No you can't have a test bank...Ms. Robbins said it's cheating!!!

J/K...sorry, sorry...I'm leaving now.
I couldn't help myself.


But before I leave, I co-sign with what everyone else has said so far. Just have people hand in their old tests. Grades don't matter, it's really a matter of content. The old tests let people know what to expect on their test/exam/quiz so they know what content to study.

Many professors at my school already did that. They had files in the library with test questions on that you could photocopy and study from.
They didn't have the answers though.

In law school, my law fraternity had a test bank that included outlines as well. It was pretty helpful, and probably the only useful thing about joining a law fraternity.

As a professor, I have no problem with test banks. They help students see my style of testing and I always redo the test for each class.

As a sorority alum, I say thank God for test banks. No way would I have survived my calculus course--taught by an Iraqi grad student with a very loose grasp of the language--without our test bank.

We had something similar, only it was more than just tests. When a course ended, many people made "bibles", which typically contained their lecture notes, any handouts, problem sets and answer keys, midterm and final exams and answer keys, and anything else relevant to the course (formula sheets, etc). Most GLOs, some dorms, and a few other student organizations had libraries of these bibles - if you knew you'd never use the material again, you could donate your bible to the library, and if not, you could still loan it out privately. Most profs changed things up enough every year that you couldn't get by with copying and pasting; I never met a prof who forbade the use of bibles, and some actively encouraged it.

One of my sisters, who shared my major, was a year ahead of me, and had top grades, loaned me a few of her bibles. They helped immensely. Even if it was a different professor teaching the course, sometimes one prof would go more into depth on a particular topic, while another would gloss right over it (then nail you with it on the final :rolleyes: ). And the old problem sets and exams usually made great practice questions.

We had an excellent test bank - I remember struggling with CompSci, and two of us found one of our professor's old tests in the file. We assumed that the tests would differ year to year, and so used the test only as a guide to what topics to study.

Arrived at the exam and the teacher hadn't changed one word or one answer. How sad was it that I still got a C?

I think that test banks are a great way to take 'practice tets', I know many professors would use similar formats and just change the numbers or switched what they were asking for...but it gave you a great idea of what topics he was going to cover. It helped me a lot during Accounting!

The key though, is organization. Ours was only moderately kept up to date and often unorganized. It was usually more helpful to get more recent stuff from some of my fraternity friends or athletes rather than our own files.

We have test files too and I was one of the lucky members of the scholarship committee who got to organize the files this past semester.

Our test files use to be really organized, but with time I guess kinda became messy as people just put their notebooks/papers/tests/quizzes in the files, without actually filing them. Our test files are great and have helped me on many occasions. How we have it is all of the tests and quizzes that people submit are put into filing cabinets and filed alphabetically by class name and number (ie ACCY 201, then ACCY 202, etc...) When we organized these this past semester, I remember finding tests back from 1985, the year I was born. Obviously the older tests and quizzes needed to be thrown away to make room for some of the newer materials.

Then we also kept lecture notes/notebooks/folders/books from certain people if they seemed significant or useful and organized them alphabetically by class also.

I think test files are a great resource for each house as long as you are not doing anything against the rules (such as taking the test when ure not suppose to..). I know I had difficulty in my computer science class so I went to the test files and found a few midterms for past years to use for practice...no they werent the same problems but it was similar and I was then farmiliar with the format of the tests.

I don't believe test files are cheating because I know that even in high school I kept my work and etc for friends I had that were a year younger than me so they could have some direction in the class. My thoughts are: if you have the means by which to help yourself and your friends/sisters/brothers (without stealing tests, etc), then you should do it! Hope that helped:D

Where to store them??
 

For those of you without a house (as in our case) where did you keep your test bank?...just wondering...


JP

Useless info: IUSA, the IU student government association, had a test/note file too, which was at the library. I don't think it exists anymore though.

Re: Where to store them??
 

Our Panhel had a room in the student center where the unhoused sororities were welcome to keep anything we wanted. We had a bookcase with a couple of shelves' worth of bibles, mostly for freshman core classes. Our scholarship chair also maintained a list of sisters with classes they had taken, so if you were taking a class and didn't find a bible in the library, you could call people who'd taken the class before and ask them if they had anything.

Re: Where to store them??
 

We keep all our test files in the storage room we have where we keep all other official fraternity property! :D