<p>I’m in AP Bio and last week we had a big test. In addition to reading/taking notes over the chapters of the textbook the test covered I looked online to see if I could find some practice tests. That’s how I like to study, I didn’t have any bad intentions doing it. </p>
<p>The problem is that I guess my Bio teacher uses those same resources as I found to write her tests. Every question on the test was from those resources… I knew most of the answers since I had been using them as study aides the days before. </p>
<p>I ended up getting the highest grade in the class. It was a raw A (we have a huge curve) and she takes students who get raw As out to dinner. I feel sick about this because I feel like I cheated since I had access to the questions ahead of time and other students didn’t. Should I talk to the teacher about it? I will probably decline dinner at least. I don’t know what to do or if I should even do anything. Advice from parents?</p>
<p>Cheating is when you know you’re about to do something wrong and you do it. What you did was simply utilizing your resources, there’s nothing wrong with that! I try to look up practice tests as well. Your teacher should have tried to think of original questions. If you were able to find those tests without much trouble, then I don’t know why she wouldn’t think students would be able to access them.
But I completely understand why you feel bad about it. If you think you deserve that grade then it should be fine, it sounds like you did your own share of studying. Next time, I would try to avoid that specific resource. If you feel like you didn’t deserve it (as in the only thing you studied off of was that practice test) then maybe you should talk to the teacher about it.</p>
<p>Agree with the others that without the prohibition on viewing such public materials and no intentions to cheat, go enjoy the dinner.</p>
<p>A suggestion if you voluntarily want to do this and have time:</p>
<p>To ensure you’ve mastered the material, however, keep up the studying of the course materials and taking other practice tests without looking at the answers beforehand. </p>
<p>However, this suggestion is mainly to maximize your chances of earning a 4-5 on the AP exam and to ensure you’re well prepared for courses which assume AP Bio or its college equivalent Bio 101 as a prerequisite. This is much more important. </p>
<p>Good luck and ease up on your conscience. You did nothing wrong.</p>
<p>If you were not given any explicit instructions to stay off all biology sites (which I think would be an absolutely ridiculous requirement), then you did not cheat - you simply studied using a resource freely available to all.</p>
<p>Do you feel that you shortcircuited your own learning? That’s what really matters - the spirit of cheating rules is prevent that from happening. In most areas of human life, we we cooperate on solutions - and share answers - all the time. </p>
<p>Since you didn’t shortcircuit, but just happened to find the questions she used (without knowing in advance), it wasn’t cheating. But don’t use the same resource again (which still wouldn’t be the letter of cheating) if you know it will circumvent the learning process.</p>
<p>Little story: H and I were recently invited to a Trivia Night. We’re okay at Trivia (watch Jeopardy, do crossword puzzles) but hardly terrific. Not really knowing anything about how the game would be played, we found our very old Trivial Pursuit game and played a few times before going. It turned out that a fair number of the questions at the party were ones we had reviewed! We definitely had an advantage, but I don’t feel badly about it; anyone there could have done the same thing.</p>
<p>Law students are encouraged to read prior exams as a learning tool. </p>
<p>As mini says, the key is that you learn. If you studied resources in addition to the book, frankly I applaud you going the extra mile of accessing. You earned your A and your dinner.</p>
<p>Perhaps, but I would imagine that the actual test is not identical to previous tests. My biochem professor in med school let us keep our tests as a learning tool, so there were a ton of old tests floating around. But she never once reused a question, and her tests were always challenging. Thats how it should be done.</p>
<p>Enjoy your dinner! The teacher was incredibly lazy and foolish- we all know where kids look and what resources are available to them- even re-using certain questions is not safe. I always compiled my exams shortly before the testing date and cross checked them against older tests just to “make sure”.</p>
<p>Do NOT tell the teacher. The teacher might turn it into a discipline case against you and you end up in all sorts of trouble that you didn’t deserve.</p>
<p>So you see, it’s pretty unanimous: What you did, as you described it, is not cheating. But notice that many also found fault with your teacher. Unfortunately, it would be very risky for you to tell your teacher what you did, even though that is what you want to do to clear your conscience. Your teacher might penalize you and call it cheating because you have exposed your teacher’s mistake potentially embarrassing her/him.</p>
<p>Just read this to my husband the AP Bio teacher. He says he WISHES the students would use the available resources, including practice questions.</p>
<p>Look, IMO, your teacher probably thought: “Hey! No one’s gonna think of <em>this</em> website! Let me cog the questions!!”
She probably thinks that her students wouldn’t dig up practice tests from the net and rock at them. Shame on her. If you feel too bad about it - let her know. Maybe next time she’ll try and put some effort into her AP CLASS.
Don’t worry. You’re a good person, and you’re overthinking the whole situation. No one can prosecute you for being dedicated. :)</p>
<p>I don’t think there’s any problem with what you did. I will, however, come to somewhat of a defense of the teacher, who’s getting bashed here. As a college physics and engineering instructor, I often use problems from other texts on exams. And since most of the major texts now have problem solutions posted online on various sites, it’s theoretically possible that a student would find and study one or more of the problems which ended up on MY particular exam. So much the better for them. It’s not necessary to reinvent the wheel every time you want an exam problem. </p>
<p>As a student (both undergrad and grad) I often had exams which included problems taken from the TEXT WE WERE USING AT THE TIME. If you studied all the problems and made sure you knew how to do them, you were golden. I don’t see that as laziness on the part of the professors, as the student still had to work at it and gain some understanding in order to do well.</p>