[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.