Teaching strategies when students have access to solution manual

Abstract

Eight years ago, the lead author undertook a study of instructors who reused homework and exam questions from one year to the next. The results showed that those who reused questions more frequently than once every two years observed more cheating by students who had copies of the previous questions and answers. But since then, the Web has changed everything. Now, Cramster serves up answers to problems from textbooks, and sites like Course Hero encourage students to upload exams for any course. This has endangered all reuse of questions. This paper reports on a survey of about 140 mostly engineering instructors on the approaches they have taken to adapt to this new challenge. Some have changed the weighting of homework; others have made up their own questions or developed alternate approaches to finding questions. Some have created "stings" for students who illicitly submit answers from solution manuals It is clear that a variety of responses are possible; we discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the various approaches. © American Society for Engineering Education, 2013.