Chris Avenir, a freshman at Ryerson University in Toronto, needed help with a chemistry class. He wasn’t alone: the Facebook study group he joined eventually had 146 other members, all helping one another with problems assigned in class. The online exchange was comparable to study groups meeting in college dorms and libraries everywhere. Avenir eventually became an administrator for the site, and things went well enough that he finished the class with a B.

Over the holiday break, however, the professor discovered the site, changed Avenir’s grade to an F, charged him with 147 counts of academic misconduct, and recommended that he be expelled. The professor says that Avenir cheated.

Although 146 other students also participated on the site, only Avenir is in trouble for this. On Tuesday he is to appear before the engineering faculty appeals committee to plead his case.

According to the Toronto Star, the questions were worth 10% of a student’s grade in the course, and “the professor [had] stipulated the online homework questions were to be done independently” — even assigning different questions to different students to discourage collaboration.

“We are not a bunch of old farts who are afraid of technology,” stated James Norrie, director of the Toronto university’s School of Information Technology. “The [academic honor] code is clear that someone who enables others to cheat will receive a severe penalty.”

But is an online study group cheating? By all accounts, Avenir and others limited their help to hints and reminders about process. “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,” Avenir said.

What’s so troubling about this is that they have decided to throw the book at one student — a guy who didn’t even start the study group — and let the other 146 students off the hook completely.

Facebook is getting the press, but it’s not the issue. Either 147 people violated the honor code, or no one did.

Posted Mon, 10 Mar 2008 00:01:12 and filed under Classroom practice, Teaching, Web 2.0, Technology. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.