I alway found that the courses that had large restrictions on the amount of collaboration they allowed (for example, don't discus it with anyone) were the cours

I alway found that the courses that had large restrictions on the amount of collaboration they allowed (for example, don't discus it with anyone) were the courses that had very poor quality course work, often featuring a 'trick' or simply finding the right combination of API functions. The best assignments allowed a reasonable amount of collaboration and often allowed a large degree of freedom in what could be turned in, language choice and minimal provided framework. My favorite assignment was one were the performance of our code was measured against each other member of the class and the fastest 20% got an A, the next 20% got a B and anyone who submitted a reasonable attempt got a C. I think there must be other measures which could be compared in a fun way like this.