Learning in the present tense

By Barbara Fister

WHEN I HEARD that a student was threatened with expulsion for his involvement in a Facebook-based study group, I wondered "What would John Dewey make of this?"

Chris Avenir, a first-year engineering student at Ryerson University in Toronto, joined a study group that happened to meet in a more public place than the library: They got together to work on chemistry problems through Facebook. Their professor, who had told students to do their homework independently, found the online group, changed Avenir's grade to an F and recommended he be expelled. After weighing 147 charges made against the student (one for being the group administrator, and 146 for every member of the group, none of whom were disciplined) a faculty committee took a less punitive view and simply gave the student zero points for the assignment.

Because the incident involved Facebook, it hit the news, with stories appearing in major Canadian dailies. It also became a Web event, with a Facebook support group, photos on Flickr, and hundreds of blog posts. You can even buy the T-shirt. Had the professor learned that Avenir organized meetings in the library to discuss homework problems, he could have taken the same action, but the study group would have been harder to document, and it wouldn't have become a cause célèbre.

It is easy to frame this controversy in terms of technology's dangers—or to blame it on the fuddy-duddies who haven't embraced technology's potential. The issue, though, is not technological, it's pedagogical: What are the best conditions for student learning? And how can we know if a particular student has learned? In this case, the second question trumped the first. The professor assessed students' learning by requiring them to work alone. That way, he could tell—past tense—if they had learned.

But is that the best way to learn in the present tense?

John Dewey argued that good learning was experiential and social, not individualistic and competitive. The National Survey on Student Engagement has found that cooperative learning correlates with academic success. NSSE's 2007 annual report described how a participating university was addressing low engagement by facilitating student-initiated online study groups. Ryerson University's own Academic Integrity Web site suggests students who might be tempted to cheat should instead consider "meeting regularly in a study group to discuss lecture material or readings, practice and compare review questions, or figure out difficult problems."

In a sense, the students in the Facebook group were engaging in what we know are effective practices. But because they violated the professor's instructions&mdashin a documentable way—they paid a price. The study group no longer exists.

We send mixed messages. You must base your claims on documented sources—but your ideas should be original. Cite everything you use—but for God's sake, don't put Wikipedia in your bibliography. You should take advantage of available help—but the work you hand in must be yours alone. We stand on the shoulders of giants. You're on your own.

This controversy and others like it have a chilling effect. We need to do a better job of defining for students what cheating is—while making it clear that knowledge itself is a social network. We must find ways to assess an individual's learning without stifling it. Otherwise, the future will be tense, indeed.