EPTAcademic Morals - Page 2
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Roe
Canada6002 Posts
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Skilledblob
Germany3392 Posts
I study languages and every professor has to write the tests himself. We even get the old tests so we can have a look at them to see how the questions will be structured but it doesnt help you cheat in any way because the content of the questions willl be different anyway. If teachers rely on premade tests and use those for midterms and what not and that gets leaked? Then I really I dont blame anyone for using that. It's the teachers own lazyness that's getting him. | ||
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aebriol
Norway2066 Posts
On February 16 2012 22:20 Hidden_MotiveS wrote: Seems like the people in that video got a slap on the wrist. Happened to one of my courses first year too :/ Test bank is immoral. Dunno if I'd do it. A test bank is a list of questions profs can choose from to put on an exam. They're made by publishers. When the Prof puts them on a test they expect students to have never seen those said problems before. The questions can have been used before. There is nothing immoral about getting tests that were given before, and study those. If the test bank is large enough so that, for example, only 10% of it is used on any given test ... if you manage to have all 100% of the questions right from the test bank, you deserve to do well on that test... | ||
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PleasureImWallace
Canada45 Posts
Unfortunately, some kids who cheated probably came forward because they thought he was being legit You can't look at tests scores and tell who cheated, although he did give a good delivery, very heartfelt BUT: Looking at patterns of past test questions isn't cheating, it's being smart. If I'm playing roulette and notice a flaw in the table that causes it to land black-11 more often than not, am I cheating by betting black 11? Nope, same shit, IMO | ||
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Skilledblob
Germany3392 Posts
On February 16 2012 22:28 PleasureImWallace wrote: That prof is so full of bullshit when it comes to "We will have a list of everyone who cheated" Unfortunately, some kids who cheated probably came forward because they thought he was being legit You can't look at tests scores and tell who cheated, although he did give a good delivery, very heartfelt if 50 people are giving the same answer word for word then you can be damn sure they cheated. | ||
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whatthefat
United States918 Posts
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Hypertension
United States802 Posts
Cheating would be memorizing/obtaining the answers without understanding why they are the right answer. As long as you have the basic understanding you should be able to get the questions right with a clear conscience. | ||
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Hidden_MotiveS
Canada2562 Posts
On February 16 2012 22:25 aebriol wrote: The questions can have been used before. There is nothing immoral about getting tests that were given before, and study those. If the test bank is large enough so that, for example, only 10% of it is used on any given test ... if you manage to have all 100% of the questions right from the test bank, you deserve to do well on that test... You don't know how large the test bank is. I did not make any assumptions on it and I don't know why you're allowed too. Some classes are purely memorization based and even for the ones that aren't, once you've seen how to do a problem the exact way once, chances are you won't get it wrong again. There is nothing wrong about studying from tests that were given before, I will agree with that. Honestly, I think a lot of the people in this thread have a different sense of morality than I do, or they're in high school and have no idea what kind of questions get tested in university. I think using test banks is immoral whereas others don't. It's worse for me though, since I might use the test bank even though I knew it was immoral to do it. | ||
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doubleupgradeobbies!
Australia1223 Posts
On February 16 2012 23:23 Hidden_MotiveS wrote: You don't know how large the test bank is. I did not make any assumptions on it and I don't know why you're allowed too. Some classes are purely memorization based and even for the ones that aren't, once you've seen how to do a problem the exact way once, chances are you won't get it wrong again. There is nothing wrong about studying from tests that were given before, I will agree with that. Honestly, I think a lot of the people in this thread have a different sense of morality than I do, or they're in high school and have no idea what kind of questions get tested in university. I think using test banks is immoral whereas others don't. It's worse for me though, since I might use the test bank even though I knew it was immoral to do it. Honestly I don't see the problem with using a test bank even if the test were exactly the same every year and therefore you can know exactly whats going to be on the test. It's their prerogative to test you on the scope of the subject, if it's so down to memorization that you can memorize answers exactly then it's either really stupid to give you access to the test bank in the first place, or they consider being able to memorize everything in the test bank to be an acceptable level of achievement for the subject. Any moral concerns would be the actual act of obtaining the test bank. Eg if it wasn't publicly available and you had to get it via dodgy means then it would be immoral to get access to it. If they are giving you access to a test bank and expect you not to make a basic logical connection that these questions are likely to be on the exam, then that's just retarded and they should make the exams better. More likely they don't actually give a shit how much you know besides exactly whats on the test bank, by memorizing the test bank you will have learnt everything they expect you to take away from the subject anyway. | ||
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ddengster
Singapore129 Posts
And to those claiming profs are 'lazy', think twice. Sometimes it just isn't possible to generate completely new exams for each new semester. Plus, they have prepare a grading scheme(for consistent grading purposes) on top of that. Add in other classes they have to teach etc, and you'll find out they don't really have that much time at all. To those who say TAs help with grading mid-terms/finals, there's probably something wrong with the school's system if that's the case. Anyway, at the end of the day, it's down to whether you want to really learn in depth or not. Grades don't matter that much in life. Just don't get your transcript peppered with too many Cs, and focus on what's really important. | ||
Daigomi
South Africa4316 Posts
On February 16 2012 19:04 Rickson wrote: Actually, my motivation in school is to do well. The test bank itself is filled with 10,000 questions and the test is 60 questions multiple choice. But out of those 10,000 questions these 60 questions will be in there for sure so if i spend the time doing all the questions, (10,000 questions for 20 chapters-only being tested on 5) which will only take a few days. That's why this blog is here  I'm asking what TL thinks about using test banks. If that's the case, there's nothing wrong with it. Instructors often use questions from past exams, and those same past exams are often made available to students by the university. In fact, more than 0.6% of the question come from past exam papers, so there's nothing wrong with studying from a question bank as large as the one you're using. If the question bank contained 120 questions on the other hand, and it wasn't publicly available to students, it would be another story, That said, I'm not quite sure how you plan to study from a test bank with 10,000 questions (or even 2,500 if you only need to study 5 of the chapters). Assuming the test is designed to take 1 hour, that means 2,500 questions should take 42 hours to go through once, and it's not as if you'll remember the answers to those questions if you see them once (or even a few times). It seems more efficient to simply study the work (which shouldn't take more than 40 hours), and then use the testbank to set up a few mock tests and see how you fare. | ||
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JustPassingBy
10776 Posts
In my line of work, before the exams are handed out to the students, at least one and at most two persons have seen any question of the exam. That is one, the professor who thought of the question, of course, and two, maybe - only maybe - an assistant the professor trusts in to keep everything secret and give him honest feedback about the difficulty level on the exam. Of course, the difficulty of such exams can vary very much, which is why there is no fixed percentage of points needed to reach a certain level. After the exams have been graded (with points), all of the assistants and the professor take a look at the points and decide on the amount of points needed to pass and which grade is giving after reaching how many points. You can use a test bank and trust on the honesty of all the students. But this is just stupid because under so many students there will always be few people who will try hard to cheat, and more people who can be persuaded easily to cheat, should the few have found a good way to do so. | ||
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QuanticHawk
United States32130 Posts
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Servius_Fulvius
United States947 Posts
On February 16 2012 18:30 Rickson wrote: I have a midterm coming up and the professor uses generic questions from the testbank provided by the publishers. This is very obvious because the sample questions, sample midterm, all reflect the same pattern and type -furthermore student's last semester said he uses the same tests every 3~4 year in cycles. So my question is, is it cheating if I used the test bank to study? Now this test bank CAN be purchased through third party sources but not directly from the publisher and the publisher even sells it through third party merchants via a cd rom format. Sounds like the publisher found a clever way to profit off students looking for practice. That's kind of smart! This doesn't sound like academic dishonesty - you're using resources that you could purchase fairly. Believe me, much worse things are going on. During my first year of grad school I witnessed a lot of shenanigans firsthand from people who already have a BS in engineering. Primarily, the international students traded years worth of old homeworks and tests (same with American students, but to a far less degree). Some of these exams were not handed back to the class which means the old student got the exam back from the professor themselves on the condition of not sharing it with anyone. One time we had a midterm and the top five scores in the class were students who had the homework from the year before (over half the exam questions were on that assignment). It pissed me off that I was studying my butt off and not getting very far while some classmates were light years ahead due to answer keys and old work. There are upsides to this story. The students who took shortcuts for better grades had to study much harder later down the road. Additionally, they have less long term retention than the students who studied the material apart from question banks. When it all comes down to it, professors anticipate things like this. If used as a crutch instead of a study tool the students are only hurting themselves, so a lot of professors don't really care. They're extremely busy people and if they are at a research institution then their ability to teach is secondary. | ||
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Klockan3
Sweden2866 Posts
On February 16 2012 22:28 PleasureImWallace wrote: That prof is so full of bullshit when it comes to "We will have a list of everyone who cheated" Unfortunately, some kids who cheated probably came forward because they thought he was being legit You can't look at tests scores and tell who cheated, although he did give a good delivery, very heartfelt BUT: Looking at patterns of past test questions isn't cheating, it's being smart. If I'm playing roulette and notice a flaw in the table that causes it to land black-11 more often than not, am I cheating by betting black 11? Nope, same shit, IMO Actually you are cheating by doing that, you'd get banned and blacklisted from casinos really quickly for it. Also just because the school doesn't have any protection against something doesn't mean that it isn't cheating. For example if I could put a screen into my contact lenses which allowed me to browse through things when I shut my eyes it would still be cheating even if none could possibly notice it. As long as the examiner sees it as cheating then it is. Is it cheating? or is it the profs fault for being lazy as fuck Ask your examiner, if he is okay with it then it isn't cheating. Otherwise it is. | ||
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Boblion
France8043 Posts
Those teachers are lazy idiots. | ||
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Gummy
United States2180 Posts
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Uranium
United States1077 Posts
Do you understand the material? Do you feel that an A accurately represents your ability level with the subject material? Then you should feel fine about using the test bank to study. If your professor actually gave a shit, he'd write his own questions. Edit: On that note, are you studying engineering/science or one of the 'social sciences'? If you are studying engineering/science then you are much better off actually understanding what you are doing. But I don't think there's any way you could do 2500 engineering problems in a few days, so this must be social science. In that case, just don't even care because your degree is bullshit and you wouldn't learn anything real anyway. | ||
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caradoc
Canada3022 Posts
On February 16 2012 18:30 Rickson wrote: Hi TL! So if you did read my last blog I'm happily to say I am out of that slump and back into that motivated student that I was. Good food, family, exercise and friends and spiritual rejuvenation helped me get out of that depressed state completely! Anyways, just something I had thought about while studying. I have a midterm coming up and the professor uses generic questions from the testbank provided by the publishers. This is very obvious because the sample questions, sample midterm, all reflect the same pattern and type -furthermore student's last semester said he uses the same tests every 3~4 year in cycles. So my question is, is it cheating if I used the test bank to study? Now this test bank CAN be purchased through third party sources but not directly from the publisher and the publisher even sells it through third party merchants via a cd rom format. After watching this video Is it cheating? or is it the profs fault for being lazy as fuck thoughts? When I TA, and help to make exams, we think about these types of things explicitly and make new tests from scratch. He's lazy. Its fine to use test bank. | ||
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Derez
Netherlands6068 Posts
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