When Avenir started his Facebook group for students in a chemistry course to exchange tips on homework questions, he had no idea that he’d be facing academic expulsion. Based on the study room that Ryerson engineering students call The Dungeon, Dungeons/Mastering Chemistry Solutions was set up at Facebook to help with homework questions. Those questions count for 10 per cent of a student’s mark in the course.
The 18-year-old will learn his fate on those charges today. He faces a total of 146 cheating charges, one for each of the other students that were a member of the group. If he loses today he can appeal his case to the university’s senate.
Students at Ryerson are shocked, according to Kim Neale,26, the student union’s advocacy co-ordinator representing Avenir today.
“All these students are scared s—less now about using Facebook to talk about schoolwork, when actually it’s no different than any study group working together on homework in a library,” said Neale.
“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.
Officials at Ryerson are not commenting until the case has been taken care of.
Avenir feels that he was the only one charged because he is the administrator of the group that quickly grew last year when their professor would give students questions that they were to work online.
“So we each would be given chemistry questions and if we were having trouble, we’d post the question and say: `Does anyone get how to do this one? I didn’t get it right and I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.’ Exactly what we would say to each other if we were sitting in the Dungeon,” said Avenir yesterday.
He says the stress of his charges has affected his midterm exam results. He has been allowed to continue his studies while the case is pending.
The question here is how much difference is the group than student tutoring. The university offers mentoring programs that feature tutorials. The Facebook account appears to have been taken offline as of yesterday although it ceased activity when the course ended in December.
Avenir earned a B in the class but that was changed to an F when the professor found the Facebook group over the holidays. The professor than reported the incident to the school’s student conduct officer and recommended Avenir to be expelled.
Because of miscommunication Avenir missed two meetings to discuss the matter. Tuesday’s hearing was arranged so that the student would be able to state his case against the expulsion. Ryerson does not have to do this.
The professor had told the class to work on the homework independently but it’s a tradition at Ryerson for students in heavy programs to brainstorm homework in groups.
There is no evidence that students were completing solutions for each other and each student had different questions to prevent cheating. What the evidence does show is that the students used the group to brainstorm about techniques in answering the questions.
“They’d say to each other stuff like … `Remember what to do when you have positive cations (a type of positively charged ion)’ and that sort of thing,” she said.
But Neale admitted the invitation to the Facebook group may have been what landed them in trouble. It read: “If you request to join, please use the forms to discuss/post solutions to the chemistry assignments. Please input your solutions if they are not already posted.”
Still, said Neale, “no one did post a full final solution. It was more the back and forth that you get in any study group.”
Does this type of group involvement change the cheating rules? How different is it than the study groups that students have long sat in?
What’s your take on this issue?
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
You must be logged in to post a comment.