The original story talked about how first-year computer science students are the most likely students to be caught cheating. The growing popularity and size of introductory computer-science classes, the ready temptation to copy and paste code, and automated software able to track cheating are all reasons why Intro C.S. classes have the highest concentration of cheating.

The nuance – and the controversy – derives from taking into account group work and collaboration. Some students submit the same or very similar code as their classmates because they’ve worked as a group to complete the assignment.

Does this group collaboration represent cheating? Or is it instead a valuable real-life experience in learning collaboration skills – skills used every day in a “real” job?

Both sides to this debate have valid points. What this debate really shows is that in a world of open-sourced knowledge and constant connectivity, educators face a formidable — but not insurmountable — challenge: They need to devise assessment methods (tests, homework, group activities) that align explicitly with the specific skills they desire to assess. And they must communicate the purpose of each assessment very clearly to students

It is hard to argue against students needing to know how to code themselves. Sure, students can ask others and use the internet to find many answers, but students in computer science — and in all fields — need to master the content knowledge of their domains. At the same time, it is also very true that in the workforce today collaboration is a key skill.

That’s why both sides of this debate have a point. And that’s why the burden in this scenario lies with educators to design different types of assessments that assess different skills.

For example, instead of using homework assignments to assess a student’s individual coding knowledge, C.S. professors can use in-class exams (with disabled internet access) to assess that. In turn, C.S. professors can assess collaboration by having students do group homework assignments; professors can implement 360 degree reviews among each group so students can rate each other, helping ensure all students contribute.

To teach in today’s classrooms, educators are challenged to think through all of the different types of skills they’re aiming to impart. Then, they bear the burden of articulating very clearly the skill being assessed and designing the best method of assessment for that skill. If the purpose of the assessment is made clear to students, and if the professor provides the right context for the assessment, then the burden gets placed back where it should be — on the student.

And the salient question in regard to cheating becomes “Did the students subvert the letter and/or spirit of the assessment through their actions?” When the letter and spirit of the assessment are made crystal clear to students, the answer to cheating or not also becomes much clearer.

One of the biggest blocks to understanding how education might look in the future is an invisible assumption that learning has to be boring and hard. Have you ever been on a sports team, or played with a band, or just geeked out about one of your favorite movies? If so, you know how fun it can really be to explore a shared interest with friends, even if there’s plenty of practice (drills) or research (IMDB, Wikipedia) along the way. Could technology help more of our learning feel like this by making it something we do with friends?

Although I titled my DIY U, the future of education I’m envisioning is not really about the mythical lone autodidact. It’s more about the potential for people to take advantage of the explosion of free and open educational resources on the web to learn together in communities, both outside of, and alongside, traditional institutions.

There are lots of good reasons to pay attention to the importance of people teaching each other.  John Seely Brown and Richard P. Adler, in their 2008 article “Minds on Fire: Open Education, the Web, and Learning 2.0,” cite research by Richard J. Light at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, who found that students’ ability to form and participate in small study groups influenced their success in college more than multiple other factors.

“Light discovered that one of the strongest determinants of students’ success in higher education—more important than the details of their instructors’ teaching styles—was their ability to form or participate in small study groups. Students who studied in groups, even only once a week, were more engaged in their studies, were better
prepared for class, and learned significantly more than students who worked on their own.”

Second is that emphasizing peer study is one way to address the most stubborn part of the cost spiral in higher ed. For example, many of the course redesigns done through the National Center for Academic Transformation use Undergraduate Learning Assistants–peer teachers–and increased use of group project work combined with software tools to take some of the pressure off instructors’ time.

But the most exciting reason to explore the role of communities in learning is that it may actually help us get smarter, faster, as a species. Think about times when you’ve gotten stuck on a fine point of some subject but haven’t known exactly who to call, or your teacher or parent’s explanation just wasn’t clearing things up for you? These days, when I need a stubborn question answered, I’ve gotten used to posting a status update to Facebook or Twitter and getting back amazingly good responses. I even used Twitter as my virtual writing group when I was working on DIY U. “Sitting down to write 500 words by 2pm” I’d post as a public commitment and people would cheer me on. I also got  help & feedback on building my website, finding good books and articles to read, and formatting my book.

The more access we have to others’ relevant knowledge and expertise, the more quickly and thoroughly we can learn. That’s why a whole group of educational innovators are excited about the possiblity of distributed learning–taking place across large networks over the Internet.

In 2008 and 2009 George Siemens and Stephen Downes taught the course Connectivism and Collective Knowledge, on this very topic, as a “Massively Open Online Course.”  They had thousands of students all around the world following along through blogs, wikis, Elluminate, Moodle, PageFlakes, Second Life, UStream,  and probably more.

“We took the role of a teacher and tried to fragment it so students would play teachers to each other,” Siemens told me. “The best person to teach you is someone who’s just mastered it–that’s fairly well established. This is one way the cost of the educator can be dispersed. Given the abundance of information and given the connective and social opportunities around technology, perhaps the teacher’s role is one of multiple nodes amid an overall network.”

In other words, instead of thinking of social networking as the ultimate distraction from classes, maybe it’s time to think of it as your best learning resource.

As an added bonus to our readers, we’d like to bring as many of you into the conversation as possible, and Anya has graciously offered to provide a signed copy of her book to folks who engage in the conversation here by posting their comments about her essay.  We’ll be giving away up to five signed copies of her book!

It’s like trying to hold back the tide.  Just look at how corporations have reacted to the prevalence of social networking – by trying to ban it.  Carol Rozwell of Gartner summed this up well:  ”Banning access to social media from the corporate network is futile, the world we live in is digitally enabled and socially connected.”

This is highly relevant to the changing landscape of education, and eloquently articulated by Prof. David Wiley in a video at the TED conference in New York on March 6, titled: “Open Education and the Future.”

His talk focused on how critical the act of sharing is to education and learning;  he described education as ”a relationship of sharing, between two or more people.”  Much of his talk was from the perspective of an educator, and tries to remind his audience that using technology to limit the sharing of information is fundamentally at odds with the fundamentals of education.

Sharing as the critical connective tissue in learning is scary to many, precisely because students are doing the sharing, and they’re the most digitally enabled and socially connected individuals, ever.  Students are redefining how sharing takes place, and where it takes place.

Prof. Wiley makes the analogy to the Reformation, a time when a powerful new technology introduced change so significant, so democratizing that huge demand was also unleashed.  This demand provoked a reaction to attempt control, to limit access.  And we all know this just didn’t work.  Think of it as “Enterprise computing meets social networking, 16th century style.”

Today, the mobile computing and social networking are making it easy for students to share and collaborate with each other  are exactly the same ones that are reforming and reshaping the landscape of learning and teaching.  The change is being driven by students, with them showing the way and educators in many cases following.  Some more comfortably than others.

This couldn’t be happening at a more critical time.  The demand for education is great, and those demands are only going to escalate on a worldwide basis.  Scaling education to meet that demand is going to require a lot of sharing.

Education really is on the verge of its own reformation.  A reformation enabled by technology, driven by students, and all about sharing.

The argument made by some professors is pretty simple. A professor at the Georgetown law school boils it down like this, “This is like putting on every student’s desk, when you walk into class, five different magazines, several television shows, some shopping opportunities and a phone, and saying, ‘Look, if your mind wanders, feel free to pick any of these up and go with it.’”

But this view is countered by a student who observed:  “”Most professors, even at their youngest, they’re in their 30s,” she said. “They don’t understand how much it’s become a part of our lives.”

While these views are not easily reconciled, the truth is both the professor and the student are right – mobile computing and communications are everywhere, and can be enormous distractions – and are viewed as essential by their users.

So essential, that a recent survey of Stanford students asking about the relationship they have with their iPhones found that 25 percent said their iPhones “seemed like an extension of their brain or their being.”

This issue of technology/communication driven distractions is no less prevalent in the workplace than in the classroom.  Just ask any business meeting attendee how many folks are checking email, during the meeting, and how distracting that can be.

The simple matter is mobile computing is changing the makeup of the student population, and the workforce.  At a functional level, a focused, engaged student can take notes more quickly with a laptop than they can with pen and paper.  And the result is a set of study materials that can be accessed anywhere, and organized with other information.  But how often is a student focused and engaged?  And is that the responsibility of the student, or the professor?  Isn’t it both?

More broadly, banning technology, and technology innovations is the last line of defense in a battle to hold back the tide.  The fact is students are fluent in technology in ways that professors and parents are not, and will likely never be.  And the trends that have caused this are only getting larger and more powerful.

It may very well be that some professors need to establish limits on the use of technology in the classroom, in the same way that in the working world some meetings are deemed “lids down” for laptops and “blackberry free”.

That establishes boundaries while acknowledging mobile technology without trying to eliminate it.  I liked how one professor summed this up:

“The question ‘Laptop or not?’ isn’t as big a question as the question of a screen or not,” he said. “And, sitting in front of 200 students, I can’t really enforce a ban on anything.”