Student faces Facebook consequences

Avenir said he joined the Facebook group last fall to get help with some of the questions the professor would give students to do online. As the network grew, he took over as its administrator, which is why he believes he alone has been charged.

"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 is still attending classes pending his hearing but admits the stress of the accusations is affecting his midterm exam results.

"But 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," he said.

This is silly. The university should instead invest its resources on educating faculty about the collaborative learning strategies of today's students, who live in a a very different environment and have different strengths and weaknesses than undergraduates of previous generations. Does Avenir's university have an online tutoring center staffed by grad students who are available to answer questions on weekends and evenings, when undergraduates are likely to be doing their work?

I am regularly amazed at the hive culture students create for themselves, but I've been impressed at the extent to which students will slug away at an exercise if they clearly understand how it will benefit them.