I know I am late to the party on this but the Ryerson Facebook guy was spared expulsion today.
I know this may be an unpopular opinion on the interweb but I think the guy deserved to be punished (expelled? Not sure. But punished in some way, which he was).
The common defence I have heard was that it was no different than a group of students getting together in the library to study. Yea but the problem wasn’t that students were studying together online, it was that students were encouraged to post their solutions online. On an assignment they were told to independently:
When the course’s professor – who had stipulated that work be done independently – found the site he gave Mr. Avenir a failing grade for the course and charged him with academic misconduct.
Something tells me if the professor happened across a group of students huddled in the library sharing answers he would have been equally upset – particularly if these students had found some way to give the answers to any student who happened by whether they were contributing or not.
Defenders of Web 2.0 and social media do themselves a serious disservice when they reactively jump to the defence of people like this guy. Just because it was done on Facebook doesn’t mean it is okay. The same rules apply.