I alerted the students in my Western Civ course to the decision by the folks at Middlebury College to ban Wikipedia from being cited in essays. Here’s what some of my students had to say in response.
Tag: Academic Commons
Why I Won’t Get Hired at Middlebury
Oh my. It’s a good thing I’m not a finalist for a job at Middlebury College, because my decision to assign the Wikipedia as the textbook in my Western Civ course this semester flies in the face of a decision the History Department there has made to ban students from citing Wikipedia in any of…
Wikipedia in the Classroom
Two weeks ago I was in a meeting at the National Endowment for the Humanities and Bruce Cole, Chairman of the Endowment, asked those in attendance what we thought about the Wikipedia. I went first and tossed out the bombshell that I’m using Wikipedia as my textbook in Western Civ next semester. Needless to say,…
What Every Historian Should Know About Physics
You need to read this essay (scroll down to the link that says “Transforming Physics Education”). In the essay, Carl Wieman, winner of the 2001 Nobel Prize in physics, describes what he and his colleagues have learned about what it takes to prepare students for graduate education in physics. His conclusion? When I saw him…