 Periodic group cohomology from a free sphere action

Suppose a finite group acts freely on $S^{n-1}$ and trivially on its integral cohomology. The Borel construction gives a sphere fibration over $BG$ whose total space is homotopy equivalent to the $(n-1)$-dimensional quotient. Its Serre spectral sequence has just two rows with trivial local coefficients. Transgressing the fibre generator gives $\Delta$; the sole differential is multiplication by it up to sign. For $i>0$, both the source and target terms have total degrees above $n-1$, so their surviving kernel and cokernel must vanish. Hence multiplication by $\Delta$ gives period $n$ in positive-degree cohomology over any field.