What constitutes plagiarism?

A Ryerson student is facing academic misconduct charges because his professor found out that he's the administrator of a study group on Facebook.

The student compares the study group to peer tutoring or study groups that meet in person, making it a part of his argument that what he's doing isn't cheating. The university alleges... well, frankly, it's unclear what the university alleges, except that students can't get away with things that they do online.... A university representative also noted generally that students must do their own work.

The story prompts more questions than it answers, specifically:

1. Exactly what was going on in the study group? Were students merely getting help from each other on general concepts or were they specifically asking about questions on assignments? If so, did students actually provide other students with the answers on assignments? If yes, that would be cheating since students wouldn't have done their own work. But...
2. How can the university prove this? Does it have printouts of the group's discussion boards and wall posts?
3. How would this differ from a library study group or peer tutoring? And if it doesn't, does that also mean that library study groups and peer tutoring constitute cheating?
4. What about the possibility that students can help other students learn since they can explain things differently than the prof did in class? That sometimes hearing an explanation the second time or being able to ask questions about it makes a difference? Should students only learn from profs and text books?
   
5. How many first-year Engineering students even know exactly what constitutes cheating? High school students help each other with homework all the time (I remember many phone calls about math homework in my day, and a few years later I'm sure it would have been all MSN instant messaging). Students aren't going to know that practices established earlier might be unacceptable in university. While "not knowing" does not mitigate the offence, the institution still has an obligation to make its students aware of proper and improper academic conduct.
6. Why on earth is Ryerson charging the student with 147 counts of academic misconduct (one for him, one for each member of the group)? The excessiveness smacks of bullying and heavy handed "let's make an example of this one".
7. Don't you think that the study group members have now started a new Facebook group with more stringent privacy settings?

I hate to break it to Ryerson, but students have been "helping" each other with their homework since the dawn of homework. This particular student got "caught" because there must have been a Facebook record.

Incidentally, I don't know why people are all up in arms about a Facebook study group when 100% improper and unethical essay mills get to advertise in the guise of a Facebook group.