John F. Lyons, "Teaching U.S. History Online: Problems and Prospects," The History Teacher v37 n1, August 2004, online at http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ht/37.4/lyons.html

After noting that distance education, and specifically online instruction, has proliferated in recent years, Lyons provides a useful first-hand account of his experience teaching an online U.S. History survey course for Joilet Junior College in Illinois. In general, Lyons felt the experience was positive, both for himself as a teacher and for his students, who for the most part evaluated the course favorably. However, he also highlights a variety of challenges presented by online education. His article is anecdotal and reflects only his personal observations in a single course, but is nonetheless tailored for history teachers and thus is a good starting point for those interested in the topic.

Lyons used the computer software package Blackboard 6 in conjunction with a standard U.S. History textbook. He notes that many publishers now include Blackboard or a similar online package with their textbooks. Blackboard enables the instructor to, among other applications, create discussion boards, post and automatically grade quizzes, provide links to other websites and multimedia clips, and to post course materials and announcements. Lyons especially extols the benefits of an active course discussion board, which he uses to create both a sense of community and to motivate students to keep up with course readings.

Foremost among the advantages of online education in Lyons' opinion is the ease and convenience it provides for teachers and students alike. Online courses are able to attract a range of students who wouldn't normally enroll in a college course because of scheduling or geographical constraints and allows instructors to work from home and to keep up with course duties even while traveling to conferences and research destinations. Lyons also notes that it is possible to create an exciting, interactive, personalized, and rewarding learning experience online, provided the instructor plans thoughtfully and creatively and responds quickly to student needs.

For Lyons, the principle drawback to teaching online is the amount of pre-course preparation that is required, which far outweighs that of a traditional course. He does add, however, that once the course is up and running the time commitment is equal to or even less than a traditional course. Other problems are to be expected: technical breakdowns, difficulty motivating students in what can be an impersonal, mechanical medium, and an endless flood of email. (Daren Salter)

Roy Rosenzweig, "Can History Be Open Source? Wikipedia and the Future of the Past," in Journal of American History Vol. 93, No. 1 (June 2006), available online at http://chnm.gmu.edu/resources/essays/d/42

Historian Roy Rosenzweig offers a lengthy, reasoned discussion of the merits and perils of Wikipedia. The article sets out to answer some basic questions: "How did [Wikipedia] develop? How does it work? How good is the historical writing? What are the potential implications for our practice as scholars, teachers, and purveyors of the past to the general public?"

In shedding light on these questions, Rosenzweig points out many of Wikipedia's obvious and well-documented shortcomings – its invitation to plagiarism, its disjointed prose, its factual inaccuracies, its overindulgence of factoids and curios in place of what most professional historians would consider more significant events or developments, its staid, Neutral Point of View (NPOV) editorial policy, and its growing monopoly on public knowledge. And yet, refreshingly, he avoids the sort of professional demonology that many academics engage in when discussing Wikipedia. Surveying an admittedly limited sample of entries, for instance, Rosenzweig compares Wikipedia favorably to other, more respected, online resources like Microsoft's Encarta or the venerable Encyclopedia Britannica in terms of factual accuracy and breadth of coverage. He also notes that when factual errors do arise, Wikipedia's hyper-vigilant amateur editors often correct them within hours.

More importantly, Rosenzweig argues, historians need to stop vilifying and start paying more attention to Wikipedia, warts and all, because: 1) their students do; and 2) it is bound up in larger epistemological debates among historians regarding the profession's role as purveyors of historical knowledge in the public sphere. Rather than ignore the continued popularity of Wikipedia, Rosenzweig urges historians to use their expertise to provide oversight for Wikipedia and other non-vetted online sources. Ultimately, Wikipedia, with its open-source, collaborative approach to historical knowledge opens up new vistas for "democratic self-education" and stimulates interest in history, even if that history is at times flawed. That is a good thing, suggests Rosenzweig. Moreover, the Wikipedia approach challenges the exclusivity and "possessive individualism" that underlies our discipline. That too, according to Rosenzweig, can be a good thing. (Daren Salter)

Stephen Brier and Roy Rosenzweig, "The Keyboard Campus," in The Nation 274:15 (April 22, 2002), 29.

Brier and Rosenzweig's article is a strident critique of David Noble's late 1990s book on computer technology in higher education, The Diploma Mill. In his book, Noble argued that changes in academic institutions and academic culture brought on by computer technology—including the rise in distance education, new modes of instruction and student learning, and especially the commercialization and commodification of university education—will spell the downfall of "our once great higher education system."

Brier and Rosenzweig find little to recommend about the book. They criticize Noble for his tone (alarmist, polemical, and hyperbolic), for his research (dated, in some cases skewed, in others inaccurate, and invariably directed toward the wrong questions), his qualifications (Noble refuses to use even email—how then is he qualified to write about technology and education?), and his hypocrisy (he distributed the original essays upon which the book is based in serial form via the Internet, an excellent example of the productive use of computer technology in higher education, the authors contend, but one that is ironically at odds with Noble's own position). In the end, while Brier and Rosenzweig believe Noble is justified in raising an important debate, they conclude that Noble's "undifferentiated suspicion of technology hinders us more than it helps us." (Daren Salter)

Rebecca Moore Howard, "Forget About Policing Plagiarism. Just Teach," Chronicle of Higher Education, November 16, 2001.

Moore Howard discusses the issue of Internet plagiarism from the perspective of what instructors can do to prevent, rather than punish, the problem. She calls for a reassertion of the "student-mentor" relationship in opposition to what she perceives as a troubling rise in "criminal-police" interaction between professors and students spawned by the rise in Internet plagiarism and the corresponding proliferation of Internet technology designed to catch plagiarists.

While she is careful not to excuse student plagiarism, she does provide some context and some useful suggestions for how to prevent it. First, she notes that the majority of plagiarism is not a willful attempt to cheat but rather the result of a lack of student understanding regarding what, exactly, constitutes plagiarism. Given this fact, she urges instructors to spend more time educating their students about how not to plagiarize. Howard Moore also argues that plagiarism occurs when students don't place value on the opportunity of learning. In this vein, she places the onus on teachers to design "authentic assignments" that have more "meaning" for students. This is rather vague and unsatisfying language, but Howard Moore seems to be suggesting that instructors do more to tailor assignments to student interests and to vary assignments from semester to semester. Of more practical utility is her suggestion that the common practice of simply handing out an assignment, collecting it at the end of the term, and marking it with a perfunctory "Good Work" and a letter grade, is in essence an invitation to plagiarism. To help head off plagiarism, she argues, teachers must set periodic benchmarks and consult and communicate with students throughout the paper-writing process. (Daren Salter)

T. Mills Kelly, "For Better or Worse: The Marriage of the Web and the Classroom."

This is a useful article for a number of reasons. Most importantly because it highlights just what can be lost when teachers lose sight of the goal of education as they become wrapped up in making the students happier ‚Äì in this case by using more technology. Kelly generally is willing to present varied possible outcomes. Is it that the internet will set students free to make their own discoveries? Or will it lead them merely to disorganization and dubious information? This also points out that students are more likely to return to something if it is on the web (although on the flip side pointing out how unwilling students are to put in a relatively minute effort to search through a course pack). It includes negative as well as positive aspects of web course—such as that it discourages students from using the library. (Stephen Crimmins)

Patrick M. Scanlon, "Student Online Plagiarism: How Do We Respond?" College Teaching, Fall 2003 v51 i4 p. 161 (5)

Scanlon tries to get to the bottom of plagiarism in this article. He begins by deconstructing myths about student online plagiarism. No, not that many students are buying papers and otherwise copying information from the internet (although still more than we want). But Scanlon makes it clear that he doesn't think that we should spend all our time trying to chase down plagiarism (especially not when it only involves online plagiarism checkers), he points out that we should try to prevent it. Schools, he insist, need to have education for students so that they know exactly what plagiarism is. This is not a new problem, but it may be growing as he points out that the internet is probably shaping students' ideas about fair use (although even Wikipedia's "copyleft" requires a citation when it is being reproduced wholesale). (Stephen Crimmins)

Brock Read, "Can Wikipedia Ever Make the Grade?" The Chronicle of Higher Education, Oct 27, 2006.

Read discusses the plusses and pitfalls of Wikipedia. He notes both its strengths in science and its weakness in the humanities. He points out the ability of Wikipedia to quickly correct errors, at least on its most popular pages. But at the same time, Wikipedia's greatest gap is its lack of scholars. Anyone can alter Wikipedia, which has meant that the site has been unfriendly at times to scholars for two reasons. (1) no original research which means that scholars can't throw in their personal analysis of the source (although it attempts to make it more "encyclopedic"). And (2), that scholars don't have any particular authority and so it may be hard for a scholar to convince a group of Wikipedians that, yes, that is the most up to date idea (of course, scholars have their own advantage as Wikipedia articles demand references – which scholars have a better knowledge of). In the end, the biggest take home message is probably that Wikipedia will continue to be around for some time and scholars will have to learn to live with it. (Stephen Crimmins)

Stanley N. Katz, "A Computer is Not a Typewriter, or Getting Right with Information Technology in the Humanities."

Katz, a former president of the American Council of Learned Societies, discusses the advent of computers into the humanities, going over the ways that disciplines have had to adapt. He notes that, fortunately, humanities have acquired the basics: email, websites, etc, although in doing that many were scrambling and unprepared. But he sees a bigger issue. Yes, the humanities have done the basics, but is there more that IT could do if we step back and look at it creatively? Such has the question that Katz has been looking at, pushing the ACLS and the American Historical Association to think about just that. He talks about a few projects he's worked on, creating a electronic version of the American National Biography and preservation of books with poor quality binding and paper, and the leaves the reader to go out and hopefully find more create approaches to IT. (Stephen Crimmins)