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From: timlee@ernie.Berkeley.EDU (Timothy J. Lee)
Newsgroups: comp.edu
Subject: Re: Exam Files
Message-ID: <9427@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 3 Feb 89 00:10:01 GMT
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In article <19863@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> matloff@iris.ucdavis.edu (Norm Matloff) writes:
|*>on if one is willing to put in enough time.  For exams, there is what the
|*>Taiwan students call the "archaeology method," which is basically the one
|*>used by American fraternity houses  --  extensive archives of past exams
|*>(it's really quite amazing how many professors will give essentially the
|*>same exam year after year, at least in terms of general content).  For
|
|>Not just fraternities...  many other student groups maintain exam files.
|
|I seem to recall seeing exam files in the UCB library.  Was that motivated
|by a desire to equalize opportunity?

I don't know about the Moffitt Undergraduate Library file's reasons for
existing.
 
|>Perhaps the visibility of some such files ensures that instructors
|>don't give the same question (or variation with different numbers) twice.
 
|In my observation, most professors who give similar exams year after year
|don't even realize that exam files exist and are used.

Eta Kappa Nu, the Electrical Engineering honor society, maintains an
exam file of EE and CS exams.  This particular file is highly visible:
many students use it, some instructors come by and dump their (used) exams
in it, and one instructor who _did_ recycle problems came to have his
course's exams removed from the file (his request was honored).

Visibility may be due to the fact that HKN's office is in Cory Hall
(the EECS building) near many classrooms, the department office, and
some faculty offices.

It may be of interest to know that the Computer Science division
encourages students to purchase collections of old preliminary
exams when they are studying for the preliminary exams.  Certainly
those who write these exams know better than to clone problems.