[fuzzylizard]

Interesting article; however, I would suggest that the Universities themselves are to blame. There were very few courses that I took where the professor encouraged us to talk to one another about problems and assignments. Usually it was the reverse. We were told in no uncertain terms that we were not to talk to anyone else, nor were we to work with other students in the class. Any collaboration was considered cheating and plagiarism.

Obviously, this did not apply to things like study groups, but once you have had it drilled in to your head that collaboration was bad, it is very difficult to then create the network necessary for a study group.

Universities need to change the way they teach and mark such that collaboration is not only suggested, but required. In addition, I think universities, if they really care about these differences, need to create some form of mentoring program for incoming students.

[ktsmith]

I would guess that this is handled differently between universities and even between departments at the same university. My math and science profs went out of their way to encourage collaboration. The courses were typically weighted so that test results were the majority of your grade. If you were cheating on the homework by copying everything from your study group you'd be found out on the test. The CS department was a mixed bag. Lots of group projects, lots of collaboration encouragement, but some of the intro courses like algorithms took the collaborating is cheating approach.

Where I encountered the most resistance to collaboration was in the humanities. Any course that had lots of writing or research pretty much had a work by yourself mandate. I blew through those courses without much effort and wouldn't have worked in groups anyway, but I always found it odd how often plagiarism was brought up and threats about academic suspension were made.

[ipince]

Interesting. In my university collaboration was greatly encouraged. However, I'd say the subjects which I learned best were those in which I worked on the problem sets by myself. The problem sets were hard, so if I could do them on my own, it meant I really had a good grasp on the subject.

I'm not saying collaboration is bad. It's great. But individual work can be just as valuable.