One professor is putting her foot down and is banning any use of Google, Wikipedia, Yahoo or any other web search engine. Tara Brabazon, a lecturer from the University of Brighton, is furious with the poor quality of work she has been receiving for the past few years. She has a list of references for each paper or a reading list from which she expects her students to cite in their paper. No more skating through the internet to find an essay or the information needed and simply re-phrasing it will be acceptable practice.
Wikipedia was meant to be a gathering place, a dictionary, of information by a group of learned people who could edit their own work or each other’s work. It was a great place to refer to if you did not know what something meant or who someone was in history. However, some students quickly put the website to use as a tool to write their own papers and projects, simply by reworking the words and adding in other references. They were handing in work that was practically verbatim the text from Wikipedia.
Students must take more responsibility to learn and earn their degrees. They need to attend lectures, do the readings and take notes. When setting up a paper they need to know the skills of putting down the beginning or introduction of an essay, the middle or meat of the essay, and finally the end or conclusion of the essay. Unfortunately, many students leave secondary schools without having been disputed for having copied or plagiarizing their work from the internet.
Many universities now offer composition and basic grammar English classes to offer students a chance to improve upon their skills. It becomes a prerequisite course if the student is floundering in their final year of secondary school. Everyone can use a refresher course.