[skylark]

Honestly, in both college and law school I've seen things like this happen with informal groups... the only thing that this kid did that was different was make it a public Facebook group.

I think that he is a product of the academic culture on most campuses that perceives this sort of group "brainstorming" to be non-cheating. I doubt if it was something that was clearly expressed to be done independently he would have kept it public. My own guess is that the professor probably had some standard "do your own work" clause on his syllabus or something.

I think that campuses need to have uniform policies for all classes so that students know what is okay and what is not. Like, unless it says "group project" you are to assume that nothing you do that counts toward your grade should be collaborated on. It needs to be the same rule from class to class because it is pretty unreasonable to expect every student to re-memorize syllabi for all new classes every semester... it just isn't going to happen.

Unless you have a clear rule that applies across the board, you're never going to keep people from doing this kind of thing.

ETA: And I disagree on the "average to below average" statement on "cheaters." I saw plenty of top-notch people in high-stress-not-enough-time situations "collaborate" with each other because there wasn't a clear rule against what they were doing... even though it was pretty obvious that what they were doing was unethical. I'm currently thinking of three of the top five grade-earners in my law school. They just never labeled what they were doing as "cheating" and nobody else called them on it either.