If the exams themselves that were used in the book came from a public source, like most quals I’ve ever seen, then there’s no problem there.
If quals were NOT posted publicly and someone were to give you a copy of an old exam to study off of, then yes, that would be cheating.
I think with the test question, it depends where the tests are from. This past year, my AP Enviro teacher put some (college board released) apes multiple choice and open responses on each test. These were materials I had access to on the internet easily, if I knew what key words to search. He acknowledged that any student could find them if they tried hard enough. In another class, my (elderly, about to retire) AP Psych teacher used a full ap practice test as the midyear. I had already seen the same, because I used it at random to test myself. In both these cases I don’t think the student can be fined as an academic integrity violation because the materials were easy to access and could also be used just as plain studying.
If a teacher re-uses a test from year to year and a current student gets a copy from a previous student, then I think there are different intentions and that can certainly be a case of cheating. The important part is the level of access and the intention. This would be “insider access” because the average kid in the class doesn’t know someone who already took the class, and that someone might not have their old tests.
How would the current or former student know that the teacher uses the same exam?
Realistically, most professors don’t really change up their exam year-to-year in any appreciable way - they often give very similar questions with just a few details changed up. If they don’t make the old exams publicly available, then those few who acquired an old exam will have a significant advantage.
Can you explain this? One student needed to use their phone to translate from Chinese to English?
On the subject of studying with old exams: I wonder whether the “curtail access” approach is best. IB schools generally use past exams for preparation and assessment purposes, much as students preparing for the SAT/ACT would take past questions. If the SAT stopped reusing questions (the IB creates a brand-new exam each year), this wouldn’t be an issue.
It’s theoretically possible to buoy in-school grades (though not final results) by memorizing past questions. The size of the IB question bank makes this a strategy with very low returns. Some sort of centralized question bank, available to schools with a subscription, might solve the issue others have described.
Of course, there’s also the option of creating new questions for every exam, which is the optimum solution but also more time-consuming.
I really can’t understand why teachers would base grades partly on homework unless it’s of the essay/project variety rather than the fill-in-the-blank, one-right-answer variety. That seems like an invitation to cheat.
She needed her phone to translate from English to Chinese when she didn’t quite understand what the English words meant in the context of the problems.
@NotVerySmart , I must assume you are not talking about math, physics or science/engineering classes.
I much prefer teachers who base grades partly on homework because that is something easy to excel at, and doing it well helps us learn the material needed for the final exams. There have been times where I have been asked to help my classmates with homework, and I am glad when I can do this - I look at it as another opportunity to show myself I truly understand it, if I can explain it to someone. I don’t think this is cheating at all if I help someone, or if she helps me because we have talked about it after trying on our own, and I revise/clarify part of my answers - unless of course it was expressly prohibited by the instructor.
There are studies that show posting the honor code in the room and reading it aloud before exams curbs cheating.
I still don’t see that using old exams is cheating, unless the professor specifically asks his students not to share the tests with others. There’s nothing wrong with it!
I know that my dad makes up completely new exams every year, and it IS a lot of work for him since he’s an engineering professor. He has to come up with new design problems. But he does it.
However, all those benefits can also result from homework that doesn’t count towards a final grade.
I can understand why teachers might base grades on lab reports or papers done at home. When each question simply has a “right” answer, it’s all too easy for students to look it up or ask others for the answer. In the rare instances when I’ve had teachers who based grades partly on homework with right and wrong answers, the midpoint of the bell curve has jumped from 60% to 90%+, and it’s not hard to guess why. I don’t see how this demonstrates mastery of the material.
I’ve moved to having the homework count LESS than it used to, but if it doesn’t count at all then no one is going to do it. As it stands, they don’t get much benefit from it. This fall I am moving to an online homework system. I’ve never been all that in favor of them, but it has become necessary, unfortunately.
@ sylvan8798: That is not relevant to the question of whether there is an honor code violation. Suppose that I leave a recycling bin at the curb with a copy of the exam in it. If a student sees the exam and reads it, he may not be committing a crime, but I would argue that he is violating the honor code. While there is no expectation of privacy in this case, the question here is not whether I have a grievance; rather, the question is whether the student has violated the honor code.
Of course, shredding the exam is preferable to putting it in the recycling bin. But the question is what should happen if someone has made the mistake of recycling the exam. I cannot condone the dishonorable actions of those who take advantage of others’ mistakes.
Mechanical pencils with small pieces of paper rolled up inside. This is one reason some classrooms require wooden pencils for the tests.
There are apps now that you can photograph a math problem and it returns the answer to you with work shown.
The old fashioned “help your friend”. If my D took the test, and if she remembers any questions, she always shares them with the students who will take this test in future. Building good karma 
I’m sure the other students who take classes without having someone feeding them unauthorized materials from the previous year would not feel the same way.
How is the student supposed to know that this is a “mistake”? You threw something in the trash. He happened to go past before the stuff was taken away and noticed your old exam there on the top. “Hmm, that could be helpful, I’ll try to answer all those questions to get ready for this week’s exam.” He has no way of knowing why you threw it there or whether you are still using the same questions on the new version of the exam. In fact, unless your name is on the exam or you are the only professor who ever teaches the course (and how does he know that?) he doesn’t even know it was YOUR old exam per se.
What about past IB tests? The SL Chemistry exam included a question that was almost entirely identical to a past test question. The tests are not easily available online, but teachers have them (hopefully they kept them) and if you look hard enough, they are on Google Drive. Was it cheating by using those to prepare?
I know some high school student who managed to trick the College Board into giving him access to all previous AP tests for all subjects. That uncovered a lot of questions that were reused, and in principle you could just memorize the answers. It’s certainly not an efficient way to study, but you’d be hard-pressed to justify that using information that is not publicly available (e.g. non-released old AP exams or IB exams) is not cheating.
Well, all IB exams are released to the teachers, but not the students. The teachers are free to do whatever they want with them. Each school sets its own policy on what it’s okay for students to have, but my school has no such policy, so it became a gray area.
For example, our math teacher used the papers from successive years as our practice for exams - but they counted for a grade. So by the second test, some students had it figured out and memorized them in advance. I agree that is completely cheating.
But as far as the actual IB tests go, old papers are available and nearly all students use them to practice. I don’t really know where I stand on that…