<p>I think a lot of us here have had exposure to test banks. These resources are often an important part of any student's test preparation. There are plenty of open websites, restricted databases, and private archives that store midterms and finals by various professors from past semesters. </p>
<p>Whether professors willingly published their tests online or students stole their tests and uploaded or some other reason, they're online now.</p>
<p>There are some departments that maintain an archive on their Berkeley page (math dept, for instance) and many more that offer no such resource. An issue that has been seen in the little world of business majors is the accumulation of old tests (presumably stolen) at the hands of the business fraternities as another way to bait in pledges or bolster the image of the group. </p>
<p>Anyway, I'm not here to argue this or that, but I was just wondering how you all feel about test archives. They have been a god-send for some of us, and a curse for others ("unfair playing field").</p>
<p>Do you think certain departments should be coerced to publish their tests? This would put a lot of pressure on professors to continually come up with new ways to test the same material. Isn't that a good thing? Of course this just isn't very plausible for many major departments where there is really only one way to test a certain topic. </p>
<p>Do these exam banks do more harm than good? Do they not make a difference? Do they really make an unfair playing field? Your input?</p>
<p>I see 3 kinds of scenario regarding test archives.</p>
<p>Case 1: The professor posts his past exams on bspace and announces about it. Usually this means the exam will be something quite different from the past or the professor is being generous to the students. I have absolutely no pity for those who don’t utilize this and get a bad grade on the exam because of it.</p>
<p>Case 2: The professor doesn’t mention about the past exam, but the they are uploaded on ninjacourses and other websites that are known to most students and are accessible by everyone. I can’t make a clear-cut opinion like Case 1, but if you’re a diligent and hard-working student, you should certainly study beyond the notes and the textbook and looking up exams on ninjacourses is certainly part of it. I think this is still a fair game since anyone can access it.</p>
<p>Case 3: Exams can be accessed through only if you have membership of the society/club that has the exam. I experienced this benefit myself recently and managed to score a full standard deviation above average. It really hurts the people who studied hard but had no access to the exam. I felt very guilty after the test, but I kinda realized there has to be some people in Berkeley who maintained a very high GPA not necessarily b/c they’re smart, but they used these outside resources to learn what questions they will be expected on the test.</p>
<p>Obviously, banning test archives is not the solution. Somebody will still steal it and post the exam as always. I think the least thing the professors can do is not publish the answer keys online. This will prevent students memorizing the work and the answers and just regurgitate them on the actual exam.</p>
<p>Definitely agree banning them isn’t the solution - it’s impractical and unrealistic. Personally I just see the use of old tests as a form of resourcefulness… maybe that’s just me. All I have to say is, don’t memorize just the questions on those exams… I’ve had classmates who thought that was enough “studying”, wow.</p>
<p>On a side note, is there a way to access these test banks WITHOUT being a member? Perhaps for a small fee?</p>
<p>I think having access to these test bank is only unfair IF the professor reuses the questions on his/her exam. For a majority of my classes, memorizing past exam question will not translate into an A.</p>
<p>My professor reused the exam without even bothering to change the numbers for the exam i did very well. Because the past exam was posted on a website that almost no one had access to, the average was pretty low and everything seemed to be alright. So yes, this perfectly fits your IF scenario of reusing the questions.</p>
<p>Publicly posting past tests* would neutralize any advantage that private test banks would give. Of course, instructors do need to vary their tests.</p>
<p>I remember in junior high school, a teacher gave a test one day with a section of true/false questions. Knowing that students would talk during lunch period, he had two different versions of the test. The before lunch period test had all true answers in the true/false section, while the after lunch period test had all false answers in the true/false section (or maybe the other way around). The results were not surprising…</p>
<p>at the end of the clip, it stated that they were going to “revamp” the test. isn’t this a good thing? instead of keeping the questions stagnant and stale, the tests evolve, forcing test-writers to become more creative and theoretical than just plug-and-chug. this is what we SHOULD be testing on in the first place, right? ideas vs pure memorization. </p>
<p>imo, it’s really on the professors.
for frenkel’s 53 class 3 semesters ago, our 1st midterm was VERBATIM one of his old tests you could find with a google search (he didn’t provide it, but i could tell about 1/4 of the class knew it as there was a big <em>gasp</em> seconds after he said “you may now begin”). needless to say it was an easy 100% finishing with like 15 minutes left.
now THAT was ridiculous. </p>
<p>more recently, in my accounting class, my professor had about 1/4 of the test from an old midterm with just the numbers swapped around. this was more acceptable, but again, with such a tight standard deviation, any advantage is a big advantage.</p>
<p>is the answer to this “problem” to coerce professors to publish old exams? (with or without the solutions)</p>
<p>@UpMagic: Then I would place the fault on the professor. I don’t think its that hard to create a different exam every semester since some topics are so broad that he/she can focus each exam on a different aspect of the topic. I also don’t think you can blame students for using past exams as resources.</p>
<p>@HelloAll: I suppose it is logical to blame the professor. I just don’t feel comfortable that I kinda rigged the whole thing.
At least we’re living in times that you can search old exams through Ninjacourses and other honor societies. This is so much better than in my freshman year when people would get past exams through Dropbox and almost everyone was unaware that honor societies would post past exams. </p>
<p>The Psych department was super smart about this and decided to never return the exams. If the student has questions about the exam, he/she can come to office hours just to look at it.</p>
<p>I think one can make a similar argument about having pdf solution of textbooks shared through Dropbox.</p>
<p>It is worth noting that Eta Kappa Nu has had EE and CS exam files for decades back into the “check out the paper exam” age, with full knowledge of the faculty (who would sometimes drop off paper exams there for the exam files).</p>
<p>Having the old exams out in public for everyone to see (a) forces instructors to make new exams, and (b) eliminates the advantage gained by private exam files.</p>
<p>Having old exams publicly available also allows new students (whether freshmen, transfer, or graduate) to get an idea of what the course content is in Berkeley courses, which may not necessarily line up with courses that they have taken at other colleges (or high school AP and IB HL courses).</p>