Re: Weekly posting summary

"whisky-dave" <whisky-dave@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message 
news:ft5k1n$ls3$1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
> "H Duffy" <hester_duffy@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message 
> news:65ku1vF2g5cc0U1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>> So students are not in any way compelled to buy the books they need; 
>> therefore, your theory that it is bad practice to insist on them using 
>> actual books, because it means buying things, is clearly faulty. We
make 
>> them read books, and we provide, free of charge, the books they need to

>> read.
> The college PAYS for the books out of it's grant paid for by tax payers.

That's right; and therefore, the students don't have to buy them.

Did you think that I was somehow implying that the books aren't paid for
at 
all? Did you think that your comment was in any way relevant or
insightful? 
Becaue if you thought any of those thigs, you were wrong. You were arguing

that insisting on students using books for their work was bad because it 
forced the students to _buy_ books. Actually, the students are not forced
to 
buy the books, because the University buys them instead, and makes them 
available to the students.
Thus, on pretty much every point you've tried to make on this issue, you 
were wrong.
All clear now?

>> Do you know what a library is, Dave? It's a place where there are lots
of 
>> books, and people can go and read them, or borrow them to read them at 
>> home, without actually buying them.
>
> Do you realise that NOT every library in the country stocks multiple 
> copies of ever
> book published in fact they tend to stock very few.

But since no student is _ever_ expected to read every book ever published,

that's not a problem.

>> They don't necessarily all need to read the _same_ book; quite often,
the 
>> information they need is provided in lots of different books.
>
> And several on-line places too may well have the same information,
> why can't that be used. ?

Because online sources tend to be unreliable; they may have the correct 
information, but they may have misinformation too. Since websites aren't 
peer-reviewed in the same way that books and journal articles are, they're

fundamentally unreliable.

In addition to that, websites encourage lazy research; bung in a couple fo

keywords, grab the first couple of pages that include those words. With a 
book, you're likely to need to read more to find what you need, and thus 
you'll learn more, and take in more of the context, resulting ina  better 
understanding of the topic.

>> If they're proper, peer-reviewed publications, they can do so. On the 
>> other hand, if they're being lazy and just looking up a bunch of web 
>> sites which haven't been peer-reviewed, they're probably getting 
>> inaccurate informat8ion, so that's not useful for them, and therefore, 
>> they're not allowed to do that.
>
> Yes they are or should be allowed to, but ultimatly it's about facts and

> the truth,
> not whether or not it has been peer-reviewed.

No, actually, it isn't; an awfyul lot of academic work is about opinions, 
not "facts and truth", because we simply don't have access to all the
"facts 
and truth". So, for example, students might be asked to write an essay 
comparing and contrasting two theroetical approaches to a particular 
subject. There will be some factual material in that essay, but some of it

will also be about opinions.
(Obviously this is not true in all subjects; a maths undergraduate is not 
going to have to think very much about opinions, for example.)

H