I’m a slow learner, so this may be old news, but I’m really starting to see how media sharing sites of all kinds (YouTube, SlideShare, etc) are becoming a powerful lever for opening faculty minds, content, and courses.

Faculty members who are traditionally resistant to sharing their content– and therefore content to operate in the restricted environment behind the walls of their LMS– are discovering how easy it is to share multimedia content with little or no assistance, opening the door just enough to let them seriously consider sharing more of their materials and allowing their students to engage in the larger community.

In my experience, once they take that first step there is no desire to turn back the clock…

While plenty of professors have complained about the lack of accuracy or completeness of entries, and some have discouraged or tried to bar students from using it, the history department at Middlebury College is trying to take a stronger, collective stand. It voted this month to bar students from citing the Web site as a source in papers or other academic work. –Inside Higher Ed

No one disputes that Wikipedia has inaccuracies and outright errors. Students should definitely be taught how to use it as a resource. But blanket rules against citing it at all are simply reactionary and myopic. Educate students on how to negotiate the terrain, don’t try to keep them on only the same old paths you are comfortable with. Most of academia’s denizens make their hay questioning and challenging the published work of others… now students are being subtly taught to reinforce that very power structure… question Wikipedia but not every other source they find? Verify Wikipedia but you can’t cite it? What’s really being taught here? Hint: not much compared to what’s being ignored.