

200 Students Admit To 'Cheating' On Exam...Was It Really Cheating - timwiseman
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101118/21485811928/200-students-admit-to-cheating-exam-bigger-question-is-if-it-was-really-cheating-studying.shtml

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pmiller2
I, too, wonder what this professor did to detect the "cheating" here (which I
do not believe was cheating at all, assuming the test bank questions weren't
obtained under false pretenses[1]). Did they simply score too high?

As someone with firsthand experience in writing tests, I can't actually blame
him for using the publisher's test bank questions -- writing good test items
is hard! On the other hand, in the video linked in the article, he never
actually claims to have written the questions. He only says that he "creates"
the exams (though, granted, his phrasing is a little misleading). Again, as
someone who's written exams before, I think creating an exam based on a
publisher's bank of questions is a legitimate way of writing an exam.

As usual, I suspect the real truth of the matter is quite a bit murkier than
is being presented by either side.

[1] Test banks and solutions manuals are frequently only made available to
professors, so if the materials were obtained by pretending to be a professor,
I'd definitely consider that cheating.

