Cooperation in CS Education?

fwitness asks: "The college I currently attend, like most colleges, is on a form of 'Academic Honesty Policy'. It has been explained to me in various ways, but mostly it boils down to: If you catch someone's code out of the corner of you eye, that's cheating, and you need to come up with your own 'original' ideas. I'm a CS major, so I write a lot of code, and I imagine when I get in the work force, I'll be writing a lot more. The difference is, in the workplace, I'll be in a team of people. I won't have control and I'll have personnel and political issues to deal with in addition to my job. So far I've had one class that actually demonstrated this principle, and I'm pretty much finished all my CS courses. I know the college has to do this so they can somehow grade 'my' code and assess my performance. Isn't there a better way? A way that students can be taught to work as a team yet still be able to tell who is pulling their own weight and who is not?" I always enjoyed working in teams during my college education, yet found that projects, where you were allowed to work with others, were few and far between. Do you all feel that technical courses should show a bit more emphasis on working with others, or is this just one of life's lessons that you pick up as you go along?

Teach working with others...

[nob]

Do you all feel that technical courses should show a bit more emphasis on working with others, or is this just one of life's lessons that you pick up as you go along?

Of course it has to be taught, CS students are antisocial by nature.

My experience

[Dop]

I had one course on software development processes. Where the group had to design what they were going to do, write the code, and run tests on the code to make sure it works. The problem with this kind of work is people like me. I hate groups. I knew I was the strongest coder too.

I wrote all of the code one morning before ever having the first group meeting. I didn't want to deal with having them argue about how to do it and having it take several days. Then I told them to do the testing without me.

I realize this doesn't work in a large corporate environment, but when it's a small project for a class when you've got other classes and work, there will be students that do the work on their own faster and don't care if the other students take credit for it or not.. just as long as yours truly gets a decent grade. The rest of the group is likely to go along with it because it's less work for them.

So basically, I think it's very difficult to pretend that people will react the same way in a classroom as they would in a corporation. The fact of the matter is, a lot of students initially show up at college to learn, but in the end they just want to get the hell out of class so they can play on their own.

Re:Differences between work and college

[mtrupe]

How about this:

Programming is a lot like sex. I tend to get very confused and make many mistakes in the process.

Re:Differences between work and college

[ivan256]

#6 is missing an part... They give you a stack of books with the WRONG information in it!

That sucks.

Re:Differences between work and college

[DeadMeat (TM)]

7) College students don't have to deal with tech support calls. On either end.

Hmm, apparently you haven't been around my dorm room lately.