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Hypo: Almost all exams administered at your school are later posted on the school's exam database. One particular exam for a somewhat unique clinical type course is not posted. You take the exam and it turns out that the materials are drawn from a publicly available set of materials (think administrative record combined with news stories tracking the development and ultimate failure of a proposed rule) on which the exam asks a series of questions. It seems that at least the materials are the same each year, although possibly the questions are different. What are the ethical guidelines relevant to discussing that fact with students who may potentially take the course in the future?

If the materials are the same, it makes sense that sample exams wouldn't be available in the archives. If that is the case, discussing it with someone who will be taking the course in the future would give that person an advantage over others, which is clearly not allowed. If you want to do this, I highly recommend at least asking the registrar's office about it first.

Hattori Hanzo wrote:If the materials are the same, it makes sense that sample exams wouldn't be available in the archives. If that is the case, discussing it with someone who will be taking the course in the future would give that person an advantage over others, which is clearly not allowed. If you want to do this, I highly recommend at least asking the registrar's office about it first.

How is it that you turn up every time I mention this course?
I don't want to do it per se, but I'm just wondering what the implications are generally. Like, what if I had asked you about the exam, and you said "well last year, he gave us a case study on Case X and asked the types of questions we had in the homework assignments"? You would not have been alerted to not mention it, and I would likely have used it as a practice exam. It's almost certain to happen on some level a couple times a year.

Haha I didn't even realize it was you!

General questions like that should be fine, because professors share that info in class before the final, e.g. the structure of the exam and the type of questions to be expected. However if I were to give you specific details beyond that, I would be pushing the line.