Facebook or coffee shop? What’s the diff?
p2pnet news | Freedom:- The plight of Canadian student Chris Avenir continues to generate headlines.
He was threatened with being expelled from Toronto’s Ryerson University for academic misconduct after running a Facebook study group.
But what’s the difference, “between a group of students brainstorming chemistry problems around a table in a library or a coffee shop, and the same group brainstorming online via Facebook?” – wonders the Montreal Gazette, quoted by the Vancouver Sun.
Avenir, in his first year of a computer engineering degree, “was the administrator of a virtual study group called Dungeons/Mastering Chemistry Solutions,” says the story, going on >>>
“Dungeons” is the name of a basement study room used by 146 of Avenir’s fellow engineering students for an online discussion of approaches to homework problems. The homework questions counted for 10 per cent of the students’ overall mark in the course. Because the mark is supposed to reflect each student’s work — and individual work alone — university officials view the help provided by other students on Facebook as a form of cheating.
“It is our job to protect academic integrity from any threat,” Ryerson spokesperson James Norrie told CBC News. “And if that threat comes from new online tools, we have a responsibility as academics to understand the risks, to assess those risks and threats, and to educate people about how to avoid misconduct.”
But, “Avenir mounted a plausible defence, telling the Toronto Star that ‘if this kind of help is cheating, then so is tutoring and all the mentoring programs the university runs and the discussions we do in tutorials’.”
Adds the Montreal Gazette:
“Deliberate duplication of work is an academic offence, no question. But it seems in this case that the venue, Facebook, might have given rise to the accusation. Unless the university finds actual evidence of cheating, it is wrong to suspend or expel a student who is doing virtually what students have done on paper or in discussions for years.
“At the very least, the university should set out in unambiguous language where, in its view, discussion groups end and cheating begins.”
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Also See:
academic misconduct – No regrets from ‘Facebook’ student Avenir, March 12, 2008
Vancouver Sun – Brainstorming on Facebook no different than in a library, March 14, 2008
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March 15th, 2008 at 10:18 am
The Internet is what today’s students are using to enhance their education now – it is called collaborative learning.
We need more of our schools to accept this and work with it.