What to do if I have seen an exam before I have taken it?

Question

Today I saw a photograph of an upcoming exam at my university. At first I thought it was last year's exam; so I took a closer look at it as I think it is okay to see last year's exams even if they aren’t officially published. Anyway, later someone revealed to me that it was the upcoming exam which we’ll take in about three weeks. It was taken by another student in my course, who took it while the teacher was on a break outside the room.

I feel bad and unethical about seeing it, as it seems to be cheating for me, and even more I’m worried about my further career if this ever comes out. On one hand I don’t want to harm the other student who took the photo, on the other hand I don’t want to risk my career.

It is a semi difficult exam; I would say you should pass it quite well if you learned for it. So what should I do? If I tell the university I’d probably have to reveal the identity of the person who took it, which I don’t want to do under any circumstances.

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There have been some questions on how the pic was made: the prof brought the exam to a lesson to give a rough guideline on what to learn or not. During the break he went outside (as I and many others as well) to get a coffee and that's how the pic was made. I know for sure that it is the upcoming exam as it had a big heading with our course name and year.

For those who say it is also cheating to look at old exams: I think you agree on that seeing an actual exam before you are going to take it is another dimension than seeing a year-old one. Also this is very common where I study. It´s not like we are using really illegal copies, it is just that we often see pics of post-exam reviews. It is allowed to make them and there is no NDA on it (at least I never had to sign one), the exams just aren't published officially. I also bet every prof knows that this is going on here and tolerates it (some said so explicitly).

Also some said I should "rat" the guy who took it: I don't know the punishment for taking a photo of an exam, but I doubt it is modest, considering the - in my eyes negligent - prof. Also I don't want to be responsible for "destroying" the career of another, very young, student. Also it would probably come out who "ratted" him out, and I doubt that I would have much fun in the next two years then (I think you can say that in our course it is considered worse to "rat" somebody than to do to reveal something unethical, but I really doubt that this differs anywhere in the world).

Anyways: Today I have created a new Mail-Address and send the Prof a letter, including one question I remember as a proof, where I told him that the exam probably has been leaked. I asked him to keep the matter as private as possible and I also asked him not to write back to me what he decided to do or to ask any person-specific questions as I don't know any thing more than I told him already. For me the matter is therefore hopefully closed.

Answer 1

In a situation in which you would suffer no matter what you do, you can also work to protect yourself.

An anonymous note to the professor that the exam has been compromised and that there are photographs of it circulating comes close to resolving the issue. The person who took the photo likely deserves punishment, of course, so this solution doesn't resolve that. But at least academic integrity is preserved. The professor will need to provide a new exam, of course.

The professor may also announce to the class that there is a problem and ask that whoever sent the anonymous note inform him of their identity. You may have to deal with that.

Also, you may not be the only student struggling with this.

If you are friends with the person who took the photo, you could also confront him/her with a suggestion that they step forward. If they do this before an accusation is made, I would think any punishment would be less than otherwise.

Answer 2

I agree with the advice offered by Buffy. Moreover, you write:

I feel bad and unethical about seeing it, as it seems to be cheating for me

To emphasize, it doesn't just seem to be cheating, it is cheating: it's not just that you are aware of others cheating, but you yourself have already gained illicit knowledge about questions that will be on the exam. As such, if you take no further action to inform the professor of the situation and simply go and take the exam, you have not just helped others to cheat, but in fact have directly participated in cheating yourself.

So, as far as ethical dilemmas go, this one is a complete no-brainer; you simply have no ethical choice other than to let the professor know about the existence of the photo ahead of the exam. Do it anonymously if you wish, and the question of whether to let the professor know who took the photo is a less obvious one (with both options being pretty reasonable in my opinion), but it looks like you understand perfectly well that taking the exam after what you saw would be unethical and quite likely to get you into serious trouble. I commend you for having a moral compass and the good sense to realize you cannot just sit by idly and pretend this never happened. Good luck! Do consider adding an update to your question later on to let us know how things worked out.

Answer 3

In addition to ethics, you should also consider what the implications are if you are found out to have told somebody. What they are, is highly cultural-dependent - if you are unfamiliar with the culture you are in, ask organizations like a student union or add a culture tag. I lived in several countries ("corrupt" ones and countries which were a dictatorship previously involving a Secret Police) where ratting out someone is perceived as much worse than what this student did. (I also know many high school teachers and professors who share the viewpoint that basic solidarity among students dictates not ratting out someone in this situation.) This could make your life bad - in university and also if your future employees would find out about that episode. Unfortunately, ethics and reality are not always the same.

I am not saying you should not tell someone. But find out before what the risks are, how you can protect and be as anonymous as possible.

Answer 4

You must tell your professor that you've seen the exam, and explain how. Although it is understandable that you don't want to reveal who took the photograph, you are ethically obligated to do so.

Answer 5

1) some professors "s**t test" their classes by "accidentally" leaving out an exam that students could sneak a peek at. They show up, go over an exam review, and everyone sees that they have an exam in their hand their flipping through. Then prof has to step out for a bit. They might be doing this on purpose. Person steps up, takes a quick pic with smartphone, and is back in seat before prof shows up. Person shares pic with class. Come test day, everyone "studied to the test" .. and blows the test, b/c prof gave a TOTALLY DIFFERENT EXAM.

Prof's do this one of two ways...

a) have a honey pot test that has questions that won't be asked on the real test they'll give you (so folks will study only those honey pot questions, and own't be prepped for the real test)

b) they have wrong answers circled on the honey pot exam, so folks thinking they can just memorize A, B, A, C, D, E for a scantron .. will bomb the test horribly. This lets the prof pretty much ensure they can pick out the cheaters, b/c they will simply compare a student's answers to their fake / wrong test, and if they match up fairly well.. well, it means the student probably cheated some how.

So... just b/c someone got a pic of the test doesn't mean that's the real test, and it could be a honey pot where the professor is testing everyone's academic integrity.

2) My personal feeling about looking up old exams .... we live in an age where knowing how to look up info is just as important as retaining information in your head. If a prof is too lazy to update their test to keep students from just studying a quizlet of their old test and passing with flying colors.. that's the prof's fault.

However, I also feel that asking students that take a test (in the same semester) before you take it is scummy. EG: a prof is teaching back-to-back classes of same kind. Showing up on test day to ask the folks ahead of you what was on the test, and specific answers to the test.. is scummy. A prof not having different tests for same classes in same semester is just lazy, too, though.

3) I have a third notion about cheating after I had to deal with one particular professor in my college career. This prof was giving online quizzes with short timers, but the questions required a lot of time to frame up the math. Basically, you cuold either legitimately answer 1 or 2 of the 5 questions in the time span, or you cuold guess and hope you got more then 1 or 2 right, or .. since the quiz questions were already online .. some folks just started blatantly cheating, b/c that was the only way to successfully get an A or B on the quizzes .. while everyone that was trying to be legit was getting F's.

I confronted the professor about this, b/c a) if my theory about this was true, then he should see an inverse bell curve (high F's, low dip into D/C territory, then rising as cheaters got B/A's). Quizzes are supposed to help people study, so all I wanted him to do was either remove the time limits, or extend them.

What he told me was basically he never even bothered to look at the quizzes. He was using quizzes that someone else setup, but slapped on a short time limit thinking they were just glossary terms / definitions multiple choice, not advanced math.

But, what he felt was the main concern was that people were cheating. I told him that people were cheating, b/c the quizzes forced them to. The quizzes were worth 15% of our grade, so if you bombed the quizzes it was almost guaranteed you'd drop a letter grade. So, folks were cheating to try to even the playing field.

He felt that cheating is still cheating, which I thought was absurd. Cheating to me is when people have a fair advantage and try to stack the deck in their favor. Cheating is NOT cheating to me when it's a last resort measure just to try to get a fair advantage.

I guess my chat with him paid off, b/c he increased the time limits, but sent out an email telling people not to cheat. I felt bad, b/c now I felt like a narc tattling on others cheating, but for good reason (b/c they felt it was their only option).

So, I have a flexible moral constitution. I try not to cheat, b/c the effort you put into tests and school reflects the effort you will put into your career / real life. If a person wants to cheat and skate by, then they will quickly hit glass cielings in the working world as folks realize the person isn't creative, or hard working, and can't do anything without someone's coat tails to ride upon.

But, when the deck is stacked against me, while I myself may not cheat, I will speak up to someone to explain why cheaters are cheating, b/c it's a rebuttal to something being unfair.

Answer 6

Since you haven't yet sat the exam, and you didn't know that the photo you were looking was the exam, it is not cheating, nor unethical, for you to merely have seen that photo. The student who took the photo has clearly cheated, but you have not. However, now that you have seen a photo of this exam, and know it is the upcoming exam, it certainly would be unethical if you sit the exam anyway, without reporting the issue to the university.

The simplest thing to do here is to inform the professor of what happened, so that he/she knows that there is a copy of the exam being circulated. You could do this anonymously if you want, but I don't think it would be an issue if you reported this without anonymity. In the latter case, it is likely that you will be asked who showed you the photo.

Answer 7

Send this negligent prof an anonymous note, with details of the exam so he knows you have indeed seen the actual thing. If you know him well enough and trust him to just admit his own error, tell him personally.

But it's not your job to rat on that guy who yielded the temptation to look, and then thought he was nice and shared it.

There might be one dilemma left for you afterwards: If and how to make sure everybody who has seen the photos knows that the prof knows.

Answer 8

"...later someone revealed to me that it was the upcoming exam which we’ll take in about three weeks."

If true then the Prof. is not serious at all about the potential for cheating. If you believe that the picture compromises the exam, and you think that the Prof. would think that this would be a huge problem, then you also need to re-assess the reliability of the statement about the paper in the picture being the actual exam.

Answer 9

As Buffy already suggested, write an anonymous note, but with an additional twist.

Suggest that the professor stays completely silent and informs the class before the (now revised) exam that the exam he "coincidentally left" was a honeytrap.

Advantages:

• What before could have been interpreted as neglience on the professor's part is now quite fiendish.

• The students will be punished to learn entirely for a honeypot.

• The students are not angry that someone was ratting them out, now they are angry for themselves not learning.

• The students won't try to cheat this way ever again.

Everyone feels fine. You have done your task of informing the professor, the professor is now not an idiot, but a devilish antagonist and the students are punished for cheating.

The nice thing is that some professors actually are that fiendish, so even if the students cheating read all the answers here in SE, in contrast to the others they cannot identify that someone told the professor.