Student's Facebook Study Group Falls Foul With Academics

Here's an interesting dilema reported by the Totonto Financial Post:

"Students at Ryerson University in Toronto were outraged when first-year student Chris Avenir was accused of cheating for running an online chemistry study group on Facebook.

More than 140 Generation Yers had joined the group to ask questions about homework assignments and simply could not understand why school administrators had a problem with that. Their only concern was for the group's administrator, who faced expulsion. The 18-year-old denied the academic misconduct allegation and took his fight before the engineering faculty's appeals committee, telling the media "this isn't any different from any library study group or peer tutoring."

But Ryerson's administration thought otherwise. Academic integrity was at stake, they said, and any threat to it -- even in the form of online tools -- is a risk that must be addressed and rightfully preserved.

In the end, the appeals committee ruled against expulsion but gave the student a zero on the assignments that were discussed on Facebook. But the story didn't end there. Instead, it has sparked a debate on the differences between Baby Boomer and Gen-Yers brains and the way they interact in the workplace."

Mmmm. So what are we to make of this? What is the difference between discussing coursework over the table at lunch - or on Facebook?