I've addressed the issue, along with others, as to whether professors should allow the use of Wikipedia as a source for student research papers. Seth Godin weighs in on Wikipedia and makes some interesting points:
"Selecting the facts is an important part of the process. Finding them shouldn't be. I don't know about you, but when I hire someone, or go to the doctor or the architect or an engineer, I could care less about how good they are at memorizing or looking up facts. I want them to be great at synthesizing ideas, the faster and more insightfully, the better."
Twenty years ago when I was teaching Operations Management classes, we had the students work problems by hand. Today we teach them how to do problems using computer software. The emphasis now is on interpreting the answers generated by the computer.
As professors, we need to examine how useful our teaching techniques are in preparing the students to be successful in the future.
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