Student Faces Expulsion for Facebook Study Group

Pickens brings news that a student at Ryerson University is facing 147 counts of academic misconduct after helping to run a chemistry study group through Facebook. School officials have declined to comment, but students are claiming that it is simply a valid studying technique in the information age. Quoting: "Avenir, 18, faces an expulsion hearing Tuesday before the engineering faculty appeals committee. If he loses that appeal, he can take his case to the university's senate. The incident has sent shock waves through student ranks, says Kim Neale, 26, the student union's advocacy co-ordinator, who will represent Avenir at the hearing. 'That's the worst part; it's creating this culture of fear, where if I post a question about physics homework on my friend's wall (a Facebook bulletin board) and ask if anyone has any ideas how to approach this - and my prof sees this, am I cheating?' said Neale, who has used Facebook study groups herself."

Comments

Re:147 offences?

[OAB_X]

It's so many because that's the number of people in the Facebook group.

SPecifically he is charged with academic misconduct (which is able to be punished by expulsion), because the group advertised not just "help" (like hints) but "post answers", and because people presumably handed in those answers it's plagerism (the questions that had answers given were requrired to be handed in and worth 10% of their mark). It's one of those really fine lines that was probably crossed, but it may not have been by him, perhaps just the people who joined the group. In that case they "should" have charged _EVERY_ student in the group with misconduct, clearly this isn't happening.

However, the administration is hampered by the rules which say that they MUST hold an appeals hearing if a professor alledges academic misconduct (it is the professor who reports plagerism, and the professor who submits a recommendation on action to be taken by the administration, in this case, the proff wants him to be expelled)

Article from the student newspaper: http://www.theeyeopener.com/article/3816

Full disclosure: I'm a student at Ryerson, but not involved in this at all, and I don't think he should be expelled.

Re:Then you missed out

[SuperDuck]

I find it rather interesting that this article's replies have all assumed that this is an American university.

Ryerson University is located in downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

And what's getting this student in trouble is the invitation to the Facebook group where it requests the posting of final full solutions, rather than warning against it. If he had just asked for solution techniques and advice, and stated without ambiguity that posting of final solutions is a no-no, he would have been fine.

RTFA, and also please don't assume that we only have igloos and polar bears up here. ;-)