Collaboration: Good or Bad?

IMHO collaboration is an essential part of study and of teaching. The teaching part is where I have concerns. All too often as teachers, particularly in western cultures we fail dismally! Yes I posted before that I was clearly told that I was a rotten teacher by a Professor from Tokyo Uni. He was right. We far too easily accept that the student has failed and seldom stop to check that we as the teacher have actually failed in our teaching methods..... Why did the student cheat? Because they chose not to learn? ....that's punishable!

Here's a model that I found worked very well to expand and draw great depth by collaboration: Collaborators are expected to list the group on the 1/ Joint paper a copy of which is attached to each of the groups 2/own paper on the homework. On the "Own Paper" each student identifies their colleagues and records their perception of each member's % contribution.

Now here's The Kicker: Grades for the particular task are awarded purely on the JOINT paper for the students in the group. The teacher's job is to identify the shortfall in understanding of the subject each student actually has and to apply appropriately altered teaching method to bring the lagging student up to speed quickly, based on the Own Paper and their perceptions % contribution allocation by the group. As a teacher, don't get suckered into setting groups to match potential contribution. You will only build super groups and failing groups. Your job it to get 100% A+ grades....then you are a good teacher, we already know you are clever and have the degrees, can you pass the knowledge on?

Why did the student cheat? Because perhaps the teacher failed to teach..... now that's the question we really have to deal with! If the teacher's doing their job, there's hardly a need/reason to cheat.

The ability of a student to do homework not only depend on the intelligence of the student but also on the family from which he/she comes from. In families where parents are not well educated student is left alone.In rich families they can arrange a private tutor. If parents are educated they can help the student. That means you can't judge a student by homework or even by a single exam at the end of the year.Students should do their exercises in school under the supervision of teacher who can assist them in difficult situations.Students should be given grades according to their class work and not by an exam. Most of the exams test the momory power and not the intelligence.Referring notes or textbooks should be allowed in exams and class work because once they go to work they can solve their problems by consulting others,which is the reality.

Working together is great - will help in the future most likely.

The old game of providing profs old tests etc for new classes is shyster and the kid should be kicked out of the university.

1) One of my MSCS classes was Software Engineering. The class was broken up into teams. Each team had the same application to develop. We had to decide who was doing which parts and how to coordinate the interfaces. I don't think it could have been done without collaboration.

2) If I have a problem doing a homework problem in, say, physics and I ask someone else to explain it to me, he/she might work thought the problem showing the process and steps. Since I can't forget what I have seen, anything I hand in will be, at least, a collaboration if not outright copying. I wouldn't call this cheating.

Let me a bit of a devil's advocate here.

Even though the OP is asking about collaboration, the article includes a reference to what one university is defining as cheating. In other words, the implication is that the necessary skills aren't being developed. Collaboration only has real meaning if all the participants have similar skill levels. By definition, students are reinventing wheels all the time as they learn. A team in industry is supposed to have some coordination and direction/guidance from a team leader to avoid everyone solving problems in an overlapping way. But you expect/hope that any one member of the team could write competent code for any problem/task assigned to him. If someone in college is actually cheating more than collaborating, he won't be up to this challenge. And furthermore, if s/he has cheated, they are likely do so on their resume also.

Honestly, what you have said is what the school is and what the university is and what the world is!

When kids learn collaboration,even after leaving the college they will make a united society with mutual benefits and reduce the world wide problems like poverty,racism,political killings etc If we can make English language as the official language of the world,remove visa system,have common currency,jobs to be advertised in internet,allowing religous freedom,have a common constitution for all the nations,allow freedom of speech/expresssion, uncensoring news ,destroy nuclear/chemical weapons,reduce expenditure on armed forces etc this world will become a very beautiful place to live

Of course having had many technical courses where they would try collaborations, I can tell you it is extremely hard to quantify the quality of effort and learning on the part of the student. It is extremely common for the more charismatic or attractive women to seek groups with the more intelligent men, and coat-tail. As they appear to be interacting with the group they appear to be adding to the quality of the effort. However, much like the internet, not all information is useful, and then the more qualified people are risking their own grades to help a struggling student who doesn't want to effort the task but rather have others explaining things and solving problems for them. For those of us who actually practice in professional business, we all recognize how annoying it is to get a marketing guy on a proposal with a who is really a salesman with a personal advancement agenda who knows nothing except catch phrases about the market sector, the technical aspects of the project, or the details about the prospective client. You spend so much time trying to explain things, rather than getting things accomplished. In many CSC course the homework (programming projects) is a kind of running depth test, and grades frequently depend highly on the assignments, since the students won't have much time in class for true involved test of depth of skills. Collaborative efforts are only of any value if the teams are composed of relatively equally qualified people with similar work efforts.

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