Learning in the Present Tense

The author discusses an incident in which a student was threatened with expulsion for his involvement in a Facebook-based study group. Because the incident involved Facebook, it hit the news, with stories appearing in major Canadian dailies. It also became a web event, with a Facebook support group, photos on Flickr, and hundreds of blog posts. This controversy and others like it have a chilling effect. The author stresses that educators need to do a better job of defining for students what cheating is--while making it clear that knowledge itself is a social network. They must find ways to assess an individual's learning without stifling it.