Guidelines for Online Sources in My Courses

Requesting Permission

• As a result, I have decided to allow the use of Internet resources in my classes with the following provision. Any student wishing to use an Internet resource must obtain my written permission to use the source. This will involve the following:
• Identifying the author and publisher of the source, including their affiliation and any other potentially facts that might threaten the source’s value or objectivity. For example, I have had past students try to use sources that were written as middle school class projects – hardly an appropriate source for a college research paper.

• Explaining exactly which information the source provides for your paper that was not available in any more traditional scholarly sources (such as books or academic journal articles). I will approve sources that have legitimate value to add to a paper, such as government web sites listing the government’s current policy on a territorial claim – but not sources that are being used as a shortcut to avoid doing research in scholarly sources.
• Evaluating possible biases in the source and discussing how you will handle these biases when using the source (if it is approved). I have had past students unquestioningly use a government web site as their only source of historical research for a paper, which I will not approve – this is why we have an entire library full of books and academic journal. On the other hand, of both government’s web sites are used of compare and contrast the way they both frame a current issue, I am more likely to approve his.

• Note that my permission is not needed for the use of online sources that are simply easier ways to access traditional printed sources. For example, academic journal articles accessed through JSTOR do not need my approval, because the same journal articles could have been found in the printed copies of the journal. Similarly, news stories accessed through the news source’s web site (such as the New York Times, Washington Post, or BBC World Service) or through news aggregators (like Lexis-Nexis) do not need my permission.

•