[jDavis]

I am currently in the process of administering Ksp exams to my chemistry classes, these are long tests and take 2 days to finish.  It has come to my attention that students were using this topic:
http://www.chemicalforums.com/index.php?topic=24810.0

to help them with their test.  Many of my questions are eerily similar, including that last problem where you need to take water into account.  Would you be able to delete that topic by any chance? So my next class cannot use it.

Thanks

[Borek]

Can you explain what you mean by

students were using this topic:
http://www.chemicalforums.com/index.php?topic=24810.0

to help them with their test.

Do you mean that someone posted your questions and we have helped your student to score high, or it just happened that these questions are similar and your students found them out - and now they are sharing this thread between them?

But - in both cases - I doubt removing the thread will help. Similar questions are scattered throughout the forums, they were also asked and explained in many other places on the web. Water thing is also covered in at least one of the books on the shelf behind me.

[Mitch]

If those questions are your intellectual property we'll of course remove it. Are they?

[jDavis]

Let me explain.  I have multiple classes because there are so many students, and the way the classes work one class is now about 3 days ahead of the other.  The test is too long to give during one class because I put off giving a test a while ago.  I assumed we would not make it this far. 

I gave the first part of the test to one class then the next day, that class did not meet, but I head students talking about the chem test during lunch and in the hallways, then someone said something about going to this site and searching for that post.

I'm all for the students going out of their way to learn, but then they began to tell the students in my other class that #4 is just like #7 on the site, just with this number instead of that.

No, they are not my intellectual property, and I had no idea how many other posts there are about similar topics.  In any case I guess Ill just have to give them an extremely different test.

[Borek]

I suppose the only problem is with this water question, as it is in a way tricky - you either think about OH^- or you don't. All other questions are easily replicated/multiplicated/changed, just by selecting different compounds/concentrations etc.

[jDavis]

I guess I will need to be more conscious about this type of behavior from my students in the future. 

I do have to say that I like what you are doing here, and from the topics I have glanced at it looks like you do a very good job to help and teach anyone who needs some assistance.

[Mitch]

I always view the internet in these matters as similar to going to the library and getting lucky and finding an example problem in a book that is very similar to a test problem. Google has just made this a much more efficient process than when I was younger.

[enahs]

All things said, if they actually use it to learn the correct science, does it matter?
If they just memorize it get the correct answer, then yes I see a problem.

But if they read the thread and think about it, as the original poster did, and actually learned why, does it matter?


Yes you should strive to make the tests fair and even for all students. But there is no such thing as a fair test.

Also, in my opinion telling another student what is on the test is cheating, even though I think most test for science lecture classes tend to force students not to learn the actual science.

[macman104]

I'm all for the students going out of their way to learn, but then they began to tell the students in my other class that #4 is just like #7 on the site, just with this number instead of that.

You will never be able to avoid this if you have multiple sections unless you write completely different exams.  You won't be able to solve it in highschool, it's not really solved in college, it's not really solvable.  If you write drastically different exams, then you get students complaining that one exam was easier, if you don't, then you get students gossiping.  The students with connections (either through talking with friends are upperclassman connections) are always going to have an advantage (some professors always make a point of bringing up the "frat archives")

EDIT:  The only way that I know of to combat the type of "archiving" and such is to not give students exams back to keep.  You hand them out during class for them to look at, or they come to your office to look at, but you don't hand them back for the student to keep.