<p>The answers were not reached from their own knowledge or the notes taken in class, so it is cheating.</p>
<p>Your sheer presence would adversely affect me by making me go numb…</p>
<p>Can I look at the solutions manual while studying… or is that cheating?
Is studying in a non-dehydrated state cheating?
Uhhh I’m going numb.</p>
<p>You should have spent all that time wasted debating on studying, or trying to change URLs of other links on your professors web site.</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-life/college-life/college-life/www.-----.edu/...../final10.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-life/college-life/college-life/www.-----.edu/...../final10.html</a></p>
<p>Those people also spent time studying the previous years midterms… it was a risk on their part as to whether or not it would help at all.</p>
<p>Jaded much?</p>
<p>Now it’s time for you to take a risk:</p>
<p>1) Suck it up, study and probably get a B in the class.</p>
<p>2) Use your self-imposed “donor” status to try to *****out the professor, but end up bringing shame to your famiry, leading to sepiku.</p>
<p>It’s not really cheating… the answers were posted pretty clearly, most professors would kind of know not to do that if they’re gonna use the same exam. I’ve had professors who’ve said “HEY if you wanna study, here’s a link to the previous year and you can see what kinds of questions I ask, some of those may even be on the test” and they’re open about it. You know how difficult it is to restrict access to a previous semester’s page? -snaps fingers- really, that easy. They can heavily restrict access to the page to the point that you’d need google’s Wayback machine to bypass it, and I’m not sure if it’d be possible even then. Although at THAT point it would be cheating, but using a previous version as a study guide and getting lucky? Yeah… no. You sound really entitled “my parents donate a lot of money to this university, it would look bad if you didn’t ‘make sure’ I aced all my tests.” You have no right to be mad at the professor OR the other students, be mad at yourself for not actually applying yourself as hard as they did. If I study for a test but still choke yeah, I won’t like it, but I’ve only got myself to blame for it in 95% of the cases. </p>
<p>Here’s a tip: When you confront him, and you may as well since you’ve gotten half of us curious about it, tell him how you feel like you were disadvantaged because you didn’t realize you had that as a resource on this test so you feel if you knew you were allowed to use it, your grade would have been higher. Maybe the Prof will be nice and give you some extra credit, boost you to an 80%. </p>
<p>Wow… and I’m one of those people that takes one look at those college-success gimmicky “you only don’t have time for this because you’re irresponsible” “you have to own up to your own faults and not blame everyone else” things and wants to savagely beat the person who came up with them for being short-sighted, pedantic and not considering extreme honestly-out-of-your-control examples.</p>
<p>…This is not one of them, that gimmicky crap actually applies here.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Was “famiry” intentional? Either way, it’s perfect.</p>
<p>Your loss, bud.
If I had been doing problems from a textbook that had answers, and one of the problems turned up on the exam exactly, then good on me.</p>
<p>I can’t comprehend how someone can consider this cheating. The rules you’re referring to are clearly not valid in this situation. If the students were handed the test from someone whom had already taken the class, stole it from the professors desk, found it on a website they were not authorized to be on, or something of that nature, then you might have a case. Anything posted online, by the professor, is obviously fair game. </p>
<p>If this is considered cheating, I’ve been a very bad boy.</p>
<p>Tomas, it was a website they weren’t supposed to be on.</p>
<p>The website was password protected. The professor, however, used the same password last year as this year. (again, the professor’s fault) The link to last year’s website was not made available. It thus was found by someone in class by “trial and error” – well by changing a year which is probably the first thing anyone tries. The links to the solutions were taken down 3 weeks into class, but people had already saved the pdf’s to their own computers. It was not authorized material to bring into class.</p>
<p>I likely worded what occured poorly. </p>
<p>It’s not as if he happened to link to the old exam and used the same exam, that wouldn’t be cheating. He didn;t say here is an old exam to study from. </p>
<p>We were not authorized or permitted to use the website with the solutions…the professor had no intention of letting this material be freely available.</p>
<p>But yes I do see all the shades of gray and think it’s an interesting issue, grades and morality aside.</p>
<p>If the webpage was not meant for you, and it was password protected(game changer), I do consider it unethical, and to a certain degree, cheating.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t let it slide if I were you.</p>
<p>Lol this reminds me of the Time I was at drivers Ed, and the teacher had to make alot of calls.</p>
<p>But a test at a good college, I don’t know what to tell you.</p>
<p>I’m sure whatever hapens, hapens for the best.</p>
<p>just hold your chin up, and make good out of what’s bad.</p>
<p>and give pride to your famiry Your FAMIRY!!.</p>
<p>god damn mongorians always knocking down my ****ty wall</p>
<p>Hold up.
So last year’s exam w/ answers was posted on the site. Some students decided to see if they could access it and they succeeded in doing so.
They knew they had last year’s exam w/ the answers but how were they to know that the professor was going to use the same exact exam?
I doubt they did. I think they were looking at that exam to help them prepare better and it obviously paid off for them.</p>
<p>The issue with that argument is that it wasn’t meant for the current students to have. It was a webpage from a previous semester’s class that was password protected. I’m not saying that the students who did use the test were completely at fault. As a matter of fact, I think that it is more the professor’s fault for being foolish enough to use the same exact test. Even if it wasn’t on the site, there are lots of organizations whose members keep backfiles of tests and assignments from past classes for their members to use. It is dumb for the professor to assume that people won’t have access to past years tests regardless.</p>
<p>I am loathe to condemn the students who did use the test. There wouldn’t be any problem with having the past year’s test had the professor not used the same one. I am not even sure what I would do had I sat down and realized that the answers to the test in front of me sat in the folder of notes I had been allowed to bring.</p>
<p>Yeah, it also seems like the students didn’t know the test would be the same. Had they known, that might have been worse, but they probably just thought they found something good to study with, which is fine. I think this is a bit of a gray area, but I wouldn’t complain further, it’s not bad enough for that imo.</p>
<p>They suspected it because the homeworks that were also posted on last year’s website, were the exact same as this year. The professor seems incredibly lazy, and it didn’t take a leap for anyone to suspect the exam would be similar, maybe not identitical (which it happened to be).</p>
<p>I agree it’s a grey area and more the fault of the professor than the students. Which is why I’m certainly not naming names, but I do have an issue with the professor that I’m still unsure if I should take up with the dean.</p>
<p>I think you probably should have let the professor know via an anonymous e-mail that you knew of people cheating in the class and how they had gone about it. Possibly CC the dean or something on it to see what would happen.</p>
<p>I know at the schools I’ve attended getting old solution sets in any way or form was considered cheating, especially for tests. I imagine these other guys have been cheating their way through the whole class since you also said the homeworks were identical, as well.</p>
<p>[Exam</a> Questions: Outsourcing vs. Crowdsourcing - ProfHacker - The Chronicle of Higher Education](<a href=“http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/exam-questions-outsourcing-vs-crowdsourcing/28911]Exam”>http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/exam-questions-outsourcing-vs-crowdsourcing/28911)</p>
<p>responding to ever-heightening demands for assessment, and of course many part-timers are (explicitly or subtly) steered into such practices. (And, as Robert mentions in his second post on this story, the local context at UCF–often lauded as a model of cost-cutting educational innovation–is not irrelevant.)</p>