Me and some friends are doing a similar study style thing for physics (Please note that I’m in a different country and in no way connected to this). The difference is that we all meet personally in a library and work together on how to work out questions and syllabus information.

The issue is that the kid obviously meant, is not provide simple answers, but to provide the method you used to GET your answers to aid those who are lost.

After all if you are caught on an assignment you are allowed to contact your teacher to ask for aid aren’t you? Since they are tutoring you it would make sense, wouldn’t it?

Isn’t this same?

Then again I am doing a different type of course to the kid so I wouldn’t really know for sure. He may be judged a different way to me.

From a different perspective, the students who posted answers may believe that they are simply providing tutorials for future students to aid them in their studies.

If a student read the notes, then they are getting a second opinion, and isn’t that what your meant to do when getting information (fact check sources against multiple sources).

I guess the real question is:
What constitutes bulling?

Since I’m in Australia the Board of Studies provides all students with a clear workbook detailing cheating and it basically says that it is wrong to bring notes into an exam, and it is wrong to plagiarize work. It doesn’t say anything about being helped, or helping others, in assignments.

If the issue was checked through the methods here the only issue would be if his work somehow resembled the work of another (another student, off a website or out of a book, etc…)

BTW Darran: there is chance he wanted people to provide the method of the solutions, not the solutions themselves. I guess if he was getting actual solutions it could be a problem.
Still he stuffed up.

So let this be a note for everyone:

He should have said ‘methods for studying with practice questions that bear a striking resemblance to actual assignments’ not ‘solutions’

Mind you, I may doing similar work to him, but I am doing it in the high school of a different country (we go up to years 11 and 12, and, in the last two years, the way the school works changes and you can be expelled if you cheat, or don’t hand in assignments, et cetera).

His rules may be completely different, of course. If so they may need to be reviewed to avoid mix ups like this occurring.

Is it OUR fault that schools are so antiquated they don’t understand that Facebook is like a virtual study hall or dorm room or any other place we would all normally study?

Don’t let Chris take the fall on his own.

Go to www.ChrisDidntCheat.com and buy something from the CafePress store. The money will be donated to Chris. He can either use it for legal expenses or for a round of beers (which I think we can all agree he’ll need during/after this debacle).

Spread the world.

www.ChrisDidntCheat.com

If the point of the group was solely to post answers for other people to copy and hand in then sure it sounds like cheating.

But if the solutions were there to help foster learning then the group should be applauded.

The hard part in making the determination is it really depends more on the person using the information than the person posting it. If you’ve struggled with a problem seeing the solution can be enlightening. If you never attempted to work on the problem then seeing the solution falls more into the cheating category.

In general, if assignments are individually (not group) graded, students are expected to do their own work. Flagrant sharing of solutions is cheating … and every student knows the potential penalty for cheating is expulsion (the academic equivalent of the death penalty).

That said, this could have played out differently as follows:

1) Professor warns class not to share solutions (this might have already happened, we don’t know).

2) Professor privately keeps track of students sharing solutions (kids tend to use their real names on Facebook).

3) Come final exams, professor lets those student who have violated (1) that their exam will constitute 100% of the final grade.

However, the medium in this instance is different from a classroom, or a study hall, or your buddies’ basement apartment. And that is all that is different. Using the argument that this group was specifically set up as a repository for swapped questions is really beside the point. For that is what study groups do; they are a gathering place for the dissemination of knowledge in a variety of forms and guises. Those who simply copy the answers will be ferreted out in the end if the course is assessed properly. All that this does, really, is to illustrate the lack of understanding of the medium on the part of a self-righteous Prof.

Where do you draw the line?

The fact you find your answer on Wikipedia, rather than an academic book from the library doesn’t mean you’ve cheated. You have to be careful when using the internet as a resource and you need to validate your findings, but as exploratory research tools its as good as it gets.

It sure was harder to cheat in my day