[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.