The university made all profs add this into their course outlines this year:

Copyright Policy: In this course you will have access to material that is subject to copyright laws. This includes (but is not limited to) the textbook, solutions manual and all resources developed by the instructors such as lab manuals, demonstration videos, quizzes, assignments, tests, class notes and class slides. You are not allowed under any circumstance to share or redistribute this material in any printed or electronic form without the explicit written consent of the copyright holder. This includes posting any course material on Internet bulletin boards, course repositories, social networks, etc.

There have been a few threads posting about this lately, so this seems to clear up any questions. You cannot post old tests or assignments or whatever online or give/sell it to anyone because of copyright issues, even if it doesn't state directly on it. I'm not sure if this applies retroactively to old course materials, and I don't know if it applies to course outlines (I doubt it, since most are made public and you can't actually use them for anything...unless someone was designing their own course based off of it?)

I always considered that academic dishonesty.

Originally Posted by BluandExile

I always considered that academic dishonesty.

Me too...but it's kind of a grey area, because you can look at an old assignment that is similar but not identical and not copy it, but only use it in the same way you would use an example from a textbook. Also, sharing class notes/slides wouldn't be considered academic dishonesty, I'm pretty sure.
This copyright thing lays it out pretty clearly that you shouldn't do it, but I don't know what the penalties would be :S Probably less severe than academic dishonesty penalties

Originally Posted by nerual

Me too...but it's kind of a grey area, because you can look at an old assignment that is similar but not identical and not copy it, but only use it in the same way you would use an example from a textbook. Also, sharing class notes/slides wouldn't be considered academic dishonesty, I'm pretty sure.
This copyright thing lays it out pretty clearly that you shouldn't do it, but I don't know what the penalties would be :S Probably less severe than academic dishonesty penalties

There's literally no way they can monitor people exchanging old tests/assignments. Unless McMaster has cameras watching us at all times

Originally Posted by BluandExile

There's literally no way they can monitor people exchanging old tests/assignments. Unless McMaster has cameras watching us at all times

Oh, definitely not. But they could, for example, come on this forum and use the search function, or use google. Some people are also dumb and bring old copies of lab reports TO their lab so that they can copy/compare results before they hand it in (although that is also academic dishonesty )

Originally Posted by nerual

Some people are also dumb and bring old copies of lab reports TO their lab so that they can copy/compare results before they hand it in (although that is also academic dishonesty )

Sometimes I wonder how some people got into mcmaster.

Originally Posted by BluandExile

Sometimes I wonder how some people got into mcmaster.

Sometimes I wonder how people stay in Mcmaster.

Originally Posted by nerual

The university made all profs add this into their course outlines this year:


There have been a few threads posting about this lately, so this seems to clear up any questions. You cannot post old tests or assignments or whatever online or give/sell it to anyone because of copyright issues, even if it doesn't state directly on it. I'm not sure if this applies retroactively to old course materials, and I don't know if it applies to course outlines (I doubt it, since most are made public and you can't actually use them for anything...unless someone was designing their own course based off of it?)

Thanks for pointing this out. I'll ask a couple of my profs about the course outlines. Hopefully they aren't copyright but something tells me they most likely are. If that's so then I have to remove all the course outlines... all that hard work >.> Lol

Originally Posted by jhan523

Thanks for pointing this out. I'll ask a couple of my profs about the course outlines. Hopefully they aren't copyright but something tells me they most likely are. If that's so then I have to remove all the course outlines... all that hard work >.> Lol

haha Or you could get permission from the profs? Which is even more work :(

It doesn't seem very sketchy, because it's not providing any monetary or academic benefit to people, it's just a good resource for people to decide if they want to take a course or not. I don't know though, it probably is safer to double-check.

Originally Posted by nerual

haha Or you could get permission from the profs? Which is even more work :(

It doesn't seem very sketchy, because it's not providing any monetary or academic benefit to people, it's just a good resource for people to decide if they want to take a course or not. I don't know though, it probably is safer to double-check.

Lol, that's A LOT of profs XD But yeah, I agree that course outlines should be available to everyone but some departments still don't post their outlines (But some of them do say to contact the prof for a copy). But yeah, I'll ask my profs and maybe contact each department.