Wondering how this might be considered cheating. I have had (high school) teachers specifically tell classes: “If the answers to the study guide aren’t in the book, look them up online”. This is just a (not very effective) studying method.
Darn it, I’ve been cheating so much. Might as well turn myself in now. 
As others have said, this is definitely not cheating. The internet is a valuable resource, and it can and should be utilized by students. Much of the information on the internet is exactly the same information contained in a biology textbook, so she’s simply getting the information from a different source. There’s no rule against using additional materials or resources for studying.
Thank you guys. Apologies for late response. I’ve been busy lately and I’m not on often. I thought this was cheating because she was not using class resources, but she wasn’t caught or anything, so I guess it isn’t and professors do not mind.
there’s nothing to “get caught” doing. There is never an obligation to ONLY use class resources for studying.
People who believe they should ONLY use “class resources” (which is what I assume to be assigned textbook readings) aren’t being very resourceful. I can only imagine what peoples’ grades would be without Kahn Academy and similar services…
She didn’t get caught using Google? She’s lucky because the consequences would be severe.
OP, what do you do if you don’t understand a concept in your class materials and your professor/TA is unavailable? @xxeliza321xx
I’m not sure what you mean by this but I want to make sure two things are very clear:
- It's not "not cheating" just because she wasn't caught. It's not cheating because it's not cheating. Unless your professor specifically says no outside resources are allowed (like for a take home exam or something) or it's in a setting where it's generally assumed that no outside resources are allowed (like in class during a closed-book exam), then you're allowed to use outside resources. Many students do. This is not cheating. Studying by looking up answers for a review guide is not cheating.
- Just because someone isn't caught, doesn't automatically mean that it isn't cheating or that the professor doesn't mind. If someone was looking up answers on a closed book exam, that would be cheating regardless of if they were caught and I promise the professor does mind.
Not cheating
She didn’t ‘‘not understand’’ something. She was missing notes. Read my first post carefully. I understood why she would not go to a professor. I think a professor may just tell her to get notes from a classmate.
A prof probably would say that, to ensure she’d get the notes they went over in class, but that doesn’t mean she has to or that looking up information online to supplement or replace her notes is in any way cheating.
What a bizarre thread.
… Classroom notes are not the only way to understand a topic. If I did know the answer to the question “Why did we enter the War of 1812” I would look it up. Simply relying on notes all the time would be just reciting what your teacher told you in class and not really learning.
Still not sure how that is cheating. If she was missing notes, copying another student’s notes would be just the first step, because she would still have to look up something to know what was going on. I doubt many professors limit their studentsto only using assigned texts. Using the internet is like checking something in an encyclopedia.
It seems like OP thinks that the only right/proper/legal way to learn things is being spoon fed only with class materials.
@xxeliza321xx your clarification makes no difference. I’m about to finish my 5th year of graduate school, so between k-12, college, and grad school I’ve got 23 years of school under my belt with more to come. I’ve never encountered a teacher who would consider looking things up on the internet, in a book not assigned in class, in a insert literally any source here as cheating. Doesn’t matter if you’re clarifying notes, missing notes, or supplementing notes. It’s so obviously allowed that it doesn’t even have to be mentioned in the syllabus.
The word “memorizing” makes it seem like the actual exam was posted. If this is the case, yes that is cheating.
If not, if the friend is only memorizing definitions and so on, well that’s part of learning.
It is not like writing an essay and copying from the internet. About the only “bad” thing about what your friend is doing is whether they are using reliable sources (or sources that agree with his thoughts).
@rhandco that’s not what the girl was doing. As per the OP:
I mean yeah, I wouldn’t necessarily consider this the most effective study method, but the question isn’t whether or not this is the best way to study for the exam. The question is whether or not it’s cheating. It’s very clearly not cheating.
Not cheating in this case.
However, I had a student once who used large portions of a wikipedia entry on a take-home exam, without attribution. We had a long talk about plagiarism, as well as the need for numerous, authoritative sources in a well-balanced essay. I did not fail the student because I felt the errors were largely unintentional. But I did have the student do the essay over, with proper citations.
I feel like this thread had such an obvious answer yet it goes on and on.
It’s dead, Jim.