Shawn Allenby :: Blog :: The "Facebook" Cheats...The Class of the Establishment vs. New Collaboration

March 19, 2008

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Shawn Allenby

The "Facebook" Cheats...The Class of the Establishment vs. New Collaboration

It was interesting reading the article in the Globe yesterday about the student using Facebook to not work independantly (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080318.wfacebook0).  It was very interesting to see the reaction of his professor and the outpooring of reaction to support his facebook community that was supposedly a "study group". 

This type of issue is going to be happening more and more frequently with students understanding and using social networking sites such as Facebook to their advantage.  It will not be very long, and in fact I am sure it is happening in K-12 without folks even knowing, until we are faced with similar dilemmas in K-12.

Weather we like it or not educators are going to move, slowly maybe at first, but quicker as these technologies get more pervasive, into being faciliators of learning instead of those who impart learning.  Being a big believer in Project Based Learning, I believe that this can be a good thing, but we also need to ensure that students can learn in a multitude of ways including  lecture, experiential, project-based, discovery to name a few.

It will be interesting to see how the first school board in Ontario deals with a similar case to this Ryerson student...it really is only a matter of time!

  

Keywords: Cheating, Facebook, Project based learning, Ryerson

Posted by Shawn Allenby |

Comments

  1. I responded to a "Family Study Group" initiated by a relative on my Facebook account which asked the question, "Out or In??" as follows:

    "Apparently the instructions were that the assignment be done individually. Thus there was an assessible component to the assignment, and so self-styled group-work contravened the intent.

    However one could argue that this was a computer engineering student, collaboratively working on-line to solve a problem. How is that not the essence of a 21st Century learner using Web 2.0 tools? How pedagogically sound is the on-line part of the course that fails to incorporate, or even recognize, any kind of networking?

    I'm glad for the student, and for Ryerson, that they chose wisely.

    Barbara McLaughlinBarbara McLaughlin on Wednesday, 19 March 2008, 18:25 EDT # |

  2. Actually,  I think their choice was only partly wise.  They didn't expel the student (that would have caused problems politically for the university).  However, they assigned the student a 0 on all the assignments that were connected with this Facebook group.  So they saved face but still punished the student for collaborating.

     

    Rob De LorenzoRob De Lorenzo on Thursday, 20 March 2008, 17:08 EDT # |

  3. I think the issue was more systemic, this prof insisted on the work being independant, but may be unaware of the effective collaboration tools that exist using the internet.  This can definitely be said about K-12 as a whole, with little pockets of folks who see this type of collaobration coming.  In the very near future we will be seeing something similar coming out from K-12 about a very similar type of collaboration, it will be interesting to see how the "establishment" views this type of collaboration, especially if the work was meant to be "independant".

    Shawn AllenbyShawn Allenby on Tuesday, 25 March 2008, 10:27 EDT # |

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