<p>I am wondering if academic dishonesty in Engineering is as prevalent in other universities as here at ISU</p>
<p>There are some gray lines when it comes to what constitutes academic dishonesty. For example, one of my IE professors encouraged us to work in groups when doing homework for a programming class, while other professors are very particular about assignments being done individually.</p>
<p>I have seen some stuff lately that has truly blown my mind. For one particular Materials Engineering course, someone made a key with screenshots with answers for all quizzes-total of 36. This "Answer Key" has been shared widely amongst Engineering students- about 250 Engineering students take this class every semester. </p>
<p>I think we all agree it is wrong but I am seeing more and more stuff like this :(</p>
<p>You’ll see answer keys circulating quite a bit at basically every school, though in my experience they seem to be much more common for homework assignments rather than quizzes and exams. I honestly never saw or knew of anyone at my undergraduate school who had the answers to a quiz or exam ahead of time (though that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen; I didn’t know everyone, after all).</p>
<p>Answer keys for homework were much more common and a substantial percentage of the people I knew used them. That is a much more gray area, though, and many professors certainly knew the keys were circulating. The rule of thumb is that if you reuse questions, the answers will get around within a year or two, and many professors reuse questions because it is simply nearly impossible to change up all your questions every semester. Ultimately, though, if you simply copy your answers for homework, you likely aren’t learning the material and will do poorly on exams. On the other hand, if you use the answers simply to help you learn the material and don’t just straight copy, they can actually be a pretty decent learning aid.</p>
<p>There were definitely examples of professors reusing entire exams, in which case it wasn’t uncommon to see answer keys floating around. That’s a bit shadier though, and its why professors are much less likely to reuse exam questions than they are homework questions.</p>
<p>In addition to what boneh3ad said (which I see the same things), I’ve also noticed students passing test questions in between sections. For instance, I’ve taken two classes that have back to back sections and because there isn’t much time (10 mins) in between the two sections, the teacher doesn’t change the exam. Every test, in both classes, the second section had a better average than the first section and the teacher chalked it up to “the students in the second section are more awake”. I’m not buying that.</p>
<p>When I went to college, some student organizations had public exam files, with full knowledge of the faculty. This both equalized student access to old exams, and ensured that faculty would not reuse old exams. Today, the same student organizations have the old exams on their web sites, and at least one department puts old exams on its web site. Old exams are also helpful for incoming frosh with AP credit to help them determine if they know the material well from the college’s point of view.</p>
<p>Also, when two sections of the class shared exams, it was common practice to have a common exam time in the evening (announced early so that students would have warning to avoid scheduling conflicts). Sometimes, two slightly different variants of the exam were given.</p>
There is no gray line here. If working in groups or using published answers or any such thing is prohibited by your professor, then doing so is academic dishonesty. If it is prohibited by the department or university but permitted by your professor then THEY are violating the rules, not you. If it is prohibited by neither, then it cannot be against the rules.</p>
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Also not a gray area - this is academic dishonesty. It happens everywhere. For every person willing and able to distribute a correct answer to a homework/quiz/test there are hundreds in this day and age willing and able to harness the power of the intertubes and use that answer instead of doing the work. This is an unfortunate reality that professors and departments are aware of and look out for.</p>
<p>On the bright side, this is a losing proposition for the vast majority who do it. Some will be caught. Others will run into professors who do NOT reuse old homeworks/quizzes/tests, and will lack the skills needed to succeed in the class. Still more will find that they lack the expertise to acquire/keep an engineering job.</p>
<p>In terms of working with others on homework, that happened all the time. In terms of looking at answer keys for old exams, that happened all the time (usually answer keys were posted by the professor). In terms of actual cheating on an exam or project, I’ve never seen that happen.</p>
<p>I suppose the only reason to worry about it would be if the ones who are cheating are the ones setting the grading curve, in which case honest hardworking people could be affected.</p>
<p>That being said, when I was an undergrad, I never witnessed other students using answer keys on quizes/exams since professors usually made up new quizes/exams for every class, and every semester. It was somewhat common for students to micro-print notes on their 3x5 notecard though, and this was acceptable as long as they could read them with thier own eyes without the use of a magnifying glass! </p>
<p>Homework is a different animal. It is there for you to learn the material, whereas quizes/tests are there to test you on the material. Whether you learn better individually or in groups is a personal preference, and most professors don’t care how you get it done. </p>