Being a student, I must admit to having some bias towards Chris Avenir. I find that his punishment was not so deserved and is still a bit severe for his offence.
Chris Avenir established a facebook study group to help students in a certain course. When school officials discovered this, they made claims that students were exchaning answers and solutions to the assignments given in that course and it was against the code. Chris was charged with 146 misdemeanors, the number of students he was helping.
According to CTV News, Chris is supposed to recieve a ZERO for every assignment that was discussed in the Facebook study group he established. This means that his running average will end up being a 20 percent! Although its definitely better than expulsion or being kicked out of the course completely, I still find it irrational. I disagree with their decision and say that this online tutoring program is exactly the same as a tutoring program that would take place in the library. It is more likely that students would pass off assignments to each other and cheat off each other when they are studying together in person than it would be on a website where activities can easily be tracked.
We don't know Chris Avenir's intentions when he made the study group. Maybe he WAS trying to cheat and get answers from other students, but if this was the case, I don't think there's enough evidence to support the idea of plagiarism. I think that the Ryerson officials should take into consideration that this student was only trying to help other students by making it more accesible to them to find help. It's not like they WANT their students to fail, or do they?
And on the topic of Facebook being used as an educational tool, as much as I'd like help to be more accesible, I think Facebook is meant to be a place for social matters. It just seems really odd and silly to try to have study groups on Facebook where messages can often be misintrepreted, take Chris Avenirs situation for example. People already find that Facebook consumes their time as they try to keep up with their social life, but now it offers help in school? What's up with that?
But, I guess that's just in my opinion :)
