TechWag

Chris Avenir who is a student at Ryerson University is on the chopping block and facing expulsion for running an on line study group via Facebook. While it is not uncommon for students to be using technology that instructors do not know or understand, this is the first time that a Facebook study group has been put together where the leader of the group is looking at getting kicked out of school.

Yet students argue Facebook groups are simply the new study hall for the wired generation. Source: The Star

What looks like will actually get Chris expelled though is the wording used on the invitation and study group description.

But Neale admitted the invitation to the Facebook group may have been what landed them in trouble. It read: “If you request to join, please use the forms to discuss/post solutions to the chemistry assignments. Please input your solutions if they are not already posted.” Source: The Star

This is not the first time that wording has hung someone out to dry. One of the key reasons that the Kazza P2P system was found “infringing” was because of internal e-mails that showed in their marketing programs that they were pushing the infringement idea as marketing. There are other companies that have worked on the same concept in the P2P world that are also DOA because of the “inducement to infringe” issue.

While this might have worked out great if they stayed off line, no one would know or care, and it would have been more traditional, everyone on their own in a study hall, the school should be looking at what was actually posted in the room. Schools go to great lengths to prevent cheating, even down to altering the questions and making sure that everyone gets an individualized test at the onset of the testing.

Facebook study groups though turn the idea of a traditional study hall on their head and shakes out the establishment a bit. There probably was nothing wrong with the Facebook study hall at all, it was how it was marketed and approached. Schools are interesting, and while they have struggled to deal with the P2P generation, how they deal with the Internet MySpace Facebook Bebo generation should prove to be equally disruptive.

Tags: web 2.0, education, technology //