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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."
That's all there is too it. They weren't talking about Chemistry in general, but they were answering questions and sharing the answers on an assignment worth 10% of their final grade. It was against the school's rules (Which they accepted when they joined the school) and they broke them, Facebook or no Facebook.
I don't quite understand why the media goes into a frenzy every time Facebook or YouTube is mentioned. Kids at my old highschool swapped answers on a free forum they quickly registered and ended up getting caught and punished. Is this any different? No, yet the media and non-techie readers get into a frenzy every time social networking is mentioned.
This is slightly off topic but what the hell is with that info box in the article? "OTHER CASES: Expulsions for internet misuse". It implies that students were expelled simply because they accessed the internet or social networking websites. But that's not the case. They were expelled because the school either has the right to expel at their own discretion (eg. The gay guy who was expelled John Brown Christian College) or they broke other school rules such as harassing and physically abusing school officials. The fact that it happened on the internet is redundant, the outcome would have been the same if polaroid pictures of the incidents were found or if someone was dobbed in.
Is it reasonable to assume that every student will carry out their homework assignment in isolation? I don't think it is. It's not really commendable that someone took it upon themselves to go for a more organised approach to 'cheating' but I'd say that if the university wants assignments to be carried out by individuals alone they have a duty to provide invigilated exam halls rather than setting a practically unenforceable condition and kicking anyone out who they happen to find breaking it.
Thousands of other students will have broken this rule in the past sitting around a library table or a kitchen counter - why did the university let them get away with it?
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Why are they still letting 146 other students get way with it and just going after the administrator of the site?
Oh, of course, if they kicked out all the students that were using the facebook group, there wouldn't be anybody left on the course and they wouldn't get all that nice money they provide. Much better just to pick one scapegoat to make an example of.
Sounds like a typical US college knee-jerk over-reaction. We can do it so we will... tremble in fear, puny students at the might of THE ADMINISTRATION...!
The reason is that cheater needs to be caught red-handed. If it is just a small cheating group assembled in the library table or the canteen, there is not enough incentive for the university to try to get them. The group is too small, could easily hide the evidence and there are dozens of such groups around.
Now, if one tries to have a group the size of 100+ students in the library, canteen or anywhere in the premises. I'm sure there is more than enough incentive for the university to get them. Much like what they're doing here. And besides the evidence is as plain as the midday sun (w/o clouds).
This is approaching cheating. You have a historical record of the questions and eventually direct answers to the homework questions. Remember, these questions generally come from books which are used over and over. So by the third semester these books are going to be pretty well answered on the internet.
What makes this different is that most people work out the problem with their peers and then move on, not keeping the answers out on the table for the next group of students. It's collaborative problem solving, not collaborative problem/answer posting. The real damage can be that no one learns anything other than how to sign-up to Facebook and troll for answers.
Volatile methods should be considered acceptable: IM, IRC, Email (without archives). These promote collaboration without promoting copy/paste.
I personally did very little with collaborative study groups because I found too often I was shelling out answers to people who were just writing stuff down and never returning any value to the group or me personally. As such, I saw no value to my academic career in continuing this practice. I would not advocate anyone seriously invest as this being the only study means, you just don't learn that much, like problem solving.
Who cares how someone obtains knowledge, by studying by themselves or through rapid interaction with his peers? What matters is whether he learned something or not.
I don't care about homework and exercises, someone who cheats will flunk their exams aswell and if he won't, then who cares whether he did the exercises properly or not because apparently he understands the subject!
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Au contraire, this is the only thing that helped me through my EE class last semester. Maybe you're too smart to need it, but I always understood 80% of my homework and earned the rest of the understanding by attacking the problem as a group. Having a collaborative study group taught me virtually everything in that class; the instructor was terrible.
My point is, what works for one person doesn't for another, and vice-versa. I favor the collaborative approach over the solitary. I haven't RTFA, though I should, but suggesting approaches without giving out answers sounds perfectly reasonable to me.
I know the above is a +5 funny comment, but seriously, this would be a perfect opportunity for students to do what they used to do best. Protest.
147 offenses? Why so many?
Seriously! This looks like something straight out of the RIAA playbook.
Training students to be rugged individuals is the wrong thing to do. Give them homework that HAS to be done in a group.
In my engineering school, they believe this very strongly and in virtually all in-major classes homework is REQUIRED to be done in groups.
I hate it.
I already have dozens of engineering books picked up from used bookstores all over the state in my home, I know how to Google, and I've got friends I can ask the random question to. I'm also married and don't really like losing odd evenings and weekends to on-campus meetings with folks who can usually just stroll over from their dorm rooms and some of whom just wait on me to produce "the answer". Finally, many of these students are from all over the world and apparently it's quite acceptable in their cultures to do absolutely EVERYTHING together, including xerox their answers before handing them in.
Only one of my classes had a compromise: group work was OK but not required. I enjoyed that one.
The instructor has constructed the class in such a way so that the homework contributes to the educational process of the class,
Says who?
If this is true, then let the students copy all the homework they want. They'll fail the exams anyway.
And if it's not true, then let the students copy all the homework they want, because it is not their fault their professor sucks and wants to use their grade to force them to do homework that isn't teaching them anything.
Don't cheat on exams. Don't turn in papers you didn't write. But problem sets should be optional.
When I was in school, we'd get together in groups of 2-15 to do problem sets. Some kids figured most of it out and taught the other kids until they knew what was up too, and some other kids just showed up and leeched answers. The leechers failed the exams. This is no different than doing it on Facebook except Facebook is more efficient. The people who learn the material will pass and those who don't will fail.
It's not cheating until the people who don't learn the material start passing.
paintball
(At least in the schools I've been in, and at the risk of the "True Scotsman" fallacy, any school with common sense:)
An exam tests your ability to solve problems under controlled conditions, without outside assistance. Homework is an exercise, and even if your grade depends on the homework, what is graded is essentially effort and diligence (like grading attendance). If you are assigned homework that requires you not to research or ask for assistance, why the hell did the teacher not make this a test, so the terminology remains clear? Isn't that like prohibiting people from sharing lecture notes, since getting information from a lecture you didn't attend would be "cheating"?
Seriously, does anyone not research online for homework, even if they do recall the subject matter, simply to verify that they understood it? And compare their homework with other students to check for errors? Obviously, copying homework is stupid as you fail to learn anything, but discussing and explaining homework problems is not copying; it is education. That other little thing schools are supposed to do, besides their main purpose of evaluating performance.
I have been teaching undergraduate physics for about four years now. I specifically ask my students to work in groups of two to three, and to hand in their work as a group.
Besides saving the supervisors a load of time during correction, this encourages collaborative behaviour. Good students learn while explaining the subject to their peers. The slower students learn by having in effect a second, more hands-on lecture, by one of their peers. During my own undergraduate years, most of my professors did ask us to work in teams, and I always felt like I was learning much more, while working much more efficiently.
Of course, it is possible for people to "cheat" their way through this. So far, I haven't seen this happen too often, for two reasons: Peer pressure (if you don't contribute to the team, your mates won't want to work with you next term) and actual exam pressure (the final mark consists purely of the exam result, which is of course done by everyone individually). The examples I set are just (and I make that clear at the beginning of term) examples. They are an offer to you to learn something. You can choose not to take this offer up, it's your decision, you're an adult.
But is it collaborative if you can come in after the fact, see what other people have done and write down the answers yourself without any interaction with the original group. The people who gathered together to solve the problem initially was collaborative learning. Anyone after that is cheating.
I have all requisite degrees in the hard sciences (BS, MA, PhD)--all earned the hard way at some of the world's top universities by hard study and work. And I'll go toe-to-toe in publication record (quality+quantity, especially quality) with just about any one out there. But I think modern professors do not teach with students' learning in mind. It seems that the idea these days is to make it as hard on students as possible. I think this student's problems and the active discouraging of study groups does a huge disservice to education (we are defining education as the teaching of academic knowledge).
Professors, this note is for you: the goal is to get academic knowledge into the brain of your students--not to teach life's tough lessons. Let life do that and stop being so full of yourselves. If you want to make sure they are learning what you should be teaching them, give them tests. If they fail, re-evaluate how you teach. Your job is not to be a moralist, moralizer, philosopher (obvious exceptions noted), parent, policeman, or judge.
Again: knowledge => student brain. Focus on that.
Just callin' it like I see it.
Well give him a break, he is obligated to do that! The article states that Ryerson's academic misconduct policy defines misconduct as:
any deliberate activity to gain academic advantage, [...].
So clearly - since learning would give you an academic advantage - it would have to be treated as misconduct. Same for any study method which has the potential to be efficient.
Information is not the same as understanding. Besides that, there's something to be said for having someone else pay for some of the more expensive/dangerous equipment that you'll need to use, including, but not limited to, a wide variety of acids, oscilloscopes, software licenses, mass spectrometers, and all manner of other things. Even if you're the sort of person who can learn from the book without the teacher's help, the university still provides materials to you.
I see your informative link, and raise you a pithy comment.
Other methods also come to mind
The point is that the "rule" is so vague it can be applied to all methods of of legitimate study and should therefore be considered unenforceable due to its vagueness . I did RTFA and there is a statement that no solutions were "traded" just tips and pointers as to how to solve a problem. The fact that it is on Facebook as opposed to a study hall or anywhere else is irrelevant. What needs to be examined is what was exchanged, was it actually solutions, plagiarized works, advice on how to solve problems in general, study tips, whatever? As always, the devil is in the details and if you want an informed opinion you have to look at them
Even so it is a difficult judgement call since you can be having roadblock and have to post part or all of your solution to get help.
I.E. We know the answer is 4 but every time I add 2 + 2 I get 5, what am I doing wrong?
I also wonder about the "permanence" factor, if the problems all change every year then having "old" solutions available is a study method not a cheat. If the teacher is using the same stuff then they are lazy. The university I went to published the exams, with solutions, for several prior years as an aid to studying, it probably kept the profs honest as well. As far as I can see the decision point isn't what technology is used, its what information ( that's useful data ) was exchanged.
It's a cozy thought to think he'd be fine if the intentions of the group were more 'honest', but you can't really say he would, unless you're on a board or two at Ryerson.
The metastory is the important bit here; as we careen headfirst into the Web 2.0 world and our meatspace lives become increasingly public in the blue nowhere, how are the rules changing? In particular, is the academic world just a little slow in adjusting centuries of tradition to cope with the changing lives of students?
If my university couldn't offer me coursework better than copy-to-pass, I would probably withdraw. In this particular case I think Ryerson is justified because of the technicalities of the wording of the group. This poor shmoe probably never thought to change the greeting message on the group when he took over, so he's basically getting slammed over somebody else's words because he assumed their position when he took over their job of running this group.
Goddamn shame, really.
... except that Ryerson is in Toronto, Canada. Not the US.
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It's easy to catch the cheaters: if they cheat on homework, they have to cheat to pass on the exams as well.
With respect to a math and science class, homework isn't meant to be done in isolation, and it certainly isn't meant to be assigned the same ethically rigorous standards of conduct that tests demand. Fundamentally, the purpose of homework is to encourage collaboration, so that the students can collectively supplement the teachings in class. Doing homework together isn't cheating. Getting the answers from someone else for a piece of homework isn't cheating. Finding the questions online and copying the answers verbatim isn't cheating. It isn't even plagurism, because there are a limited number of ways of solving each problem, and there's no expectation that every individual turn in their assignment with a novel solution--well, unless nobody in class knows just what the hell is going on and everybody's trying to BS their way through the problem hoping to get a few lucky points.
On the other hand, the understanding (and purpose) of an exam is that of individual knowledge and achievement. And that's the time to catch the cheaters who copy homework from others verbatim.
Obviously, different standards apply to liberal arts classes, where exams do not usually produce meaningful information, and hence where there actually is an expectation of novelty for assignments. But the arts stand diametrically opposed to math and science, as unlike math and science, there are no "right" or "wrong" results, only defensible and indefensible results.
This chem prof must be one of those jackasses who, while still in school, did all of his work alone and refused to lend assistance to any of his fellow students, especially if there was no tutoring credit. And he's probably justifying his own selfishness by imposing the same standards that he idealized as a student upon his students.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."