I do wonder how much of the anti-internet sources feelings are due to the use of the internet being seen as the 'easy' way to get information, so the lecturers are trying to get their students to walk into a library instead of sitting at home on their computers with remote access to electronic journals?
Yes, that was part of the point: not to tell them that everything on the Web is unreliable, but that there are sources that aren't on the Web, and that they really should learn where the campus library is. (And it's only one source out of half a dozen or more....)
I would be tickled pink if the students were citing quality academic journals that they happened to get in electronic form; if they were, I would drop the requirement. But in practice, the students have been citing (and/or copying without attribution) whatever Web page turns up first on Google. I think the distinction between subscription services and "the open Web" is too subtle for a lot of these students :-)
I also spend part of the semester discussing how to assess the reliability and biases of various sources, including Web sites. We look at humorously bogus sites, like http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/ and http://dhmo.org , as well as less-benign ones like http://martinlutherking.org ).
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I do wonder how much of the anti-internet sources feelings are due to the use of the internet being seen as the 'easy' way to get information, so the lecturers are trying to get their students to walk into a library instead of sitting at home on their computers with remote access to electronic journals?
Yes, that was part of the point: not to tell them that everything on the Web is unreliable, but that there are sources that aren't on the Web, and that they really should learn where the campus library is. (And it's only one source out of half a dozen or more....)
I would be tickled pink if the students were citing quality academic journals that they happened to get in electronic form; if they were, I would drop the requirement. But in practice, the students have been citing (and/or copying without attribution) whatever Web page turns up first on Google. I think the distinction between subscription services and "the open Web" is too subtle for a lot of these students :-)
I also spend part of the semester discussing how to assess the reliability and biases of various sources, including Web sites. We look at humorously bogus sites, like http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/ and http://dhmo.org , as well as less-benign ones like http://martinlutherking.org ).