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I second that. Using the same questions for a couple of years and blaming the students that they learned the answer to those questions? questionable.

by gacek 16y ago

sid0 16y ago
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 16y ago
  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 16y ago
    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.
    - jules 16y ago
      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 16y ago
        "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 16y ago
        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 16y ago
        "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 16y ago
        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).
    - egkjellman 16y ago
      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."
    - protomyth 16y ago
      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 16y ago
        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 16y ago
        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.
    - electromagnetic 16y ago
      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.
      - pohl 16y ago
        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 16y ago
        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 16y ago
        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.
  - roadnottaken 16y ago
    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 16y ago
      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 16y ago
        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 16y ago
        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 16y ago
        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.

I second that. Using the same questions for a couple of years and blaming the students that they learned the answer to those questions? questionable.

by gacek 16y ago

I second that. Using the same questions for a couple of years and blaming the students that they learned the answer to those questions? questionable.

sid0 16y ago

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 16y ago
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 16y ago
  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.
  - jules 16y ago
    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 16y ago
      "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 16y ago
        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 16y ago
      "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 16y ago
        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).
  - egkjellman 16y ago
    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."
  - protomyth 16y ago
    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 16y ago
      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 16y ago
        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.
  - electromagnetic 16y ago
    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.
    - pohl 16y ago
      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 16y ago
        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 16y ago
        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.
- roadnottaken 16y ago
  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 16y ago
    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 16y ago
      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 16y ago
        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 16y ago
      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.