I first heard about Middlebury College's beef with Wikipedia in this January 26, 2007 article at Inside Higher Ed. It began making the rounds and has now landed in today's Campus Technology's News Update. Funny how an issue surrounding reputable information has gone from a "stand" against Wikipedia to a "ban" on Wikipedia. I really wonder if every faculty member at Middlebury will not accept a Wikipedia article as a source on a student assignment. It should go without saying that any encyclopedia is not an appropriate source for an academic paper, especially one with a dubious peer-review process. Democratic? Yes. Academic? No. Still, I could see it being acceptable in about 1% of cases.
My initial fear, which I still have, is that people will confuse the wiki technology with Wikipedia. Wikipedia is just one instance of the wiki technology in use. There are lots of ways the wiki technology can be used in engaging student activities, though we're still trying to figure out what those are. Right now in my "Computer Mediated Communication" course, we're using the wiki in Sakai to collaborate on an encyclopedia on tools like blogs, wikis, del.icio.us, and the like. We're learning from each other and building a neat collaborative "product."
The Center for eLearning here at CSU is using a wiki to provide up-to-date FAQs and other information to faculty and students using the new Blackboard CE 6 Learning Management System. A true collaboration, we've gotten two faculty members interested in helping us keep it up to date.
Just don't cite us in an academic paper! Geez, folks. If you're using Google and Wikipedia to find sources for academic papers, and your Institution is in Ohio, you have no excuse. OhioLink will give you everything you need to find appropriate sources. Are you at CSU and not in a lab? Find out how to get reputable stuff off campus.
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I'm deeply disappointed that an institution of higher learning would simply ban an information source, rather than use its strengths and weaknesses as a starting point for teaching solid information literacy skills to students.
I wouldn't claim that Wikipedia is always correct. However, the same is true of Encyclopedia Brittanica -- see, for example, the well-known "Internet Encyclopedias Go Head to Head" published last year in "Nature" ( http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7070/full/438900a.html )
It seems to me a much wiser course of action would be to insist that students more thoroughly document the reliability of all their information sources, be they paper or print.
As a teacher, I insist that my students do this -- and as a teacher, I use a wiki with my students to create summaries of our course content in their own words.
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