<p>"In the old days, college students might turn to classmates for help during all-night cram sessions before final exams. Now their study buddies are just as likely to be commercial Web sites with step-by-step solutions to textbook problems, copies of previous exams, reams of lecture notes, summaries of literary classics, and real-time help with physics, math and computer science problems. . . .</p>
<p>On Course Hero, for example, students can type in a college name and course number to unearth the previous semester's particle physics final exam. They can find examples of research papers on, say, the causes of World War I. For homework, Cramster supplies step-by-step solutions to problems in more than 200 college-level math and science textbooks."</p>
<p>My school has it’s own website devoted to old homeworks and exams, and it’s been extensively proven that (according to our honor code) it is not cheating to upload or download or look at them.</p>
<p>I am not sure about the sharing of old exams. Many teachers don’t release old exams because they want to use similar problems from old exams. Idk, unless it is provided by the school or free then I’d feel uncomfortable with it.</p>
<p>At VT you can get on a website and it’s all there and free. The website isn’t officially sanctioned by the school but after a bunch of huffing and puffing they figured out that it wasn’t against the rules so they couldn’t do anything about it.</p>
<p>How is it cheating? Studying from prior tests has always been an option. The only problem would be if a professor did not want his or her prior tests to be available.</p>
<p>Heh, one of the best resources I’ve found for doing upper-level physics problems is going to the school library and hunting through the really old books on physics. Often there’s entire books of worked problems demonstrating how to actually do the stuff many textbooks don’t bother with. It’s not like people haven’t been publishing these things for 100 years.</p>
<p>I started using Course Hero last year and it is definitely the up and coming site with a huge volume of materials. If you’re a BS major, there are tooooons of notes, lecture slides and older exams to help you study. I think they have somewhere around 2 million different documents and for me, a psychology major, there are notes that help me understand all the concepts. It’s legit, I definitely think its worth every penny.</p>
<p>Prof at my school often release old midterms and finals as “practice” for the up coming midterms or finals. If the prof gives permission to release, I don’t see how Course Hero and Cramster is cheating. Furthermore, its like buying the soln manual! </p>
<p>What ever you do, don’t rely on the soln’s…this screwed me over in physics…</p>
<p>It’s not cheating unless your school has a policy that says you’re not allowed to look online for help with homework. For take-home tests, cramster and course hero would likely be cheating. But for homeworks?</p>
<p>The whole point of class is learning how to think a certain way. If these sites, by devoting a bit of extra time, teach you how to go about solving a problem, then there’s absolutely nothing wrong with them. It’s like asking a buddy to explain a solution to a problem.</p>
<p>Neither of these websites was on my radar at all, but I don’t see how they could possibly be considered cheating. If all you do is copy solutions, whether from a solution manual or a website, then you are doing yourself a huge disservice and will likely never pass a test, and while that is a mistake I don’t see how it is cheating. Beyond that, there are plenty of legit uses for such a service. It’s not really useful to study poor or incomplete solutions, so access to good solutions is great.</p>
<p>Reading a paper on the same topic as one you are writing isn’t cheating. Copying the paper, all or part, is. And there is certainly the risk that once you have read the paper, even if you don’t intend to copy it, you will subconsciously include pieces on your own work. </p>
<p>When I prepare for a final I search google for similar exams. It doesn’t matter that they are from a different school, as long as the material is similar it is helpful for me. Is that cheating? What if they are from the same school but a different teacher? Where is the line? If the teacher has returned the exam to the student, then they cannot call sharing or looking at that exam cheating.</p>
<p>The exception, of course, is if the exam hasn’t been returned to the student. I’ve had classes where we don’t even get to see our scantron, only our grade. If one of those exams is online, then there is cheating of some sort happening.</p>
<p>Many schools/teachers make past exams available online or in the library already.</p>
<p>I don’t consider cramster cheating. Like others have said, it is basically an online solution manual. Don’t rely on it too heavily or you might not understand the homework you’re supposed to be learning. I haven’t tried the other site but look forward to checking it out.</p>
<p>MathGirl, you are spot on. I agree that if you copy solutions ie. physic or math problems, the only thing you’re doing is hindering how you’ll actually do on the midterms and finals. It’s about understanding and reiterating the process to form the solution and that goes with any subject. Course Hero definitely puts that out there for students to seek the help that they need and it may be a new concept for some, but it has been beneficial to me when I don’t immediately understand them.</p>