[sid0]

I guess an important question is whether this test bank is supposed to be accessible only to instructors. Presumably a test bank would contain enough questions for several tests, so it isn't necessary that there were any repeats from previous semesters.

[cool-RR]

I think that if the instructors are allowed to be lazy enough to use a test bank, then students can't be blamed for using it as well.

[pohl]

I'm shocked to see so many pro-cheating comments get up-voted on HN.

Why shouldn't a community of professors be able to cache and re-use questions? The bank should have been secured, yes. But caching/pooling is on ethical ground more solid than that of cheating.

[electromagnetic]

Why shouldn't a community of students be able to cache and reuse responses to cached and reused questions?

Laziness begets laziness. I don't see how you can claim it's ethical for teachers to forfeit 1/2 of their job to a question cache. Cheating in this definition is using someone else's work to benefit yourself and by definition the teacher cheated too by using someone else's questions to form "his" alleged test. IE benefiting himself by not having to do the actual legwork to write his own test.

I don't think HNers are pro-cheating, I think we're pro-effort. We all work our fucking assess off at things we love, it's a little disrespectful for some shit-ass professor to claim his students are cheating by using HIS method to save time and effort. I call that his students learning a little too much from him.

[dkarl]

Cheating in this definition is using someone else's work to benefit yourself and by definition the teacher cheated too by using someone else's questions to form "his" alleged test.

That is a bizarre definition of cheating and shows that you don't understand the point of testing at all. The point of testing is to measure (perhaps crudely) students' understanding of what they are supposed to learn in the class. The teacher's job is to administer a test that does this effectively, and if a test bank helps him do his job effectively, he should use it. In this case as in so many others, it is perfectly appropriate to use someone else's work as a resource to improve one's own work. In fact, as long as one is honest about attribution, this is highly desired. Test materials are unattributed, and sharing is the assumption, so it isn't dishonest or unprofessional for a teacher to draw from a bank of questions when composing a test.

(Students are claiming that the professor said he created the tests himself, but even if he drew the questions from a test bank, he was still deciding which particular facts and concepts were most important to test. Maybe he said he composed each question himself -- that would be a lie. However, it wouldn't be a lie for him to say he created the tests. It is standard for teachers to compose their own tests but unusual to aim for originality on each question, unless it is an essay test with a small number of questions.)

Why is taking a test different from creating one? If the point of the test was to create a big stack of papers with the right answers on them, it would be appropriate for the students to collaborate and use any resources to accomplish that goal. However, that is not the point. The point is to measure each student's understanding and help decide how much credit each student should be given for their understanding of the material covered by the test.

When students cheat, they subvert the purpose of testing. By hiding their cheating, they dishonestly claim credit for understanding they did not achieve. The professor's job is to administer a test that will test student's understanding. It is not his job to demonstrate his independent powers of test-writing.

[chc]

So is any studying for a test acceptable, since it modifies the understanding you had before studying? I mean, we have to assume the materials being studied will contain the right answers to the questions on the test.

Are lecture notes cheating? The professor is likely to include answers to test questions in his lectures. I've had professors use in their lectures the exact questions — literally, not a word different — that would appear in the next test. Was I cheating by attending the lecture and learning what was taught there?

Where do we draw the line between smart studying and cheating if the professor makes no effort to keep the test questions a secret?

[dkarl]

So is any studying for a test acceptable, since it modifies the understanding you had before studying?

That's the whole freakin' point: the test is supposed to measure your understanding. The honest way to improve your test scores is to improve your understanding of the material. The professors administer tests, the students study and learn, this is the intended way of things. This is the way traditional college classes work, and if you want to go to college and get grades, then you have two choices: study and earn your grades honestly, or lie and cheat.

Everybody encounters a class that they end up cutting corners in, of course. For example, you can try to predict what topics will be on the test and study those most carefully. You can try to predict which problems will be on the test and learn to solve those. The question is, are you actually trying to learn something the class is designed to teach and hoping that what you learn will serve you well in the test, or are you trying to improve your score without learning anything useful? Drilling pattern recognition of potential test problems is not learning. That method relies on your mind's ability to recognize specific verbal patterns and associate them with other verbal patterns. It has nothing to do with understanding the material. From the perspective of learning, it's a complete waste of time.

By the way, I agree with you that professors should lift questions and answers from their lecture notes with great restraint, for exactly the same reason. One or two here and there to reward diligent attendance is fine, but if it's a significant portion of the test, then the professor is essentially conspiring with the students to inflate the test results by relying on familiar phrases or diagrams to trigger students' memories of how to answer a particular question. That's actually a good reason for teachers to share testing materials: will students still understand the material when their professor's particular phrasing is not present? I heard a student complain he got a physics problem wrong because the professor always said "inclined plane," but the test problem talked about a "slanted floor." Clearly the student did not understand the material and was relying on verbal associations; no matter whose fault it was (the student's or the professor's) it was good that the test result reflected the student's lack of understanding. In the real world, an inclined plane does not say to you, "Hi there, I'm an 'inclined plane.' Does that ring a bell?" Or if it does, it will probably not use exactly the same words your college physics professor used in his lectures! That's a very good reason for a professor to use problems written by someone else.

[jimbokun]

"I don't see how you can claim it's ethical for teachers to forfeit 1/2 of their job to a question cache."

Exactly 1/2 of a professor's job is constructing exams? What part goes to lecturing and preparation? Office hours? Grading those exams and class projects?

"Cheating in this definition is using someone else's work to benefit yourself..."

No, cheating is gaining an unfair advantage in some kind of competition by violating the clearly specified rules. Your definition certainly is not how the word cheat is commonly used, and I have no idea where you came up with it.

I think you are thinking of "plagiarism," which sometimes intersects with cheating, sometimes not.

[electromagnetic]

The students are accused of plagiarism by a teacher who is essentially plagiarising test questions. The students are accused of cheating - I contest that the professor is too.

[pohl]

I realize that accusatory turnabout is a fun exercise, but what you have here only meets the form of turnabout, and not the substance. One of the key indicators that you've gone off the rails: your turnabout necessitates conceptual contortions in order to make a false equivalence.

In your post above, you falsely claim that the students are being accused of plagiarism. They are not. While plagiarism can be a kind of academic dishonesty, it is not the particular kind of academic dishonesty at issue here. Then, to complete your false equivalence, you try to re-frame the de rigueur practice of drawing test items from an item bank as plagiarism, which is just laughable and ignores both the purpose of the test instrument and the different roles of student and teacher.

I contest that the professor is too.

The word "contest" in the above context means "to oppose as mistaken or wrong". So your sentence literally reads that you dispute that the teacher is also cheating. Clearly you have been arguing the opposite.

I think it might be time to give it a rest.

[pohl]

Why shouldn't a community of students be able to cache and reuse responses to cached and reused questions?

Call me old fashioned, but the roles of "student" and "instructor" make all the difference here to me. Although I'm not surprised that youngsters these days feel entitled to this behavior. Entitlement runs deep in modern American youth.

Are students entitled to lecture, assign homework, and hand out grades too?

[electromagnetic]

I think entitlement runs deep in American adults who are teaching it to the youth.

You blatantly feel that teachers are entitled to perform with a different ethics set as their students, which is personally abhorrent to me. If you have a problem with students cheating at their job of studying, you have to have a problem with teachers cheating at their job of teaching. It isn't an ambiguous issue, it's rather clear cut. If a student cheats they risk expulsion, however the teacher cheats and there's not even an eyelid batter - I call that a society of entitlement.

[pohl]

I may have missed something. What, exactly, is the ethical violation alleged against the teacher here?

I saw the video made by the students that attempts to "prove" that the teacher said he wrote the test questions himself, but it makes an extremely flimsy case:

1) It's a statement made on Day 1 of class, long before the midterm test

2) He only said that he creates the test, but does not state that he authors the questions. One algorithm for creating a test is to select questions from a question bank, so this statement has no evidential value.

3) The only remaining "evidence" in the video is a statement where he said that "he may write" a question that even he may not be able to answer. It's entirely possible that he intended on Day 1 to author the questions for the midterm, but ended up using the above method for creating the test by the time midterms rolled around.

The students are very eager here to turn the tables here and display some righteous indignation to deflect attention back to the instructor, but they haven't yet managed to make a compelling case.

[jimbokun]

Applying the word "cheating" to the teacher here is a re-definition of words worthy of Humpty Dumpty. The plain meaning of cheating is to gain an unfair advantage over others in a competition. The teacher administering an exam is not a competitive act on the part of the teacher.

I am deeply disappointed that so many here on Hacker News are resorting to such poor sophistry to defend a very simple, cut and dried case of cheating, and that so many are lending their approval through their up-votes.

[protomyth]

I am no pro-cheating (as I said in the other thread on this) but I don't see this as cheating.

"Why shouldn't a community of professors be able to cache and re-use questions?"

Well, the reality of having Greeks / Clubs that maintain a library makes this difficult, but even worse is what it actually says about the class and the teacher. If the class is so cookie cutter than why not just have videos from the publisher and an online test? What has this teacher learned from previous offerings? A test is a teacher's summation of the important points taught in the class. It should be improved and modified to account for new information and improvements in the teacher's teaching style. Cookie cutter tests lead me to believe he put the same effort into the lectures. I question anyone who probably spent more time proving cheating than creating the test in the first place.

[jeff95350]

Even assuming the teacher was lazy, or plagiarized the test, that's simply no excuse.

Anyone who sees questions that they had early access to from some special source (a source not available to all students) has a clear ethical responsibility to inform the teacher that they had special access.

It might be slightly ambiguous when, by happenstance, a few questions are the same or similar. But when all of the questions are the same, what are these students thinking? They know that other students are seeing these particular questions for the first time even if they studied intensely.

Students can choose how they learn. But the professors choose how the students are tested, and this test was clearly compromised due to student dishonesty. You can throw other factors in if you want, but dishonest is dishonest.

[protomyth]

So, the crux of your argument is that these students had a "special source (a source not available to all students) has a clear ethical responsibility to inform the teacher that they had special access."

I take it that you believe members of Greek / Clubs on campus that have old tests are dishonest (not everyone is a member)? A student buying a study guide that finds the teacher just used a sample test from the study guide is also dishonest?

I guess my big problem with your reasoning is that I can make a bunch of honest decisions in my studying for a class and then become dishonest by the dishonesty of a teacher.

[jeff95350]

"I can make a bunch of honest decisions in my studying for a class and then become dishonest by the dishonesty of a teacher"

The thing that I think you are missing is that it's all about mutual expectations.

It's the same thing if you take a picture of a TV and put it on eBay for $100. Then, someone buys it and you send them the picture of the TV rather than the TV itself. That's totally unethical of the seller, even if they never say that they are selling a TV explicitly. The buyer expects to receive a TV, and the seller knows that the buyer expects to receive a TV, and proceeds knowing that the buyer's expectation is flawed. Maybe the seller really likes photographing TVs as a form of art, and thinks that their work is worth $100 per print (honest so far); but that doesn't matter because they knew the buyer had other expectations, and did not inform them (dishonest now).

The fact that many students didn't have access to the test ahead of time, and that the students received the test surreptitiously (as another comment said) is evidence of the teacher's expectation, and of the students' knowledge of the teacher's expectation. The fact that students knew this expectation was flawed means that saying nothing is dishonest.

[psyklic]

It is all about what a teacher or other relevant authority says is okay to use. If the teacher explicitly says not to use old exams, then the members of Greek clubs are cheating if they use their archives. Similarly, if a publisher's test bank says that students may not use it, then it is cheating if students use it to study.

[steveplace]

Well, the reality of having Greeks / Clubs that maintain a library makes this difficult

I was the president of a fraternity at this university. There has been no decent test bank for quite some time. However, I've heard that some of the archives from the international clubs are quite robust.

[egkjellman]

Because using previous tests is a common (and presumably ethical) method to study for previous exams.

As noted in the previous thread, it might have been a good idea for the students to have said "Hey, we've seen these questions before." But the professor using a bank of test questions changes the situation from "a bunch of students stole the test" to "the professor maybe should have used questions that people didn't have ready access to."

[jules]

On the other hand the prof shouldn't say that he makes the tests himself if he does not. If the professor told you that he'd make his own test then studying from existing tests isn't cheating, right? It's the professor passing others' work off as his own. This video looks like a professor trying to save his own ass by blaming it on the students.

You could say the students that used this test to practice should have informed the professor when they noticed that the test was identical to the one they practiced with. However, if you look at how defensive this prof is, that would have been quite risky for that student. You would risk being accused of cheating. So instead somebody did it anonymously.

[jeff95350]

"You would risk being accused of cheating [if you informed the teacher that you had special access]."

The epitome of rationalization.

Academic honesty is taken seriously, and there are third parties that evaluate the situation objectively. If you simply say, "I didn't do anything that I thought of as cheating, but today on test day I realized that I had an advantage that I wanted to inform you about," there is zero chance of permanent consequences.

"So instead somebody did it anonymously."

Why didn't everyone then? Maybe those few people are honest, or some approximation thereof. But what about the other ~190 that didn't?

[Groxx]

Just feel I should point out this line (and nothing else! this is a volatile line of discussion, and I'm not aiming to perpetuate it):

>... there is zero chance of permanent consequences.

Bull. Faculty are just as petty and lazy (ie: human) as any other person. There are plenty of instances of teachers saving their own asses by lying enough to get away with it, and with them wielding their mighty tenure in unethical ways.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't, if you don't know the teacher very well. Odds are certainly on your side, heavily even, but it's far from "zero".

[jimbokun]

"However, if you look at how defensive this prof is, that would have been quite risky for that student."

Defensive suggests he acts like he thinks he did something wrong. He clearly thinks his students did something wrong.

What is it with this thread and using words to mean things other than their plain meaning in normal conversation? It's getting very Clintonian in here.

[jules]

I was talking about his response when a student asks why all students have to retake the test even the ones that did not cheat (or I presume the student asked this I can't hear it clearly).

[roadnottaken]

This is completely wrong. If the students are allowed to use the test bank questions, then it's ethical. If it's not provided to them, or they obtain it surreptitiously, then it's cheating. Practice tests are allowed for the SATs, but previewing the questions was clearly not allowed in this case. These rules are arbitrary, but real. Just because certain exams are open-book, doesn't mean all students are entitled to bring reference materials to all exams.

Rules matter.

PS - That's the difference between school and real life.

[gloob]

If it's not provided to them...then it's cheating.

The idea that students are only allowed to study from materials that are explicitly provided to them seems questionable. I would preface this with a statement of my own ignorance of the matter, if I weren't presently an engineering student.

I have never encountered someone who said "reading material given to you by someone other than the professor is cheating."

[boucher]

I think the intent was to say that if the professor had a reasonable belief that the test bank was secured and not accessible to students, then they probably should have had that same belief, and not used it as a source.

I don't necessarily agree with that.

[w1ntermute]

Since the professor stated on the first day of class that he would be creating his own tests, there was no reason for the students to even consider the possibility that a test created by the textbook publisher would be used as the official test.

[roadnottaken]

So if, for example, a student hacks into the professor's computer and steals the test-question to study from, this is OK as long as it wasn't expressly forbidden? I'm not saying they should only study from materials that are provided... but in this case they were clearly using materials that they shouldn't have had access to.

[chc]

Some actions have default moral and ethical values. Hacking into somebody's computer is assumed by default to be bad — it would be bad even if they hadn't intended to use the test for their class. Most actions, such as reading a sample test, are not as clear cut.

[runningdogx]

If it were a process-oriented class, that might be justified. For instance, in a pure math course, you wouldn't want to read an off-syllabus math text in which the author proves theorems that show up on later problem sets or exams.

However, those sorts of courses are not typical, and it falls to the professor to make clear and explicit if external material is forbidden, and to explain why.

Since the existence of a test bank implies the exam was (mostly) multiple choice, the above concerns do not apply. There is no reason to forbid students from learning from external resources if your idea of testing them on their knowledge is giving them a multiple choice test.

The proper (and common) scope for restricting external materials is an individual problem set, quiz, or test. It's implied unless stated otherwise that you shouldn't get help for specific problems or questions from external resources, but it is almost never implied or stated that external resources are banned in the scope of an entire class. In that context, if you go exploring for materials and find something that helps you on a later problem set, quiz, or test, that's your reward for seeking out more materials to learn from.