Collaborate on Facebook = Fail?
Just came across this article via slashdot, apparently a student at Ryerson University in Canada is facing academic charges for being the admin of a chemistry study group on facebook.
The computer engineering student has been charged with one count of academic misconduct for helping run the group ? called Dungeons/Mastering Chemistry Solutions after the popular Ryerson basement study room engineering students dub The Dungeon ? and another 146 counts, one for each classmate who used the site.
The academic misconduct policy in question:
…any deliberate activity to gain academic advantage, including actions that have a negative effect on the integrity of the learning environment.
The policy itself is so poorly worded that you could write a whole article about that, but that is beside the point here. What is Ryerson hoping to prove here? That if you’re going to work together with your peers, don’t document it online where other people can get to it?
We’ve been told as we’ve gone through grade school and college, “you need to work in groups, that’s how things work in the real world.” Apparently, Ryerson doesn’t think that in the “real world” that teams don’t document discussions in email, wikis, groupware like Sharepoint.
Generation Y thrives on two (of many) things, teamwork/consensus and communicating our way. Just on the face of things, Ryerson’s choice to attack this student is an affront to those ideals, the only difference between this online study group and one conducted in person, is that the results are archived (and searchable!) for other people to go through. (Sidenote: Isn’t this the sort of thing the internet was intended for? Freeing information for everyone to have)
Read the discussion on slashdot for more thoughts on this story or this post on Deep Jive Interests.
Where do you fall on this? Do you think Chris Avenir is getting what’s coming to him? Do you think that he needs to get an LCD to replace his CRT (look at the news article again)? Do you or have you collaborated on facebook or anything of the sort? Do you think that we should annex Canada, so we can end their silliness (and replace it with good old American as apple pie silliness)?
March 7th, 2008 at 9:49 am
Thanks for throwing me this article in Twitter. It is very interesting. It shows new media vs. old media in a huge spotlight. I think the academics are falling behind as to how students conduct work.
In college a few years back, nearly all of my tests and quizzes were taken online. I had a group of classmates and we would all the tests together. It was a collaborative learning and working experience. Not saying that this was the right thing to do, but it was a smart thing to do.
As I have moved into real world working, everything that I have done has been because of a team. Team brainstorming, team projects and bonuses. If Facebook is where the team meets, then it is no different than meeting in the library (or Dungeon), having a teleconference or chatting in IM.
It will be interesting to see if Old Media can win this case. Unfortunately Old Media still has the money to pull something like this off.