Imitation - the sincerest form of flatulence

Just come back from talking to StudentNet, an influential group which meets regularly here at the University of Plymouth to discuss issues surrounding student use of networked resources. I spoke about 'Social Software in Higher Education' and several really useful questions were raised by the group over copyright, validity and reliability of sources such as Wikipedia, plagiarism and 'fit for purpose' issues.

Landed on my desk I find the latest issue (No. 21) of the Centre for Bioscience Bulletin. On the back page is an interesting featured article entitled: 'The Wonderful World of Wikis', which says much the same thing as StudentNet. Bizarrely, the author Viv Rolfe, from De Montfort University, then goes on to talk about a wikipedia page dealing with the subject of flatulence.... students were asked to look at the page and assess how accurate it was, and whether they should change it or add to it. I assume the lecturer wanted the students' gut reactions....?

The author also mentions 'Wikiphobia' - a subject not yet covered on Wikipedia, ironically - and reveals that 67 % of students who plagiarised, also quoted from Wikipedia. Well, there's a thing....

'When you copy one person's work, it is plagiarism. When you copy many peoples' work, it is research....' (I copied this)