A Canadian philosophy prof has penalized a dozen students for running a Facebook group where they discussed answers to assignments and the take-home exam. Shockingly she thought students actually abide by the "unless stated otherwise assignments must be done independently" clause most Universities include in their student guidance.
Hilariously she first caught on to the Facebook group because she noted fewer student than usual were sitting in the philosophy room of the library. Somehow not realizing that the conversations now happening on FB are exactly the same as those that used to happen in the library study rooms. The only difference is that now the permanent record of the conversations are just hidden behind a FB group admin instead of them falling silent whenever the prof walks by in the library.
The solution this prof has come up with is a student contract she will go through with them at the start of term which will clearly state such behaviour is not appropriate and to institute an in-class exam rather than a take-home one. This second measure will of course be effective because few students are intelligent enough to figure out how to cheat during an exam without getting caught but also stupid enough to need to. But she is a fool if she thinks any amount of moralizing will stop students from collaborating on assignments and homework; because for many collaboration isn't cheating it is a good way to learn.
Collaboration is different from other forms of cheating such as plagiarism, or buying essays (there are now many online businesses boasting they will do your assignments for you to an A-grade standard for a price). When collaborating none of the students involved know the correct answer for sure, often in online collaboration you don't even know whether the students answering your question are the good students or not. So students still have to think through the logic of the answers their collaborators get to judge whether they think that is indeed the correct answer or not. This problem is accentuated by the fact that generally the top students in the class will not participate in the collaboration since they will have finished the assignment much more quickly by themselves and be confident they have the correct answers thus gain nothing by collaborating with others. Thus unauthorized collaboration does not ensure they will arrive at the right answer, occasionally such groups will actually converge on an incorrect answer based on flawed information or reasoning.
So unlike other forms of cheating unauthorized collaboration does not let students get the right answers without understanding where those answers come from thus the students are actually learning the material; which is just as well since it is impossible for professors to prevent it from happening.
