Was It Really Cheating?

Totally agree, creating a test on a readily available teacher's edition or sample test book is downright lazy. They are very easy to acquire legitimately. In college you are also asking for it if you use past versions of your own tests, since students regularly use those as study guides... especially since some professors will actually encourage it and willingly make them available.

I had a professor "borrow" test questions when I was in graduate school. It was a take-home test and I did a google search for a portion of one of his questions and found it on a class website at a totally different university. Also, one of the true-false questions disagreed with our textbook but I still got it wrong because I didn't answer the same as the stolen test. I pointed it out to the professor but he refused to give me more credit because it was only one point and not worth his time. Unfortunately, I missed class the day he was reviewed.

I agree as well, I'd seen this video posted around the web without actually watching it and bothering to get outraged, and it seems like I saved myself some time. The gall in this is kind of ridiculous. Accusing students of cheating because they studied in one of the most effective manners possible...

A teacher in high school made the mistake of using an old AP test verbatim for the multiple choice part of a final exam. The moment I got the test, a friend and I exchanged looks, we'd studied old AP tests to get acquainted with the AP; we got perfect scores on the multiple choice!

I am a graduate student in Physics. For my final exams, I usually take out one of the "100 graduate level problems in x" where x is classical mechanics, quantum mechanics, electromagnetism, etc. These subjects have been around for a long time and the basics haven't really changed, so I find that the questions on my exams are usually slight variations on problems I've studied.

If that is cheating, then it is a very bad form of cheating - way too much effort. Similarly for the students in this class - memorizing an entire testbank is a lot of work, better to just pay attention and learn the material for themselves. Their prof should have more respect for the effort they put into studying.

Does he expect his students to learn in a vacuum?

I think sample tests and test banks are the best way to prepare just before a test. They are no substitute for truly understanding the material, but I always feel more confident if I can see the information presented in a testing environment.

If you know which test bank your test comes from and you study that specific test bank, then you are probably "cheating." On the other hand, is a professor who just copies or borrows a test a cheater too?

Had he said before that the tests came from those books, then I would say probably cheating. But when he says he wrote the tests and then gets mad that they studied a "different" test... I don't know.

This new aspect is disturbing. Some of my professors have TOLD us to go to the publisher's websites and use their example tests to study.
If the students used those testbanks to study, then I don't think it is cheating. If they simply used them in an unlawful way such as selling the answers, etc. then it is another issue altogether, but it doesn't sound like that here.

This does seem like a lazy teacher. :/

I did exactly the same thing 35 years ago for a physics class. The professor was off at NASA doing something that made him extra money. The stand-in TA was unprepared to teach. I skipped class, read the text book, turned in the practice assignments and studied the previous tests.

I aced the class and still understand the subject matter. No one was cheated. Not the college. Not my fellow students. Well, maybe I was cheated since the professor I paid to study under did not show up for a single class.

I think the problem is that not all the students had access to the testbank. If the professor had announced to all students to use the testbank questions to study from, then that's fair for all students. ALso, the students should have asked if using the test questions was cheating, the fact they didn't implies that they knew it was an unfair advantage.

Yes, creating a test that way is lazy. But it is still, very much, cheating. We are rapidly becoming a nation of lawyers, all of us looking for a short-cut. It is absurd to even postulate these kids weren't cheating. They knew what was expected. Getting a hold of the test bank is absolutely cheating, not "enhanced studying". They took the class with an understanding of what was expected and they violated both the spirit and the letter of their contract.

My university explicitly stated in the student handbook that test banks were legal. I think they wanted to discourage professors from reusing questions term to term. It leveled the playing field because underground test banks would always exist. This way everyone has a chance to access them (the student chapter of my area of study's professional society ran the department's test bank). It also puts the professors on notice that they can't be lazy in making tests.

The only way I can see what happened as being dishonest is if the students realized earlier in the term that the professor was using the publisher's questions but didn't bring this knowledge to the professor's attention so he could make up a different set of questions. But if it was merely happenstance that they studied the publisher's questions and he ended up using them, seems fair to me.

The scores might be a poor reflection of the students' mastery of the material but many tests are. I passed a chemistry midterm once because most of the questions were on molecular structure diagrams which I just happened to study heavily the night before.

It is not cheating. This professor is lazy! It probably took those students forever to go through all those questions and more effort that those didn't. If he wants to stop cheating then next time take the effort to write his own exams.

I agree with the poster above, exam scores don't really reflect the student's mastery of the material, so why is this such an important issue?

Oh yeah, the other 2/3 of the class who didn't "cheat"? They probably just couldn't get a copy of the test bank. Were they rewarded for being honest? Nope, they got punished along with the cheaters, had to take the exam again. I'm sure this time many of them will consider using that test bank :D

It's not cheating...those test banks are often used for study materials, and you can't tell me that prof doesn't know it. That prof isn't earning his salary if he is just using the test questions verbatim. Now we know why colleges are trying to get rid of tenure...it's professors like this who are NOT doing their job that ruin it for the rest. (Yes, I'm a former school teacher.) He's just mad that in a way, he was "caught" but he's trying to pin it on his students...NO WAY!

you can't tell your students what NOT to read.

The so called "Prof" is LAZY.

i still think this could be considered cheating to SOME extent. if the students knew the professor was using a particular test and only studied the contents of that test without learning anything from the course, i would still consider that academic dishonesty on a personal level.

that said, i don't think "cheating" in this manner is necessarily something that can be punished (considering the arguments in this article.

I still haven't found a good explanation as to HOW the students got access to the test bank in the first place. The publisher said students wouldn't have had access. But, I also haven't read my usual higher ed websites so perhaps they have an actual explanation. If it was readily available, absolutely not cheating. If someone hacked into it and passed it around, then yeah, it's cheating.

Let's stop getting all philosophical about this- it's cheating. Slice and dice all you want, but it's cheating.

Let me put it another way...would you want your heart surgeon to have gotten a good grade on his test because he studied the material and understood it, or because he got his hands in the test bank questions?

Yeah, that's what I thought.

I am amazed how much people are trying to rationalize cheating. A group of students bought a copy of the INSTRUCTOR'S MANUAL for the textbook that class was using! The IM is supposed to be sold only to teachers who are using the corresponding textbook to teach the class. It is unlikely that at least one of the group of students who purchased the IM, did not know that using the IM was unethical and a violation of the student code of conduct. And approximately 200 students of the 600 in the course got a copy of the testbank from the IM. It is legitimate for a professor to use the testbank, simply because he can be sure the questions have been vetted, thereby ensuring that students who understand the material presented in the textbook, will be able to answer the questions. The point: better understanding of the material should result in better grades on the exam.
Tests are designed to test what students understands of the material. Since testbanks include the answers, it cheats students out of the need to work out the answers for themselves (the best way to really learn the material). Learning answers to questions is not the same as learning *how* to answer questions.
So the students cheat themselves, and they cheat against the other students. They cheat the others by gaining an unfair grade advantage while undermining the point of the test -- measuring how well students have learned the course material. Those who did not cheat may better understand the material, but the cheaters grades would falsely imply otherwise.
But it seems that learning wasn't the goal of these students. The grade was all that counted.

Over 600 students had to take the midterm exam. The exam was given over a 5-day period. In order to discourage cheating, the exam was given via a computer lab, with the questions varying each time the test was given. The questions were automatically drawn from the pool of questions based on the testbank. There were over 600 potential questions, and each exam used 55 of them.

Over 22% of the students got an A. Where based on previous results, only 5 or 6% would have. A statistical analysis of the exam results showed that approximately 200 students cheated on the exam. Now consider that the students who cheated had memorize the as many of the 600 answers they could or they could not have pulled off A’s. It does require effort to memorize that many questions and answers. Why would they bother unless they suspected that the test would be based on them. Still, that’s easier then actually trying to actually understand the material.

Although it is relatively easy to get access to Instructor Manuals through disreputable websites, that does not, in any sense, excuse students who do so. Cheating is cheating, even if it’s easy.

The only issue I see is how the test bank was procured. Many publishers do make test banks available and others do not. If an IM was attained through theft or deceit, then clearly it posed an unfair advantage to those who used it, and that of course is cheating. Considering the multiple Universities, publishers etc. that he contacted prior to even giving this lecture, I'd say it's pretty clear that the test bank was not public domain. Remember, it was another STUDENT in the course that turned the cheaters in, so it was obviously not a kosher practice.
As far as everyone calling this prof. lazy for using a test bank, perhaps you should ask a University Professor what they do with all their "spare time." New prepping a 200 question exam several times per term is an massive undertaking especially if you are trying to write a fair exam that's relevant to the material covered. Moreover, for all we know this is but one of several classes he is responsible for teaching, so if he uses banked questions that are supposedly secure, I don't blame him one bit.
Sure it sucks for those who didn't cheat, but given that he could have just let 200 people get booted, I think he was more than fair. He is responsible for the integrity of the course and I believe he defended it quite well.

Anthony Coletti wrote, "I am amazed how much people are trying to rationalize cheating."

I couldn't agree more. It's actually kind of amazing (and sad) to me to see so many people coming up with reason after reason as to why this cheating is "okay".

So, to all the rationalizers who see nothing wrong with this, let me pose a couple of questions...

1) If *YOU* were the teacher here and found your students had done this, would you be okay with it? Really? You'd have no problem with someone passing your test who learned the test answers, but not necessarily the material? If so, then you must be okay with being known as a teacher who turns out students who will likely perform poorly in the real world.

2) As I wrote earlier, lets say you were going to have a heart transplant or some other surgical procedure. Would you want your surgeon to have gotten a good grade on his test because he studied the material and understood it, or because he got his hands in the test bank questions? Would it be okay if that person treated your mother or daughter? How about the paramedic who responds to your 911 call with you as a heart attack victim? Is it okay if he passed the First Responder test by getting his hands on the test bank questions?

Maybe you'd like to be a passenger on a plane built by people who "passed the test", but who never actually learned the engineering that's required to build a safe airplane?

Do you see why some of us are upset with this? The purpose of a test isn't to see if you know the answers. The purpose of a test is to see if you know the *material*.

It's incredible how many of you don't get this concept and instead choose to condone this kind of cheating. Incredible, and very, very sad.

MrMike,

I don't think anyone was condoning cheating, IF cheating occurred. Studying for a test using a practice test is a good way to familiarize yourself with the type of questions asked, so that you know what to study. Take SAT and GRE prep books, for example. Those are PRACTICE TESTS, but you also have to know the material in order to get a good score. You are not memorizing answers, you are getting an idea of what the questions will look like.

The only issue here is HOW the students got hold of the testbank/IM. If they got it through underhanded means, then yes, they were cheating. Or, if they KNEW the prof would take questions from the testbank and then obtained it through any means, they were cheating. If, however, the testbank was readily available online, and if they did not know that the professor would use the questions on the exam, then no cheating occurred. That is the point.

MrMike, it really sounds like your beef is with the Prof for failing to write a test that actually tests whether his students know and are able to apply the material.

When I was in law school, nearly every professor made past exams available for us to study. When I studied for the bar exam, I did so by taking dozens of old exams. In both cases, the testers wrote new exams for every administration - it's time consuming, but what they're paid to do. This sort of preparation is common in professional and graduate school (my younger brother is a physician, and I vividly remember him taking practice test after practice test so that he could do well on his boards; my wife is a veterinary oncologist, and did the same).

Here, the professor seems to have explicitly told his students that he wrote his own tests. If true, the testbank questions have no value *except* to prepare for the professor's exam. Turning around and using the test bank questions then getting in a huff because your students have actually made an effort to prepare is asinine.

To crib some of your false logic, would you really want your heart surgeon to have graduated at the top of his med-school class at a school where the professors couldn't be bothered to write their own exams? How about a doctor who wanted to be a heart surgeon but couldn't, because despite knowing all of the material wasn't able to quickly and efficiently deal with the questions presented on his boards?

Obviously, if the students were aware of the fact that the professor used these questions, studying from them would be cheating. Here, however, it seems like the most fortuitous sort of prep - tantamount to focusing on a particular section of course curriculum while studying only to find that the professor has opted to emphasize it on the exam. Nearly everyone has had that experience (or its converse) at some point in their education, and it's ridiculous to contend that its some sort of cheating.

I've met this tool.

He is way out of line and I think an unpaid leave of absence is in order.

Just another example of a lazy educator, and I use the word educator loosely, doing the minimum to crank out drones. This makes me crazy. Then he blames his resourceful students. In business this guy would be out on his ear. And the 400 "honest" students wouldn't be getting promotions.

What KateM said.

If the testbank was publicly available, then there was no cheating. If, on the other hand, some student or group of students misrepresented themselves and got access to a teacher only tool, as has been stated here, then there's no question that they were cheating, and were wrong.

As to whether or not the teacher misrepresented his tests, well, he said he "created" the tests, and he said that he might write a test questions. Creation from a test bank is still creation, and he never said he wrote every single question. Like it or not, a teacher has the right to use any source they choose for tests, and no, it isn't cheating, and it isn't even a double standard. Test are created to assess knowledge of a subject, and there is no standard to which the test creator must hold to, other than to create an appropriate test for the subject matter that has been taught.

Finally, and what really matters, is that the University called it cheating. It doesn't matter what the students think is right, it doesn't even matter that the teacher thought it was cheating. It's the University that gets to make the final decision, and it's the University that gets to expel students for cheating.

If a student really believes that what he or she did was not cheating, take it up with the appropriate department of the University. Argue the point. Show why it wasn't cheating. Anyone who used the methods the University is calling cheating who is not willing to argue the point is tacitly accepting that he or she was cheating.

Double standard!

Both teacher and students are wrong in this situation. I know a lot of instructors that do not write their own tests but most of them are not good teachers. Last I checked plaigerism is cheating and there are strict rules that instructors must follow when using written material. This guy could loose his job for pointing out all the kids cheated. Either way, though, the students still cheated.

I have had a few online classes in the past year, and even some online tests with regular classes, and for EVERY SINGLE ONE, I can google the question, and find it in a test bank, word for word...very convenient

The prof is a jerk...