I hand back graded exams and the students get to keep them. I do not
distribute copies of past exams, but I make no attempt to stop students
from getting copies from previous students. I often recycle a few
questions from past exams, perhaps 20% of the problems on the current
exam appeared on an exam given within the past few years. One night I
had to finish an exam and I was ill. I felt terrible and was having a
hard time staying awake. I pulled out an exam from two years before,
and recycled about 80% of the questions .
Approximately 11:00 pm I was surprised to get a phone call at my home
from Mark, a student from the class two years before. It seems Joe, in
the current class, asked Mark if he could look at Mark's exams from when
Mark took my class. Mark told Joe he would share his old exams if I
okayed it. Having just finished the exam and getting ready for bed,
there was a moment I didn't know what to say. Finally I said, "Sure,
let Joe look at your old exams. No problem."
I was surprised when Joe and his study group averaged about C-minus on
the exam. Later I told Joe, "Hey what happened on that exam? Many of
the questions on the exam were the same as the exam you got from Mark."
"Oh really. I didn't know that."
"Why not, didn't you get the exam from Mark?"
"Yes, but we ended up not using it."
"Why not?"
"Well, we figured if you didn't care whether we looked at it, then you
knew it wouldn't do us any good, so there wasn't any reason to look at
it."
It's amazing how students can get a twisted view of the
professor-student relationship.
Michael D. Edmiston, Ph.D.
Professor of Physics and Chemistry
Bluffton University
Bluffton, OH 45817
(419)-358-3270
edmiston@bluffton.edu
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