T, Mills Kelly, I have discussed this issue with a variety of people and I can conclusively say that this is completely unprofessional - as it fails to mention iphone, ipad, podcast, blog or wiki or web2 or the cloud - and unethical. I have this on no less an authority than Ernest Lalor "Ern" Malley himself.

The important thing that your students are learning is how to think. Congratulations: you're teaching a vanishing skill.

I have adopted a similar approach in the teaching of forensic science in a secondary school context. The students take the role of criminals trying to forge handwriting and make fake voice messages and so on. Try as they might, other students in the class acting as detectives inevitably spot the fakes. Very good analytical skills and convincing arguments emerge with lots of fun. All students report that fooling experts is very very hard. (And their ability to mimic teachers is enhanced as well!) Is there a danger that this may hone skills as a future transgressor? Probably nothing like watching a few episodes of any old crime show on the TV - not that youngsters do that much anymore.

I absolutely agree Ian, history can be changed and usually to support winners and teaching children to lie does not may, have bad consequences sometimes lasting throughout their lives.
Going are the days, when a man's word was their honour.

If I am reading Professor Kelly correctly, his aim is not to teach student's to lie or be deceitful, but rather to teach them to become much more sensitive to the possibility that others are trying to do so to them!

I relate very strongly to Professor Kelly and his student 10 years ago. Already having a degree, and a career, I returned to university for the sort of heavy-duty BA I hadn't been ready for back when I was 18. But between finishing my first degree and the early 21st century BA, technology had completely changed the way an undergraduate worked. Even though we were bombarded with the evils of plagiarism, the dodginess, of Wikipedia, etc, somehow cheap PCs, websites, blogs, ebooks, access to dozens, often hundreds of scholarly journals from logging on to the university library meant that at least in the early year/s, things were bound to go wrong.

By spending a whole unit on "dodgy' historical evidence must have increased each student's critical reading skills outta-site.

I really sympathize with History professors today. Just how much effort does a student have to exert just to make sure she gets by the 'Turnitin' guards? If I were a Prof, I would set one 4,000 Research Easy from a provided bibliography, which the student was not to go beyond. At the very end, I would set two exams. The first an unseen closed-book 2-hour multiple choice of facts, events, and dates. The second would be an exam, where three essays had to be written. To take account of those students with extreme exam anxiety, students would have 8 hours to write the 3 exam essays. This raises the prospect of the confident ones just writing all day and handing in 3*3,000 word essay. You could get around this by imposing a strict world limit of 1,000/1500 words, or whatever.

After this, finally, all students would take a viva on their Research Essay and exam papers, to see just how well they did cover the work beyond just escaping Turnitn..

Though not exactly analagous, I was reminded of an xkcd comic

Citogenesis: http://xkcd.com/978/

Anyway, in some ways history is always an act of fabricating the truth. From subset of possible facts we create a narrative that, however convincing, is necessarily a falsification.

This is not to deny the utility of the process or the result - if we enter into the enterprise with a clear sight of both our limitations and the goal toward which we strive. But the historian becomes merely an ideologue when they attach too much importance to their constructions.

As long as one had done the necessary research when writing about historic happenings who can refute the findings. Honest refutation requires as much research as the criticized original. It is not a lie when all the known facts have been exhausted and the best presented.

We need this approach in a political science course, preferably as a mandatory requirement before becoming eligible to vote.

Making this sort of trick a component of a regular history course may be a good idea, but only as a one off element, e.g. for a seminar (etc), but packaging a whole semester on this approach is not to actually "teach" history at all. I may be old fashioned, but I would want my students to actually learn that there are some "facts" in history, and to go away having learned a few "real" things.
But in this post-modernist era it seems to be increasingly a matter of "entertaining" students who do not want to bother doing anything hard. Serious issues do exist, laughing all the way through is not a guide to quality of approach (except in stand-up comedy). Turning university into a "user-friendly" game won't work for all history subjects, e.g. the holocaust.
I guess these days, who needs "real" knowledge of anything. Unless you are a surgeon - now - post-modern brain surgery - or a dentist.
About 20 or 30 years ago there was a brilliant book AMUSING OURSELVES TO DEATH by Neil Postman, really about the media, but applicable to almost everything, I highly recommend it, especially the second half (and it is a short book). What is alarming is how the things he warned about are now vastly worse.
Why have any standards at all?
Now there's a dangerous idea - who needs "facts" in ANY subject as long as it's "fun." No wonder Asian universities are powering ahead of us as we sit at our game consoles being "amused to death".

"Everybody loves a hoax except those hoaxed" W Smith "Spectra Hoax" p47

I endorse Prof Mills' initiative with one caveat: the laudable outcome of these courses may mask a potential long term (ethical) risk. A key factor as yet to be mentioned is the students' likely awarenes they were participating in a revolutionary approach.

With a history major BA, I'm now undertaking a research thesis examining 3 hoaxes (Philip Dowling: "Good Ol' Ern" is one of them - an 'intimate friend' of mine over many enjoyable research years). Whenever I say 'hoax' people are instantly interested. As a teacher (albeit creative writing) I know how effective fun is for learning; indubitably this applies to all educational endeavours. To 'see' things from hoax perpetrators' viewpoint is very instructive.

My concern is ethical which, in effect, is a long term perspective of the point raised by Antony Howe. In the short term, this laudable initiative of Prof Mills - in his commitment to both (much needed) critical standards of historical research & to his students' learning experience (making it enjoyable) he 'thought outside the box' - has achieved very effective results. A key factor, it seems to me, is that his students would have been most likely aware they were participating in a 'revolution'. This awareness in itself would, I suggest, contribute to the outcome. 'Revolutions' generate an energy which can be very productive; as the 'excitement phase' inevitably eases a certain element of 'routine' evolves and the high energy benefits lessen. This is not to suggest there can't be ongoing positive results from revolutionary change. However, as energy diminishes, ideals of the early phase can gradually fade to the background.

I suspect that if Prof Mills' courses/methods, as currently designed, were to become a norm for teaching history, then over the years his principle that the questionable ethics of fabrication are strictly a tool/means to achieve a desirable end, would give way to a situation where those means become the end: that, ultimately, students would adopt the view fabrication is generally acceptable.

I suggest a possible way to minimise this potential is that fabrication/lies should not be, as is currently the case, the key title/focus of the course. This doesn't mean Prof Mills' techniques can't be used, or that hoaxes can't be referred to in some way in the course title - it's a good idea there is up-front mention of them - they generate interest. (A key point of my thesis is that teachers should harness the potential for good leaning that hoaxes provide.) I agree with Antony Howe that fabrication shouldn't be the mainstay of the course, but I don't see it needs to be limited to one workshop.

Before I windup this 'dissertation', here's a couple 'food-for-thought' items:

In 1761 James Macpherson published verse fragments which he claimed were written by the ancient Gaelic legendary figure Ossian. Whilst there's some 'room' to believe there may have been a few genuine fragments from an earlier period (tho' no evidence these were written by Ossian which, for many reasons, is most unlikely - for one thing, in the period Ossian is said to have lived, Gaelic was most likely an oral, not written, language ) that Macpherson translated into this verse, scholars are generally agreed he wrote the bulk of them himself. Despite highly publicised allegations of Macpherson's 'fraud', 'hoax', etc, which commenced back in1763, these verses now have a very prominent place in Scottish nationalist culture.

I guess you've all heard that Eskimos have a very large number of individual words for snow? A number of scholars have now illustrated this is a myth with a 'foundation' that's most unlikely. Allowing for a big difference in 'mindset' between Western & Eskimo cultures/languages (a case of comparing apples with oranges), it seems Eskimos have approx. 8 - 10 words for snow, whereas ours - depending on your definitions - is in 6-8 range. In an exercise that I believe would have been exciting historical research (within a complex anthropological-linguistic context), these scholars have traced where the myth appears to have commenced - a public lecture in early 20th century given by noted cultural/linguist scholar Benjamin Lee Whorf in which, in his effort to communicate the idea that Eskimos think very differently to us, he appears to have been unintentionally careless in saying they had many words for snow (he seems to have suggested 14 at one point) - radio commentators happened to pick this up & before long the airwaves were broadcasting statements that Eskimos had hundreds (one assertion claimed 1,000!) words for snow. See: C. K. Pullum, "The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax".

These items are, I believe, fascinating examples of how hoaxes, or what are often called hoaxes (since there appears there was no intent to deceive, it's dubious to label the Eskimo case a 'hoax'), and their often strong connections to culture & mythology, can be very informative about a whole range of human endeavours & the history thereof.

Interesting article...I quite like this idea...I teach a class for pre-service secondary Humanities teachers here at RMIT in Melbourne...we do a lot of work on 'critical literacy'...I'll def send this one around...should generate some great discussion in classes...

Good grief, in all this discussion nobody questioned putting lies on the internet?
"create lies about the past and turn them loose on the internet"

Don't you know things take on their own life on the internet? You might take down the source, but you have no idea where your false information has migrated to.

I try to contend with all the manufactured garbage about global warming, but of course it just keeps coming around, repeated forever.

I hope you will stop this and never do it again.