The labor of knowing

In the July 19 Wired, Jonah Lehrer alludes to the joys of fieldwork versus the “drudgery of the lab.” After several years’ work on the Citation Project, I have a much better sense of what he means. We set off on the Citation Project with the objective of having a broad data-based portrait of what students do when they work with sources. As teachers we had some pretty concrete ideas, drawn from our work with the student writers in our own courses; as scholars we had some glimpses... [Read more]

The recycled news story, yet again. Nauseatingly.

On July 5, the New York Times offered “To Stop Cheats, Colleges Learn Their Trickery.” Exactly one week later, it was “Cutting and Pasting: A Senior Thesis by (Insert Name).” Thus does the Times publish two stories that, while they have been circulated widely among educators, actually set back the cause of good teaching. Like most media coverage of issues of plagiarism, cheating, and academic integrity, these pieces go for simplistic, sensational claims. And the Times replicates... [Read more]