Tech advancements get mixed reviews (part 2 of 3)

Professors say some breakthroughs positive, but others, like Wikipedia, can cause issues

By: Jennifer Meyer

Posted: 4/5/07

Students and faculty are both familiar with how technological advances are affecting the education system.

Bill Loges, new media communications professor, said some technology can be seen as a distraction in class, such as iPods or wireless Internet laptops used to access Facebook during lectures.

There are, however, other advancements in the classroom regarding technology that have positive benefits for faculty and students alike.

Whether these technological advancements are useful or not, the drawbacks and benefits of technology are affecting the campus.

A number students use Wikipedia.org as a source when doing a research report or a project.

Wikipedia is a multilingual, Web-based, free content encyclopedia project. It is written by volunteers and its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the Web site.

This online resource is commonly taken advantage of by people who want a quick reference about almost any subject. Any professor would agree that Wikipedia should not be a person's sole reference because the information provided is not always reliable.

"Consulting Wikipedia alone is like consulting only your Uncle Larry," Loges said. "When it is something important, you want all the facts, so naturally you would use other sources, nothing against Uncle Larry."

For this reason alone, professor's discourage students from citing Wikipedia in their work. An example would be a case in a Japanese History classroom.

Several students from a class at Middlebury College used Wikipedia as their only research method in discovering information regarding a Japanese history question, said a New York Times article. Instructor Neil Waters discovered that his students were using Wikipedia as a reference source after several students answered an exam question with the same wrong information.

Mathew Price, an OSU physics professor, believes that podcasts and other reliable online sources that cross check their facts, can be helpful to both students and faculty.

"I encourage students to get info where they can - just use reliable resources," Price said.

Online resources, such as Blackboard, aren't always used by professors.

Some decide to post their lecture notes online so they are accessible to their students, while some prefer the traditional way of hand outs.

"Not everyone has technological capabilities," Loges said. Many professors still believe that attendance at lecture is essential to a good education.

"Things change depending on the class, but then if there was a fundamental problem with lecturing, we would have solved it a while ago," Loges said.