Teaching students, Google, Wikipedia etc.

[CharonY]

Just as a preface: I do not intend to make a technology rant here, nor do I intend to succumb to

the old "in the olden times everything was better" notions. In addition, I think there was already a similar thread somewhere but

I could not dig it up. What I'd like to have is some input in the following thoughts:

 

Background:

At the moment I (still) work as a postdoc but due to various reasons I have a slightly higher than average workload regarding to creating and supervising both, theoretical and practical courses.

Due to the nature of the topics I teach, the practical courses alone are usually not a sufficient indicator of understanding the topic, thus I usually let the students present their results either as a talk, or a written report.

In addition I train students during their diploma or phD thesis in all aspects, but as I am not a full professor I am not allowed to directly grant titles or marks.

 

I am doing this for six to seven years now and I found that in a number of areas the quality of the test results, reports or diploma theses (only slightly in phD theses) appears to be detoriating. This is not a pure subjective feeling as the achieved marks were in deed detoriating over the las five years.

What I found in my tests is that the questions that require to give the correct "catchwords" and definitions were as good as five years ago, but those that require understandingwere lousy.

 

Identical tests that I gave five years ago scored consistenty better than today. I assume that a lot of parameteres are likely to be involved in this, however

in recent reports and theses I found that quite a lot of the information within was almost exclusively gathered by online sources like wikipedia.

While wikipedia (and encyclopedia in general) might be a good way to start or to get a rough overview but are certainly not sufficient to get in depth informations to write

good reports or even theses. The way theses sources are used range between pure copy/paste, slight rephrasings or summarizing it. These passages are often easily detected as they are often unconnected to their own work.While I often emphasize in the courses that this is not acceptable I found that less and less people are prepared to go to the library and check out original sources/journals. This is reflected in the reduced time students are spending on gathering information for the reports.

Earlier a good report took around one week, now I sometimes get some the next day. I am not saying that having to spend a lot of time to gather some information is a good thing (which is clearly not), but the accessability of online sources ( simply putting in key words into the google bar, or in wikipedia) apparently reduces the willingless of students to actually search for original literature or even reading textbooks in some depths.

In the beginning students came up with questions to papers they found, but now I get zero requests. After private questioning some students confessed that they feel inferior to their peers. It is their impression that everythin worth knowing is in the internet and being forced to ask ones mentor is perceived as a loss of face.

 

I started actually providing all papers in hard copy in the courses (something that I did earlier only in a limited fashion or for not easy available papers. I was told flat in the face that reading those was too much work and I again receive Wiki-like reports.

Now, I always held the belief that the internet would be a fascinating tool especially for students. At least I know that if the web (especially science resources and tools) was as available as now, I would not have been forced to waste that much time on the photocopier, or searching for articles in vain.

 

This overall situtation bothers me also because I cannot really sanction those that copy/paste their reports or even theses. The group leader is more interested in having as many students as possible (to improve his rankings) and I was told to let it happen. However, I find this very unfair to those that really do the work.

Now I wanted to ask the people here, both students and mentors, how you perceive this. Who else has similar (or differing) experiences, am I making too much of a fuss about it?

 

Maybe for clarification: a diploma is similar to a Master's degree and involves around 6-9 months of lab work (in theory conducting own experiments) and then writing the actual thesis.

[GutZ]

I am college student...so different scenerio but..

 

Sometimes I will use wikipedia as a reference...like for example I had a project on spectroscopy I need to remember how the photon/electron relationship worked, I'd check wikipedia.

 

I try to use more than one source too, wiki is cheating in a way but that the same time you have to re-word it (teachers are not dumb, they know if you are copying and pasting), I'd rather just get the concept and then write it all in my own words. I can even BS alittle here there with expanding the paragraphs by not put in useless words, but maybe borderline fancy for a technicial report...lol you know...

 

At the same time I can understand students who use it within a college setting because everything is rushed...around mid-term things get chaotic...you got 6 classes and you have to write 10 papers...tests...presentations...

 

After a while it just seem like your being rushed out of the place. Half the time exams don't even test "learnt" ability...Can you memorize this, or shorten test time with more content: "How can we trick into making mistakes to look as if we aren't give an easy exam"...where you're just flying through the test hoping you get it right.

 

As far as your concerned, I wouldn't worry. A person who takes short-cuts will never benefit in the long run, People that take the time to do it correctly will come out with alot more, it will show.

[CharonY]

At the same time I can understand students who use it within a college setting because everything is rushed...around mid-term things get chaotic...you got 6 classes and you have to write 10 papers...tests...presentations...

OK, this is understandable. Unfortunately much of the system is directed at short term lerning. It was a little bit better in Germany, when there was no Bachelor system. Now not anymore. Overall a good point though, as it could be that less students are actually interested in my particular field and thus deliver rush works. Judging from colleagues comments my described effect is a rather broad one, though. This should not apply to diploma and phd students, though, of course.

 

As far as your concerned, I wouldn't worry. A person who takes short-cuts will never benefit in the long run, People that take the time to do it correctly will come out with alot more, it will show.

 

Actually that is my concern. In academia it can take very long before it shows (if at all). If I gave all the students the same marks they will have equal chances of getting a phD position. There it might show, but by then it is far too late as it is very uncommon to fire a phD student.

Unfortunately the way students are graded are subject to not little amount of politics ins some cases.

[GutZ]

Actually that is my concern. In academia it can take very long before it shows (if at all). If I gave all the students the same marks they will have equal chances of getting a phD position. There it might show, but by then it is far too late as it is very uncommon to fire a phD student.

Unfortunately the way students are graded are subject to not little amount of politics ins some cases.

 

hmmm. Now I see your point. Given the fact that your group leaders don't care, actually now that I think about my mother re-married a philsophy teacher who caught a studentwho would plagiarize whole articles...She was getting through her whole study in this manner. I can't remember the circumstance exactly but I remember it be similiar. For some reason he was the only one who felt as if it was a problem...

 

In that case...I don't know. Do you know others in your position or others that feel the same....if you had support maybe you could convince someone that this isn't correct. ( Atleast I wouldn't feel that it was correct)

[CharonY]

Well, there are few, but labs (or universities, or research institutes...) are usually hierarchically organized. Thus, if the group leader decides that he wants as many students graduating with an A there is not much you can do as a subordinate.

[Sisyphus]

That's outrageous. I'm a wikipediaholic, but I would never cite any encyclopedia, let alone that one, on a serious academic paper. And you're saying they're not just citing it, but basically plagiarizing? And you're supposed to let them get away with it? Good lord.

[CPL.Luke]

hmm what level courses are these? 100? I know that at my university most of the 100 level courses are set up so that if you have a pulse and show up for the midterm and final you'll pass. This is the result o the university putting a very large gen ed requirement on students, the courses for you major are good, however the basic ones are crap.

[timo]

If you encounter the problem with copying from WP in diploma theses (it doesn´t clearly come out of your OP) then I think something is really going wrong with your supervision.

[CharonY]

If you encounter the problem with copying from WP in diploma theses (it doesn´t clearly come out of your OP) then I think something is really going wrong with your supervision.

 

Well, if I didn't know it. However, they were not direct copies, but rather summaries of certain articles. I only found out because there were misconceptions similar to wikipedia articles and I subsequently queried them about it. I am still at a loss how to deal with that. I told them that they had to read original articles and provided some to them (and textbooks). But apparently they didn't read it.

 

So far I had only two instances of a direct copy/paste from wikipedia or a "Google" source and another one from a phD thesis. The latter one was in another ("non-elite") institute and the person in question got reprimanded. Here, at the moment I have to let it slip. In fact, I was told to rewrite the passage in question. Moreover, for tests there has been a new faculty-wide rule that the best test in any exam is supposed to count as 100% and any rating >=50% from that is supposed to be a pass.

 

 

And I have to add another thing, I have a few very good students, who feel being treated unfair, as they put much more work into it. In one on one discussion I explained the situation and most understood it. Yet, the overall mood in the lab is getting worse.

But then I might be leaving to another University soonish, anyway...

[KLB]

That's outrageous. I'm a wikipediaholic, but I would never cite any encyclopedia, let alone that one, on a serious academic paper. And you're saying they're not just citing it, but basically plagiarizing? And you're supposed to let them get away with it? Good lord.

 

I'd have to agree, this is very appalling. Part of the purpose of writing reports is to learn critical thinking skills. Going to Wikipedia (or any site for that matter) and simply summarizing or rewriting what was posted is not learning critical thinking, it is learning to parrot what others have to say.

 

What I find really appalling is that the powers to be in universities are giving a wink and a nod to this issue. My mother teaches at a community college and would (and has) fail a student in a heartbeat if she caught them plagiarizing in this manner. In fact, she along with other faculty have banned the use of Wikipedia as a resource point. In part because it is an encyclopedia and encyclopedias should not be used to research a college level paper and in part because they want students to learn critical thinking.

 

I run a website that publishes original articles is heavily used by students. On several different occasions using various plagiarism detection tools I have found instances of all or part of my articles that had been submitted by a student as their own paper and then subsequently published on a college/university website. In one instance one of my articles was heavily lifted into a graduate student's paper without so much as a citation in the bibliography. Needless to say I routinely report said plagiarism to the institution in question. At the very least this results in said papers disappearing from the Internet.

 

Given how easy it has become to plagiarize and how seductive easy Google and sites like Wikipedia make doing papers, teachers of all forms, owe it to their students to take a very unforgiving stance towards plagiarism. There are some great tools on the Internet that can help track down the origin of plagiarized passages.

 

The Internet can be a very powerful research tool if students just learn how to use it properly and resist the temptation to take the easy way out by relying on sites like Wikipedia.

[swansont]

This is discouraging to hear. In this day and age, with the ease of information flow, I'd expect the bar to be raised, not lowered, since it takes less time to search for and identify sources of information. The only mitigating factor would be that with more information available, sorting the wheat from the chaff is tougher.

 

Equally sad is that a professor would be willing or compelled to let this slide. That person either isn't doing their job properly, or isn't being allowed to. The mention of faculty-wide rules indicates that at least some of this attitude is being dictated from above. Institutionalized lowering of the bar to keep allowing one to continue to declare "success" is disheartening.

[KLB]

Equally sad is that a professor would be willing or compelled to let this slide.

Agreed. It is appalling to think that professors at universities are letting this slide while adjunct faculty at a small community college are holding students accountable for their actions.

[CharonY]

Equally sad is that a professor would be willing or compelled to let this slide. That person either isn't doing their job properly, or isn't being allowed to. The mention of faculty-wide rules indicates that at least some of this attitude is being dictated from above. Institutionalized lowering of the bar to keep allowing one to continue to declare "success" is disheartening.

 

Apparently it goes all the way up. The faculties get money in dependence on the amount of students. A professor fears that his reputation might suffer if his students get bad marks (although most profs are not that much directly involved in training students, at least not in direct lab-work). The guy in my case is even worse as he is not a full prof yet (tenure track). They fear that if students with bad marks leave his lab, he won't get enough to achieve full tenure.

And of course in the end the good students get to suffer. At the moment I am I have resolved to exclusively grade lab-performance as well as the ability to discuss their research with me (discussion with the PI doesn't help as he likes to make monologues instead). But unfortunately I have to do my own research as my position atm is limited, and as everyone has to get the same marks anyway...

 

Unfortunately this puts me under great stress as I really dislike this kind of injustice.

[Severian]

If my boss made me do that I would report her to the Academic Senate and have her fired. And then I would have her job.

[Glider]

This is discouraging to hear. In this day and age, with the ease of information flow, I'd expect the bar to be raised, not lowered, since it takes less time to search for and identify sources of information. The only mitigating factor would be that with more information available, sorting the wheat from the chaff is tougher.

I think it comes down to there being broadly two types of student: those who want a degree and those who want an education. The former won't bother with the wheat/chaff thing and will happily copy whatever they find that sounds remotely relevant, from whatever crappy website they find it on. Happily, they're also dumb enough to cite the crappy websites (because, of course, they'd hate to get busted for plagiarism ). The latter tend to search out the original papers and read them.

 

I strongly discourage an over-reliance on the 'browsing' approach and encourage more focussed searches from recognised sources. If I find 'cut and paste' from crappy websites, then it's the plagiarism route, every time.

 

 

Equally sad is that a professor would be willing or compelled to let this slide. That person either isn't doing their job properly, or isn't being allowed to. The mention of faculty-wide rules indicates that at least some of this attitude is being dictated from above. Institutionalized lowering of the bar to keep allowing one to continue to declare "success" is disheartening.

 

I haven't seen any evidence of that in my University, but Universities do seem to make it hard for tutors. If I suspect plagiarism, then I have to search out the original source, print it, highlight the plagiarised section(s) in both the student work and the source, copy them and take the copy to the school office, where they will review the case and make a decision.

 

Even then, the outcome is not certain, the actual threshold of plagiarism being so vague. If we have accused a student of plagiarism and the office rule that it isn't, then it opens the tutor up to a whole bunch of claims from the student. This is the biggest hurdle I think. Whilst reporting plagiarism is not 'institutionally' discouraged, many people don't because of the fear of legal consequences should their case fail. These days, people tend only to report only the most absurdly obvious cases.

 

I think it's a symptom of increasingly consumerist attitudes. By paying tuition fees, those students who just want a degree get the idea that they're 'buying' it; that we owe them a degree simply by virtue of their cheques clearing. Like all consumers, they feel they have the right to litigate should their 'goods' not be automatically provided within a reasonable period of their having paid for them.

 

Universitites seem unwilling to make it clear to prospective 'clients/customers' that they are paying for an education and not a degree, and that the degree is only awarded if they can demonstrate that they acquired the education they paid for (i.e. learned something). I think this is because of the increasingly fierce competition to get bums on seats and they don't want to risk discouraging prospective students.

 

The current government fad is 'widening participation' where Universities are being 'encouraged' to recruit students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds (conveniently avoiding any mention of their having increased tuition fees), stating that everybody has a right to higher education.

 

I agree with that principle but, as with increasing numbers of students, the government seem unable to tell the difference between 'an education' (i.e. learning stuff) and 'a degree' (a piece of paper awarded to people who can demonstrate that they learned enough stuff). Everybody does have the right to an education, but along with that must come the right to fail (for whatever reason). You cannot dictate that a person must learn. Not everybody wants to. Not everybody can. [/RANT]

[swansont]

I think it's a symptom of increasingly consumerist attitudes. By paying tuition fees, those students who just want a degree get the idea that they're 'buying' it; that we owe them a degree simply by virtue of their cheques clearing. Like all consumers, they feel they have the right to litigate should their 'goods' not be automatically provided within a reasonable period of their having paid for them.

 

Universitites seem unwilling to make it clear to prospective 'clients/customers' that they are paying for an education and not a degree, and that the degree is only awarded if they can demonstrate that they acquired the education they paid for (i.e. learned something). I think this is because of the increasingly fierce competition to get bums on seats and they don't want to risk discouraging prospective students.

 

The current government fad is 'widening participation' where Universities are being 'encouraged' to recruit students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds (conveniently avoiding any mention of their having increased tuition fees), stating that everybody has a right to higher education.

 

I agree with that principle but, as with increasing numbers of students, the government seem unable to tell the difference between 'an education' (i.e. learning stuff) and 'a degree' (a piece of paper awarded to people who can demonstrate that they learned enough stuff). Everybody does have the right to an education, but along with that must come the right to fail (for whatever reason). You cannot dictate that a person must learn. Not everybody wants to. Not everybody can. [/RANT]

 

 

Oh, definitely. There seems to be an attitude of entitlement to success rather than to opportunity, and it's becoming more and more pervasive.

[J77]

The good students I supervise always ask if it's OK to cite wikipedia -- I tell them not and point them in the direction of an ejournals resource, such as sciencedirect, from which they can find peer-reviewed references.

 

Or, if it's just basic intro stuff -- towards the library!

[KLB]

Or, if it's just basic intro stuff -- towards the library!

A library! Oh you are so cruel.

[ecoli]

I use wikipedia to find sources. At the end of most articles, they have a references section, often refering to published journals. It helps me find sources that are directly relevant to the topic and ones that others thiink are important enough to cite.

 

It's a win-win.

 

PS- refer to my sig.

[KLB]

I use wikipedia to find sources. At the end of most articles, they have a references section, often refering to published journals. It helps me find sources that are directly relevant to the topic and ones that others thiink are important enough to cite.

Maybe the problem with this is that it shortcuts the process of actually doing the research too much and one doesn't learn how to dig up these sources on their own without depending upon something like Wikipedia.

 

PS- refer to my sig.

Ya I like it.

[ecoli]

Maybe the problem with this is that it shortcuts the process of actually doing the research too much and one doesn't learn how to dig up these sources on their own without depending upon something like Wikipedia.

 

I see your point... but this isn't really a problem for me.

[swansont]

I use wikipedia to find sources. At the end of most articles, they have a references section, often refering to published journals. It helps me find sources that are directly relevant to the topic and ones that others thiink are important enough to cite.

 

 

Which makes it the equivalent a college-level paper. You shouldn't cite it, but you can possibly use the references it lists.

[CharonY]

At the end of most articles, they have a references section, often refering to published journals.

And here is another problem. If there are references at all (not links) then they are only good in the most basic topics. And after browsing through some I also found serious misquotations.

That wouldn't be so bad if they wouldn't prefer wikipedia over pubmed, or rather reading a review and starting from there instead.

 

Also after some discussions with wikipedians apparently there are not that many experts there to do the serious clean ups. Or rather I would believe that there are not that many experts there having the time to do so.

[KLB]

Also after some discussions with wikipedians apparently there are not that many experts there to do the serious clean ups. Or rather I would believe that there are not that many experts there having the time to do so.

Maybe a better way to state this is to say that the experts are overwhelmed by vastly greater numbers of rabble.

[CharonY]

Recently a colleague showed me the thesis of one of his diploma students. Several aspects indicate that large passages of the introduction were copied from wikipedia. Of course one could only detect them with the rigorous training of a scientific mind ... so these were top three hints:

 

-some passages showed a change of style and wording

-there was little coherence between certain passages

-the passages in question do not actually address the topic of the work

 

and finally:

- the girl/woman in question kept the fonts of the website (she used another throughout her work) and did not remove the links......

 

D'oh.