What's cheating?

An interesting article on Slashdot makes me ask the question. The article's called "Student Faces Expulsion for Facebook Study Group," and the comment thread offers a bunch of takes on the issue. (For a fuller version of the article, read "Student faces Facebook consequences.")

Seems to me that study groups are always helpful for learning something and that technology is just a magnifying glass, letting those study groups happen more quickly and remotely. In fact, students say that a Facebook study group is a "valid studying technique in the information age." Makes perfect sense -- as a technique for *learning* stuff.

But the way for instructors to find out if any particular student has learned anything [either with the help of a study group or not] is to provide some kind of opportunity for said student to show s/he has learned. In fact, I call tests and quizzes "opportunities to show me what you know" whenever I give them in class.

So I can't see why Facebook study groups would be cheating: if they're used to take exams, when those exams are not group exams, then they'd be cheating.