for information but in equipping them with the skills needed to exercise due diligence in assessing the reliability of their sources.

One solution specific to the Wikipedia Dilemma that may make everyone happy could be the introduction of a new protocol for annotated bibliographies. If students choose to cite a Wikipedia entry, they would also be expected to sub-cite the information by seeking the original source of a specific claim in the References at the bottom of the page and stating how they had verified it for reliability.

Reminder: Today's Friday Chat about Digital Plagiarism

Today, Friday June 5th at 1PM EST:
The Friday Chat will be on the topic of Digital Plagiarism

A topic dear to the heart of any classroom teacher: plagiarism -- and methods of both discovery and prevention -- has become a fresh challenge in the Digital Age. Join us for informal discussion on June 5th.

June 5th at 1PM EST
http://todaysmeet.com/TeachPaperless

The Next Friday Chat on June 5th: Digital Plagiarism

June 5th at 1PM EST: The Friday Chat will be on the topic of Digital Plagiarism

A topic dear to the heart of any classroom teacher: plagiarism -- and methods of both discovery and prevention -- has become a fresh challenge in the Digital Age. Join us for informal discussion on June 5th.

June 5th at 1PM EST
http://todaysmeet.com/TeachPaperless

How Do You Check For Plagiarism Online?

A reader asks:

How do you check for plagiarism with Google?

Please cut-and-paste and then Google the first line and the last line of the first paragraph of the following essay. It's from an piece on The Great Gatsby that I received a few years back from a student with little understanding of how Boolean searches work.

Is his novel the Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald creates Gatsby -- a character who becomes great. He begins life as a regular, lower-class, person. But Gatsby has a dream of becoming rich. He has a reason to strive to become prominent after meeting Daisy. Throughout his life, Gatsby gains the title of truly being great.

Even before Gatsby is introduced, he is hinted at being different. The evidence of this is when Nick says, "Gatsby turned out all right at the end." (2) Nothing was known about Gatsby at the time and Nick is already saying Gatsby was all right. Gatsby is mysterious. Everyone knows of him, but no one knows who he really is or where he comes from. Even at our first glance of Gatsby, no one knows Gatsby.

You can go on... but why bother? This is a classic case of Internet plagiarism. Cut-and-Paste from an essay service.

In my classes, I often begin introducing an essay topic on a given book by pulling up a few essay services and looking at what they have to offer. In general, the essays at 123HelpMe, eCheat, BookRags, and GradeSaver are just awful. The kids actually get a laugh out of looking at all the ways people cheat on essays, but they also realize just how easy it is to get caught and just how stupid it is to take that chance.

One thing I would not do is just go and nail a kid for plagiarism without going over it in class first. So make a lesson out of it; I find it actually makes for a great class period and you get to share quite a few laughs with the kids.

What About Digital Plagiarism?

A reader writes:

I am very wary of turning in essays on a blog, simply because there is so much plagiarism going around. It would both put hundreds of essays out there, for students to copy, and for students to submit via copy/paste. Granted, it's not difficult to plagiarize on paper, but with paper, there is no option to "delete entry." The evidence is there, turned in by the hands of the students.

I've actually caught more cases of plagiarism since going paperless. Every now and then, I take classtime with my students to run Google checks on anonymous blogged essays their peers have turned in. Inevitably, we find copied work. Rather than bust students and deal with it in the standard disciplinary way in the event we do discover fault, I use it as a means to show them how easy it is to discover plagiarism in the digital world. The kids learn quick and I've never had to do this more than once with any class to completely discourage digital copying. It's actually quite a bit more difficult to do that with just paper.

And as for the concern over "delete entry"... let's just say that few things you ever write online actually disappear. And if it's a blog, and you've subscribed to it, you actually get sent a copy directly to your inbox or newsreader. The writer can't take it away from you.

With paper, there are no accusations that the teacher may have manipulated the essay, through a word processing program.

Most blogging apps leave a time-stamp and author signature on the post. Consider that one safe-guard to any accusations. It's got the student's name on it and it's got the exact time and date that they posted it. Just refuse to accept any work that's not posted with a time-stamp.

Easy.