Discussion on question by anon.jpg: Exam requires self-imposing a time limit: what should I do when others are likely to use more time?

I detest lecturers which create obvious cheatbait problems. It's always unfair to the honest students and rewards cheating. "Honor codes" are only valuable if cheating requires at least some threshold to jump through or carries a serious chance of penalization. Frankly, the only honest solution I see is to protest to the entity responsible for academic integrity about how to proceed - either having them open work option for the full time of accessibility or get an assurance how to ensure nobody worked longer than 3 hours.

If (1) the exam is curved, (2) this scenario is created where obvious cheating is possible and (3) the students are anything less than people who are world-wide known as honest people who obtained several prices for their integrity, I'd say your teacher is either completely out of this world or he doesn't give a damn about good and fair grading. If you suspect the former, do you believe you can convince him not to do curving? If you suspect the latter, is there some authority you could complain to?

I agree... An honor code might stop students from copying each other, but its not going to stop them spending 4 horus on a 3 hour exam. It wouldn't stop me. The only reasonable possibility I can see here is that the exam is designed in such a way that you don't gain anything by taking longer - if you understand the topic, 3 hours should be more than enough. If you don't, not amount of extra time is going to help you.

@academic, if an immoral system is imposed on you, it is impossible to morally appeal to you to keep the immoral rules. There are too many examples in history (and even currently) to dispute that.

I have to admit that I've never been associated with anywhere that either grades on the curve or uses honor codes. But taking a little extra time just doesn't feel like cheating. And if I'm doing an exam which my entire future depends on, and I need another few minutes at the end, I don't see many reasonable people would be able to resist that. Although perhaps the idea that I was doing other people down would give me pause - as I say, grading on the curve is new to me.

@academic I think it’s more correct to say that IanSudbery is openly admitting that there exists a set of circumstances in which he will behave in a way that may be interpreted as cheating by some people, when said people, out of a misguided understanding of ethics and human nature, have engineered a situation that forces Ian to either behave in such a way or to be unfairly penalized.

The only way to beat the system in an honest way is being significantly better than almost everybody else. Anyone who has not the luxury of being one of these top performers will have to choose between being honest and getting a fair mark. I say that as someone who has had above luxury in my time, but such unfairness still sets me off.