[VBprogrammer]

Two things which I remember having a significant impact on the amount of 'collaboration':

Marking against the other members of the class. I remember one project where the performance of the code was under test and the fastest 30% got an A, the next fastest 10% got a B etc. There was little incentive to help anyone else beyond the most naive implementation.

Group projects, avoid the problem of collaboration by openly encouraging it. Also has the benefit of improving the real life skills everyone will need. Allowing members of the group to rate other members makes it obvious when someone has simply ridden on the coat tails of the other members of the group.

[TallGuyShort]

Those are two things I remember hating every time I saw them implemented. In my experience, members that ride the coat tails of other members of the group always get far more credit than anybody else in the group gave them.

[thisone]

I would have said the same during my original undergraduate work (at 18-19). However, I ended up working full time and taking night classes with other working adults. From then on, there was never a coat tails problem. We would actually have the problem of people wanting to do too much rather than people not wanting to do anything.

[VBprogrammer]

Yeah, that is true, but I think that is probably a valuable life lesson!

[TallGuyShort]

So was being bullied - my point was that using group projects as a method to prevent cheating is much less trivial than I think you were implying. Encouraging collaboration and communication is a good thing, but in my experience, there is still plenty of cheating.