found my university exam online

[uniadvice84747]

i’m in my final year of university and have just done one of my exams. it was a multiple choice question exam done from home online.

basically i’m really confused and feel a bit like i’ve done something i shouldn’t have - my teacher had released practice quizzes over the last few months. these quizzes were taken directly from an external website not linked to the university, so they’re not the teachers own questions etc. didn’t think much of it as they were practice quizzes. i’ve been doing those, printed them off, studied them multiple times etc.

the actual exam today was made up entirely, word for word, of those questions. it took me about 10 minutes to complete an hours exam because i had literally studied the exact questions as revision. so my teacher has basically copied and pasted questions from a different website for our exam. is this allowed? i feel like i’ve cheated because i sort of knew every question and answer before they were up and it’s panicking me a bit, i also don’t understand why a teacher would copy and paste official exam questions for a real exam, it seems so risky? you can literally google the question and the whole quiz comes up with all of the answers on the original website?

Won't everyone else sitting the exam from your group also get 100%?
Sadly, my experience as a teacher suggests otherwise!

I would take this as a stroke of good luck and not tell anyone about it. Plagiarism issues are a matter between the teacher and the website/university, none of your business.

@Tal45

This just happened in one of my sons mocks.

How on earth can you do exams at home? The potential for people to cheat (or in your case to look like they've cheated) is huge. Seems like a terrible idea to me and would never be allowed in schools. Crazy.

@Tal45 probably is greater scope for cheating, but I did a professional exam online in summer 2020. You can't leave window with the exam open, to google something. You need to leave your camera and mic on and invigilators watch through the screen, also we were recorded. If you needed the loo you had to say you were going, and there was a 3 min time limit on it, that would have been the only opportunity to cheat.

Absolutely not your fault, you used resources which were freely and legitimately available to you before the exam to study, which is what students are expected to do.

Your lecturer has messed up here and it may be, as other posters have mentioned, everyone sweeps the exam because the questions are online. If anyone asks, just be honest and say what you've said here - you aren't in the wrong at all.

I had similar, for a written exam in my finals I had to perform a semiotic analysis of a particular topic. Two nights before I'd read a published semiotic analysis of the same topic.

I took it as a stroke of luck.

Sounds like you haven’t done anything wrong. I wouldn’t worry - if it is queried you will be able to explain. Plus I expect you would be able to prove from your computer history that you legitimately accessed the study questions in advance and used them to revise - if you have any handwritten or electronic revision notes if keep them too just in case. By the sounds of it if anyone is going to be in trouble it’s the lecturer!

It’s definitely not an open book exam??

Someone will be in big trouble if this is discovered. DH had a colleague who was found to give a ‘mock’ exam as revision a month prior to the actual exam. The actual exam had the same questions only in a different order.
She was only found out when a pupil who hadn’t studied the mock complained it was unfair!

You only aced this because you have done the work. If you hadn't done all the practice papers you wouldn't have this knowledge. Anyone else who put in similar effort will get similar results. Someone who didn't spend the time probably won't do as well. So from that pint of view it's perfectly fair.

Your lecturer might have some questions to answer but that's hardly your fault or your problem.

@hivemindneeded

You have been conscientious in your revision prep. That's how you know the questions and answers. If you score 100% and they query it, explain this and say you had used that very paper as a practise paper and it is freely available online. Tutor's mistake, not yours.

In fact I would make sure the access to the sites is in your history so you can recall as evidence if required. Just incase your settings delete once a month or something

My dh writes professional exams and they meet together and work out which questions are looking too easy because everyone is getting them right and whether an average candidate would be expected to get some wrong. This should be flagged up if everyone gets them all right.

I had similar years ago for a uni exam. It was exactly the same as a previous years paper which was available in the library and I’d revised using it.

Also dd when doing her science GCSEs had 2x 6 mark questions exactly the same as on a previous paper which we’d gone through the night before.

I don’t think you have done anything you shouldn’t have OP. If the lecturer chose to set the exam based on the practice papers then that is his/her decision however right or wrong it may be. In terms of the value of the exam, a lot depends on the subject - if the question is “calculate X using whathisname’s theory” either you’ve done it or you haven’t. Of course whether it is useful learning to get a lot of information into possibly short-term memory by cramming practice papers is a whole other thread but, again, that is what you were told to do so you did it!

Screenshot and save your internet browsing history. Plus screenshot/download /save as PDF the questions from the revision website. Save it all. Then if you are ever questioned you can show absolutely that you had full access to the question in the exam from your own revision.

And don't feel bad.

You revised so you were prepared.

I'd sit back, relax, say nothing and think, nailed that one!

At uni over 35 years ago. Science subject.
By the final term of final year most of my tutorial group had dropped out of attending. Just me and the only other women on my course were still attending. Lecturer was setting us lots of practice questions.
All the questions on our exams came form those practice questions but with slight variations - ok it was a very mathematical based exam so would have always been on these learning points, but the questions were obviously written that if you’d been to tutorials and discussed with professor you’d know how to do them
Nice for me. I thought it was fair deal. If the guys had bothered to get out of bed and attend their tutorials and listened to the prof they’d have had the same advantage
Moral of story, if you put the work in and do all the practice questions - then yes things will seem awfully familiar. That’s the point. Practice makes perfect and hard work gets rewarded

Some years ago Swansea University awarded Masters to people after two years who neither attended or submitted any work. That loophole was soon closed.

You only cheated if you saw the paper before your exam, knowing it would be your exam.

You didn’t. What you did was called revising using independent research.

You learned the stuff they wanted you to learn.

@CuriousaboutSamphire

Oh, I see. Different post

I've taken a few A level classes through past papers and, towards the end of a syllabus's life, got them to write their own questions based on what has not been questioned before. It's never a surprise at that point when they virtually write the exam.

There are some weaknesses in every system!

I did this at the end of the last A-Level Bio spec. Took me ages but I went through the questions point by point and worked out the spec points that hadn't yet been examined.

We managed a revision session which covered every single thing that was in the exam immediately before they went in. 🎉

Extra good results that year!!

@ImAnOmelette For the new spec keep a spreadsheet. Use the spec and make a list. Tick every round that a topic is covered (I used to keep the Qs linked too - because I can be a tad anal like that). Then you do it for every main exam and resit, and get a really good idea on what is likely to come up towards the end of the spec.

If you keep the Qs you are also building a really useful question bank that can be used to teach the common phrasing of questions and how they link to the mark scheme. And you can modify them to make your own.

Sorry, probably teaching my grandmother to suck eggs. But my last two NQTs hadn't even considered such a thing and were astounded when they saw my spreadsheets.

I used to be notorious in my department for being able to write a mock exam for my subject that was always 90% identical to the real thing! The topic changed every year and there really were only so many questions that could be set on any one topic, so with an eye for pattern-spotting and a bit of subject knowledge it was really easy to guess. Didn’t seem to do the students all that much good tbh. You’d be surprised how many people can fail an exam even if they had the paper in advance.

Nope! I REALLY would not

And yes, I was told I had that "witchy vibe" around exams. I used to try my hardest to teach each cohort how to do it for themselves, but with each passing year that became less and less likely to happen. A contributing factor to my leaving - needing a bigger spoon!

"Moral of story, if you put the work in and do all the practice questions - then yes things will seem awfully familiar. That’s the point. Practice makes perfect and hard work gets rewarded"

That's not how most exams work though.

@Warblerinwinter

At uni over 35 years ago. Science subject. By the final term of final year most of my tutorial group had dropped out of attending. Just me and the only other women on my course were still attending. Lecturer was setting us lots of practice questions. All the questions on our exams came form those practice questions but with slight variations - ok it was a very mathematical based exam so would have always been on these learning points, but the questions were obviously written that if you’d been to tutorials and discussed with professor you’d know how to do them Nice for me. I thought it was fair deal. If the guys had bothered to get out of bed and attend their tutorials and listened to the prof they’d have had the same advantage Moral of story, if you put the work in and do all the practice questions - then yes things will seem awfully familiar. That’s the point. Practice makes perfect and hard work gets rewarded

This happened to a couple of modules in my undergrad....

Those of us who attended did well in the bkind marked exam... The lazy beggars who stayed ib bed complained.... They'd been rold explicitly that attending fhe actual seminars/lectures woupd help them focus their revision.... They chose to ignore!

Similar happened in my maths o level... Id been practising most of the questions that camr up, in the week before thr exam.

You do the worl... You pass well!

Same happened with ds2's GCSE computing exam which was set by the exam centre last year. Somehow, dh worked out which questions would be asked - he's clever like that, and, sure enough, when ds read the paper it was the predicted questions 😆 he got a good grade.