There's a big difference between a discussion between a few people to figure out an answer that they all understand, and posting the answer to a multiple choice question directly to the whole class.
To use the author's measuring stick, study groups typically engage with the course material. Learning that the answer to question 5 is "B" is not engagement.
Also, anecdotally, the study groups I was a part of were almost all based around figuring out answers to publicly available past exam papers, _not_ marked assignments. I think the sharing of answers (vs understanding) would have felt quite wrong to those of us involved.
Yeah just different experiences I suppose. Although I guess I can't really think of any classes I took that had simple multiple choice assignments. But yeah, my math and science classes had graded take home assignments with quantitative exercises and it was normal (encouraged, even) to work on them in groups. And yeah, there tended to be some free loaders, who I guess I wouldn't debate were "cheating", but I didn't and honestly still don't think it was such a big deal. Even those sometime free loaders learned a lot of stuff and went on to be successful members of society. It would have been pretty stupid to kick them out of school for it. Maybe these are unpopular opinions, I dunno, but I just kind of see this whole concern as misplaced.
I do agree that cheating on exams would be bad. Maybe my perspective comes from not really thinking graded homework is that great of an idea to begin with.
To use the author's measuring stick, study groups typically engage with the course material. Learning that the answer to question 5 is "B" is not engagement.
Also, anecdotally, the study groups I was a part of were almost all based around figuring out answers to publicly available past exam papers, _not_ marked assignments. I think the sharing of answers (vs understanding) would have felt quite wrong to those of us involved.