Row over leaked UCT examination papers

Nom Chompsky

Nom Chompsky

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...except they weren't really leaked. What type of student does not try to get past papers etc.? The lecturer must at least take some of the blame for being rather lazy and asking the same questions over again. Also 'leaked' is not the correct term here - 'leaked' implies students knew what the questions were going to be like in the 2012 exam but that is not the case. It is simply good fortune that the questions they studied came up again.

(Sorry couldn't find article online)

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I agree... that's not a leak, that's laziness on the examiner's part and good fortune for the students. Most of my lecturers kept telling us that it would be no use to memorise past questions, since they'll all be changed (they kept to their word :) ).
 
Slack standards then. I have had an exam at Tuks where past questions might appear but in those courses students werent allowed to keep the exam paper.
 
Yea for me this comes down to laziness, if you recycle questions it's should be over looooooong term...
 
Utterly pathetic from UCT, studying past papers is probably the dominant form of exam preparation, and the distribution of old papers happens all the time, even if they aren't readily available in the library.

I can get maybe 10-15% of questions being repeated, but 60% is just a poor effort by the examiner. If the students are going to punished so severely for merely preparing properly, the examiner and those who approved the paper should be hauled over the coals as well. Chances of that.....close to nothing probably.

Of course, to make it even better, UCT couldn't be bothered to even comment on the situation.

Exams are stressful at the best of times, academia shouldn't be allowed to be so mind numbingly blase about inconveniencing hundreds of students for something that it's very worst amounts to copyright infringement.
 
dj_jyno said:
I agree... that's not a leak, that's laziness on the examiner's part and good fortune for the students. Most of my lecturers kept telling us that it would be no use to memorise past questions, since they'll all be changed (they kept to their word :) ).
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+1

Unfortunately those who reside in academia believe themselves to be well above us mere mortals, so it will take a court case to wake them from their slumbers ...

All in all, they don't care a ****
 
koeksGHT said:
Seems how UNISA works.. 20% of my exam questions were in the past papers in the last year... not complaining tho :whistle:
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There are only so many questions one can ask so them popping up again is to be expected. At least maybe change them a little bit.

Doing old exam papers is probably the best way to study for exams as you test your own knowledge of the subject matter so if you already know how to get to the answer I don't really see how it's an issue if the question pops up in the exam again.
 
Studying past papers was one of my main strategies while at UCT. The library even keeps many of them on short loans, and if not there, someone will have them. This all seems a bit ridiculous.
 
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R13... said:
Slack standards then. I have had an exam at Tuks where past questions might appear but in those courses students werent allowed to keep the exam paper.
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From what I read, the Professor said past exam papers are not circulated for this course but a student managed to get a copy.

Funny thing is this happened to me while at UCT when a student shared a copy of a paper from 22yrs ago. Same thing was repeated in the open book exam. The lecturer asked me how did I get hold of the paper. I told him "you gave it to one student. He shared it with the next one and so on"
 
What's wrong with repeating important questions on important topics?
 
dlk001 said:
From what I read, the Professor said past exam papers are not circulated for this course but a student managed to get a copy.

Funny thing is this happened to me while at UCT when a student shared a copy of a paper from 22yrs ago. Same thing was repeated in the open book exam. The lecturer asked me how did I get hold of the paper. I told him "you gave it to one student. He shared it with the next one and so on"
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usually students go to perusals and take photos of the exam papers. That is how they get distributed at tuks, although past papers only help you up to a certain point.
 
Nicodeamus said:
usually students go to perusals and take photos of the exam papers. That is how they get distributed at tuks, although past papers only help you up to a certain point.
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I've always found that past papers help me know what the lecturer wants from you, how you are meant to approach the questions. I don't do them in hope that there will be recirculated questions :P. However, studying the material is usually the best way to pass an exam :P
 
Got a new lecturer so she changed all the questions :( Most of my modules come with mock exams to prepare you.
 
Whilst at high school a certain lazy teacher once rehashed an exam paper from the CityPress:erm: Myself and a group of friends were so convinced that the lazy teacher was going to use that exact paper. So we just skipped the questions and memorised the answers instead. We all got 100%. :D
 
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