This was handled very very poorly by the professor. Their first mistake was putting policy before education. It simply does not matter that students violated a

This was handled very very poorly by the professor. Their first mistake was putting policy before education. It simply does not matter that students violated a school policy or that the school process required forms. If you cheat in Candyland you have to remember it's still Candyland, don't get so full of yourself that you think your academic bubble and its processes matter. Secondly they delayed what really mattered, pointing out that students were putting in a lot of effort to accomplish something just as farcical as what the teacher was doing. Passing a course without learning anything. Because of the self importance off professors and institutions students are given the impression that grades matter. Then they do stuff like this. Instead the Prof could have immediately said holy crap everyone I just realized I've been logged into chat all year, most of you have been cheating badly, and some of you are getting nothing from this course. So now we're going to talk about online privacy, security hygiene, and time effort tradeoffs. My goal is for you to be less stupid and better informed when you leave this class. Then they could go back and find the students who hadn't done any work (other than cheating) and drop them from the class. FFS teach kids don't play games.