A Ryerson University engineering student punished for his Facebook study group has started a $10-million class-action lawsuit against the Toronto institution.
Chris Avenir faced 147 counts of academic misconduct two years ago for his Facebook group, which let engineering students “discuss/post solutions” to homework problems. The course stipulated that students had to conduct independent work. Mr. Avenir faced expulsion, but a faculty committee ruled he should instead receive a zero for one assignment and a disciplinary note in his file.
A statement of claim filed on Mr. Avenir’s behalf says that students enrolled at Ryerson have been denied the right to have a lawyer present at disciplinary hearings. According to the document, the university violated its policy requiring that all hearings comply with the Statutory Powers Procedure Act, which guarantees a right to legal counsel. The policy states that all its Senate hearings must “be conducted in a manner consistent with” the act.
In a Toronto Star article published March 18, the university’s general counsel said the institution planned to defend itself against the allegations.
“We have lots of confidence in our academic integrity policies,” Julia Hanigsberg said. Of the more than 600 misconduct cases at Ryerson between 2007 and 2009, Ms. Hanigsberg said, only a fraction reached the Senate.
Mr. Avenir has 90 days from when the lawsuit was filed — on February 24 — to file a request that the Ontario Superior Court of Justice proceed with the case. If approved, the class-action suit would automatically include all students who passed through the disciplinary process on or after March 4, 2003, when the university approved the policy. Those students would then have the right to opt out of the lawsuit, and any awarded amount would be split evenly among the defendants.
Mr. Avenir’s lawyer, John J. Adair, declined to comment further on the case.
20 Responses to Student Punished for Facebook Group Starts $10-Million Lawsuit
tskochanski - March 22, 2010 at 4:46 pm
Wow, I am currently running a Google group for a one year game theory course. All we do is discuss homework problems. Some people have posted their full solutions! Someone else started the group and i took over when she dropped after the first term. The group was announced in class during the first term. I assumed the instructor was aware of and supported the idea but now I don’t know. I wonder if the instructor involved stipulated no study groups or discussion of homeworks at all or if he just got a pile of identical HW’s at the end of the term and decided to pursue it as a plagiarism type of case.
musicologyman - March 22, 2010 at 5:10 pm
I hope he has a good attorney, because he’s going to need to live on that $10 million. If he loses, I don’t know who’s going to hire him.
stevefoerster - March 22, 2010 at 5:15 pm
musicologyman, I actually might. They guy certainly has initiative, and in the real world, it’s not just about what you have memorized for the test. In business, traits like being able to make innovative use of available resources and ability to collaborate with others makes a difference. This kid seems to have those traits.
pfarber1950 - March 22, 2010 at 5:32 pm
@stevefoerster would you feel the same way if he was discussing your trade secrets with your competitors on facebook?
damonblue - March 22, 2010 at 5:45 pm
Yo, Ryerson University! Y’all got an education program there? If so, you might want to consult folks who have actually studied learning theory. Here’s a hint: read up on Vygotsky, Bruner or Wenger. Student learn from one another. Students are not cheating if they are working in groups, learning from one another. Vygotsky would call this the “zone of proximal development.” The fact that students can gather in groups on-line, asynchronously in Facebook, GoogleGroups, on a Wiki, etc, makes not difference.Steveforester’s comment about collboration is right on!
rlechten - March 22, 2010 at 6:15 pm
damonblue:You assume that everyone visiting the group was contributing to the group. And even if they were, there are many ways to work as a well functioning group that learns together while breaking laws and rules governing society. It’s not like cheating is suddenly OK when it follows learning theory. I certainly don’t want an engineer building a bridge I drive over that got their homework questions answered by looking at a facebook group. In education we seek to harness principles of learning to maximize student learning, not use them to excuse cheating. You may want to brush up on your ethical principles theory, Kitchner might be a good place to start.
dr_pdg - March 22, 2010 at 8:47 pm
I’m with Damonblue and Steveforester on this one…… I run blended learning programs for adult learners and a major part of my courses come from the students interacting on projects and I require that they post these projects on their blogs….To address the concerns raised by rlecthen and pfarber, in my courses, I include projects on ethics and especially in not posting proprietary or confidential information on their blog postings.BR,Dr. PDG, Jakartahttp://www.build-project-management-competency.com
sdauskurdas - March 22, 2010 at 9:36 pm
rlechten – no one builds a bridge alone. And this is no different than any other study group we had in the library in the 1980s, just bigger and more accessible. And if the students don’t learn the information, they’ll flunk the tests anyhow. But in life, and in engineering, there is plenty of room both for the folks who figure out the answers and the folks who put those answers to good use.After all, Kitchner came up with the theory…but you used it. Does that make you a cheater?
kphunt - March 22, 2010 at 10:33 pm
All of you who disagreed with rlechten, go back and read r.’s comment. There is a mistake (actually a mis-statement)in the comment but it is not that groups working together cannot facilitate finding solutions or learning. Steveforester, do you want to hire someone who’ll show initiative in making it appear he’s done his job when he hasn’t? Damonblue, are you aware that learning theory also says that those who actively process the material they are learning learn it better? In fact, that is one of the elements operating in *successful* group cooperation. If a study group works on reviewing the course material and on practice problems with everyone maximally involved, that’s one thing. Simply copying solutions is another. Did you see the recent report on a study in which students who cheated on online assignments were much more likely to fail the course? Confirms what you said, sdauskurdas. But some cheaters do slip through, and I don’t want them working on any bridge I have to cross, whether they do it by themselves or in a group. That’s regardless of whether they came up with the original answers themselves — I still want them to know how to properly apply those answers.
lee77 - March 23, 2010 at 7:13 am
RE: recent report on student cheaters – see http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/18/cheaters-lose-mit-profess_n_503741.html for one story.
fcslchron - March 23, 2010 at 7:55 am
Learning theories aside, the course stipulated that students must conduct independant work. Operating a Facebook group where students can post solutions is not independent work. Using Facebook for collaborative learning is innovative, but it was against course policy and he got caught. I just hope everyone who posted a solution to the group was also disciplined. RSDisclaimer: This is an intitutional account and the views expressed are those of an individual and not the institution as a whole.
tridaddy - March 23, 2010 at 9:07 am
Sidenote: Picking out engineering as an example was unfortunately a poor example in this case. A student may obtain an engineering degree but must score a particular percentage on a “entry” exam into the profession. In addition, a engineer with at least 3 to 5 years of experience and who has passed and received the P.E. would have to sign off on the plans of any other engineer who is not a P.E. There are several checks along the way to ensure that the work of the engineer is up to code (or at least should be up to code).
panacea - March 23, 2010 at 10:17 am
Whenever you have group work, you are going to have some people who contribute, and some who don’t.The issues raised in this case, and in the recent Chronicle article on cheating on online assignments, are ones my nursing program has struggled with as long as I’ve been teaching here. One of the potential solutions we’re considering is including more performance based testing via simulation to force them to demonstrate their knowledge and skills.Too often, I find students regard homework and out of class assignments as hoops they must jump through rather than tools for learning. They want me to spoon feed them the answers to test questions in the classroom (I’ve actually had students attempt to weasel answers to potential questions out of me, or get me to teach to the test). They don’t want to think, they want to parrot.Collaborative learning is great, and I’m all for it in the right circumstances. But students also have to learn to do their own work, and to understand that it is how they practice what they are doing in class. However, part of the problem with this particular case is that this generation is used to doing everyline online, and used to working in collaboration with peers.Mr. Avenir got a fair ruling (expulsion would have been too harsh, I think), and he should have shut up and taken his lumps since he did violate course rules, even if he really meant no harm.
emmadw - March 23, 2010 at 11:30 am
I thought at the time that all the students had a different question anyway (albeit on the same theme), and also that it was a fairly small % of the overall grade. In previous years, students could have worked together & submitted their answers, but there wasn’t the audit trail of who said what. At least with a facebook group – and different questions for each student, they all had the opportunity to see the working out (beit correct or incorrect) – and hopefully gain something. If they all had the same questions & the coursework was a much higher %, then I’d agree with a lot of the comments in this thread (though also argue that he should have set an exam in the first place, not coursework). However, given the small % & the fact students *will* compare answers, no matter what you tell them, then I think that the expulsion was a little excessive.
emmadw - March 23, 2010 at 11:33 am
Oops… just seen that the expulsion was rescinded in the end. But you get the drift of what I’m thinking!
bmljenny - March 23, 2010 at 12:49 pm
He claimed after getting in trouble that it was a nice, collegial study group, but the invitation to join the Facebook group said this: “Please input your solutions if they are not already posted.” (Source: Toronto Star 3/6/08) So it may have ended up as a study group, but doesn’t that read like it was intended to support cheating on the assignments?
11299051 - March 23, 2010 at 3:37 pm
I teach online and my students also use social networks to study and problem-solve together. To keep the appearance and reality of cheating to a minimum each lesson features practice problems such as might be on the exams scattered throughout the course. I select when exams happen, outside the final paper, of course. The actual exam questions outnumber the students and are randomly assigned with complete responses due to me in a few days. I find this works well. Nothing is foolproof. With today’s technology students can cheat in so many ways not involving facebook. When I attended college they cheated, too, even without facebook.
frtop45 - March 23, 2010 at 5:19 pm
I think people are missing the point of the lawsuit. He isn’t disputing the charges, he is seeking $10 mil in damages because *he couldn’t have a lawyer present at the disciplinary hearing.*What this case is going to boil down to is whether Ryerson really does state that students can have legal counsel present at hearings, whether it be explicitly or implicitly. And if they do, is it worth $10 mil in damages?I entirely agree that what this student did should be construed as cheating and that his punishment was appropriate. I haven’t heard of ANY private institution permitting students to have legal counsel present at disciplinary hearings (because-hello!-it’s not a trial), so it will be interesting to see how this turns out.
musicologyman - March 23, 2010 at 7:48 pm
@stevefoerster: I’d certainly agree that the guy has initiative, but his willingness to file a $10 million suit brans him as a troublemaker. I know that the very successful real-world company that I work for wouldn’t hire someone like that.
jacquie427 - March 25, 2010 at 6:50 am
The lawsuit is not reported as connected to the misuse or misunderstanding about collaboration work. It is connected to lack of legal representation. It’s real easy and once again inaccurate to make this appear to be a web tool problem – Facebook as a target word for legal procedure issue of a student’s rights. Would have appreciated that the headline connected the real issue with the lawsuit and not the buzz word of Facebook reference.