^ If those materials were not legitimately obtained – as in, released by the CollegeBoard – then it’s still cheating. Who knows if that person on Reddit got the test by honest means.
You could have saved your butt by disclosing immediately after the test that you had seen the same test on somewhere else instead of having people finding it out.
I know in some colleges, it’s considered honor code violation by reviewing previous exams that’s not explicitly distributed. It’s stupid and really only saves some lazy prof’s work so that they don’t need to make brand new exams. But that seems to be the rules at many places.
There are actually two issues here:
- Student access to a test before it is given. In this case, it was unintentional on the part of the student. If anything, it only exposes the teacher's poor practice of using an old test that could be accessed beforehand, whether by intentional cheaters or accidentally by someone not intending to cheat. (Note that some college instructors and the College Board are also guilty of this poor practice.)
- Student and teacher unauthorized access to the presumably unreleased old AP test. This would be a copyright violation that both of them are guilty of (since both presumably accessed it independently). (It is theoretically possible that the teacher got permission from the College Board to use that test, but that seems highly unlikely.)
OP, this is a very interesting situation. Keep us informed about what happens, please. (I’d need some more info before I gave my opinion on whether or not I’d consider this cheating by you.) Also wondering about your teacher!
I am really shocked that getting old AP questions off the internet would be considered cheating. It’s a great way to study. Do people really think you need to retain a copyright lawyer to surf the internet?
Second, I am not a lawyer but it appears that distributing copyrighted material is a copyright violation, but not accessing copyrighted material, so the student not violating copyright but the teacher may be.
http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html#106
I would think that there would need to be an intent for something to be classified as cheating. However, I also don’t believe the score on the exam taken is legitimate. I agree that the “fault” lies in the person who placed the old exam on the website and users of the website should not have the obligation to find out what is on the site illegally and what isn’t. At some point, if something is in the public domain, it’s fair game. Also, some fault in here lies with the lazy SOB who just recycled an exam. The blame pie has so many slices. If this were a court case, blame first would go to the person who posted to the site without permission, second to the website which has some responsibility to monitor its content, third to the lazy teacher for using an old recycled exam (how hard is it to use some questions from one exam and others from other exams?), and some to the end user.
It may be a question of semantics. OP used the word “cheating” which in my mind, it is not. However, the OP may really have been accused of an honor code violation, which it is (assuming the school has an honor code), IMO.
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I obviously do not know the specifics in this case, but the CB does release some old exams for teachers to use, but does not give access to students. In that case, the teacher may be accused of being lazy, but may not have committed any copyright violations.
Actually, no—you’re getting hung up on the word during, except that it doesn’t actually mean what you think it means. (Hint: It isn’t just limited to crib notes.) And no, it doesn’t mean every study aid has to be explicitly authorized, but students are expected to exert due diligence to ensure that they’re not basing their work on unauthorized sources.
Also: @skieurope is correct, this isn’t cheating. It does, however, appear to be a clear case of academic dishonesty.
The teacher did have access to the College Board exams. However, most of my teachers use these materials as PRACTICE. They use it in class, and the only reason they are not allowed to let students take it home is because College Board doesn’t allow them to. As College Board said, it is illegal to distribute, but I did not. It’s also illegal to reuse, but what’s the verdict on that when even released tests have that watermark on them? Their terms are very vague on that. Yes, @dfbdfb that this falls under academic dishonesty, but there was always the pressure of getting my test canceled or an F. Now the school considers suspension to anyone who even had the document. Also, as a side note, there will be a retake, but who knows if I’ll be allowed to retake it at this rate. I believe everything is online, and that this is one of the easier things to find. Google AP practice exams, and they’ll sure be on the first few pages. Heck, I saw another school website post another exam for a different AP class.
I honestly do not know what the school regards as “cheating” at this point. Some of my classes, for example, have used prep book questions as tests before. If I had owned that prep book, is it cheating also? I believe that if the school had enough students doing it, it is, even if it’s material owned by the student. They believe in academic integrity even though it’s fairly obvious that many people in school cheats for reals.
Sheer volume of people doing something wrong does not make it right; there are plenty of examples in history of large numbers of people doing things that are not “right.”
As described, regardless of which site it was on, it was not cheating. You were trying to do as many practice tests as you could get your hands on. That is laudable not a problem. How in the world would you know one would be the final. Your teacher should have made a final and anticipated that students would be trying to find as many practice tests as possible. You did nothing wrong and you certainly should appeal if they are accusing you of cheating.
@skieurope But I didn’t purposely go out of my way to find a test. I don’t believe in that kind of activity, so that’s the case. Most students would not submit themselves in for this type of situation because it just doesn’t make sense to us. Our grades at this point, matters too much. I agree that doing mass majority doesn’t make something right. For this case, both sides are in the wrong, but the punishment is still too harsh for something unintended.
How were you even caught?
@lostaccount, it doesn’t matter if the test that was found happened to be the final, what matters is if the test that was found was allowed to be used at all.
For those that don’t understand the situation, the College Board releases practice exams to teachers that students that aren’t available to students. Often, teachers will use these tests as practice for the AP exam and/or for the finals in their classes (I believe my teachers have done this in the past). It is illegal for students to access these tests over the Internet, as they are not supposed to be distributed outside of the classroom. However, the OP found a repository on reddit that had a bunch of released “illegal” exams that he/she shouldn’t have had access to. Now, I can’t say if this is cheating, but it is indeed against the CB’s rules.
I saw the post on reddit with the repo and even in the comments there were people asking the OP what he would do if he got into legal trouble for distributing the tests. So yes, it is wrong to look at them ahead of time and the guy who distributed the tests is aware of that. I tried downloading the files (for research purposes only…I’ve already taken my AP exams) but the file was too big and I got impatient and gave up. I wanted to determine whether the test OP looked at was a practice test only released to teachers (very likely) or an actual past exam (highly doubtful, and in this case the teacher would be in the wrong too, but let’s face it, what are the odds that a teacher was able to get an actual past exam when even the most tech-savvy of students cannot?) but I didn’t feel like clogging up the space in my computer with the file.
Very curious to see how this case develops.
Just to chime in though: as long as the OP is telling the truth and everything, I think this example shows how broken our education system is. Geez Louise.
Go catch the real cheaters on the AP exam. Go catch the real cheaters on the SAT/ACT. Go catch people that BLATANTLY cheat. Go improve the educational standards for more people.
Final Update: Well, Saturday school. Anyways, more information about this case. It seems that many many people in the school had access to these secured documents, because the Internet exists (crazy, right?). And well, the school was going to suspend more or less, but I think with legal issues that will rise with that, they had to pick a lesser punishment. As an educational institution, I believe that they should at least try to be aware these things exist. We don’t live in the 20th century. We have the world at our fingertips.
Is it going to be a disciplinary action reported to colleges?