Have you specifically agreed to an honor code as is present at some schools like Dartmouth? Are there competitive elements to the grading, or will you be evaluated only for your own work?

Related: Other students can easily cheat on a test and the grading system is relative - should I cheat, and what else can I do?

Can you clear up whether the prof is saying "you MUST only work on this for 3 hours" or "I wouldn't spend more than three hours on it if I were you". Currently we write our exams to take about 2 hours to complete, but we give students 24 hours to do them in. We tell students they should spend around 2 hours on them, but wouldn't consider it cheating if they spent longer.

@Ian Sudbery it's "must", I specifically emailed if we needed to time ourselves and I was told "yes"

@Buffy yes, I think; the class is curved as far as I know.

@GoodDeeds I saw that question; I think my situation is sufficiently different. But unfortunately similarities are there, LOL

Actually, "curved" and "evaluated only on your own work" are opposites. So which is it?

@Buffy alright, I would say it's curved then.

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?

@CaptainEmacs I disagree. My undergraduate institution had a strong honor code, where pledged three-hour take home exams were common. We all got the message that we were being trusted, and in return were expected to behave honestly and police ourselves. A very positive message in my view, and I don't believe cheating was common. Moreover, 3 hours is an appropriate amount of time for a STEM exam, and that's usually impractical to proctor. If trust breaks down, and cheating becomes widespread, then you can't hold on to this system -- but it's great if you can keep it.

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.

@IanSudbery Really? You are openly admitting that you would cheat on an exam?

@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.

@Buffy What rules are you arguing are immoral here?

My best guess is that the OP has misunderstood something here and would do well to clear those up with the professor. My base suspicion is that grading is not competitive (i.e. not "on the curve") and only their own work is considered in grading. If so, all of this Sturm and Drang disappears.

@academic, competitive grading under the conditions stated. If I can do "worse" because you have done better, and for no other reason, the system is immoral. Within such a system, I have to protect myself as a moral obligation. "Curve" grading always has serious issues, but here it is pretty clear that it can't morally be applied. But if you make that one thing go away, then the situation is completely different and it doesn't really matter to me if others cheat. I will get the same grade based only on what I do.

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.

See this question for something with many of the same issues, though not a duplicate: academia.stackexchange.com/questions/116460/…

@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.

What is "Ngl"? Is that a typo or an obscure abbreviation?

@Buffy sadly I don't think I misinterpreted my professor's decision haha

@academic frankly I think that's been thrown out the window. Among a group of roughly 25% of the class, with this portion being the "honor code/try hard" group of the class, I received over 50% telling me they're gonna take longer LOL

@shoover "not going to lie"

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.