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My professors usually give solutions for part term tests. But it seems that, they never gave any solutions for the past final exams in any courses I've taken.

Does anyone has the same experience? Or does anyone know why it's like this? I personally believe that students could use past exam's answers to prepare for their own exams.

Edited: Wow, it's amazing that so many people shared their opinion here. I'd just like to clarify my question here cuz I see my question mislead few people, my apologize. Say, I am taking some course this year, and the professor would usually post some pasts term tests with answers and the past exams from previous years(with no answers, or sometimes they just post a link to the library website, where answer-free version of past exams can be found) on the course web-page.

BOBOB
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    Even if they agree with you that distributing solutions would be educationally valuable (which not everyone would), professors have a finite amount of time, and creating solutions would take time that could potentially be spent on something more valuable. – Nate Eldredge Apr 22 '19 at 05:39
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    I give answers and detailed comments on non-finals because I feel the students can learn from that. For the final, I'm happy to give detailed answers to any student who comes by my office after the final to pick up their exam, but I haven't had a student do that yet. (Or even email me to find out answers) Why take the time if no one is interested? – Kathy Apr 22 '19 at 14:17

8 Answers8

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This depends on the institution & department and potentially the instructor/course.

The last two institutions I have been at (UK) have provided solutions to past exams. One only odd numbered years, the other all years.

I'm sceptical about the value of providing solutions to past exams for studying purposes. From my experience the temptation to look at the solutions instead of struggling through the questions is often irresistible for students, especially those who are struggling. This leads to the false impression of knowing how to solve the problems. Of course past exam solutions can be used effectively to study, for example by only using the solutions to check answers after completing the entire exam as practice. But I have rarely seen students do this.

Developing appropriate exam questions is difficult so instructors may also want to recycle past questions and therefore not provide past exams (questions or answers).

atom44
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    By experience, I would say that looking at solutions can teach how to properly approach a problem and also how to solve any new instance of the same kind. – Patrick Trentin Apr 22 '19 at 08:48
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    I've heard the problem of students being spoiled by the solutions mentioned quite a few times by my lecturers. One had an interesting approach: she did not hand out solutions, but offered to provide feedback on the students' solution if they hand it in neatly. I'm not sure how well that went, but it's an interesting approach that seems to solve the dilemma of giving students material they would use incorrectly, probably at the cost of some time for the lecturer (although I'm not sure how much time). – Discrete lizard Apr 22 '19 at 08:55
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    @PatrickTrentin, Yes certainly, solutions can be used to study in this way. But exam questions/solutions are not intended for this purpose. Pedagogical examples in lectures/textbooks are. I've seen many students work on exam questions and when they get stuck they have a quick 'peek' at the solution to get them over the tricky part then move on. The problem is the learning happens in the struggling not the peeking at the solution. – atom44 Apr 22 '19 at 08:59
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    @mg4w Throwing a child into water may teach him how to swim, or make him drown. Showing a child another person swimming first, can go a long way in keeping the toddler alive. That was my point, and that is also why I have always shared the solutions to the past exams when teaching a course. – Patrick Trentin Apr 22 '19 at 09:06
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    @PatrickTrentin A question written (especially as part of a series of questions) for students to exercise methods and techniques and progress with is different to a question written for a final exam. – Solar Mike Apr 22 '19 at 09:11
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    But exam questions/solutions are not intended for this purpose. — More accurately, final exam questions/solutions are not intended for this purpose. At least in classes like mine, which have midterm exams and a cumulative final exam, the midterm exam solutions definitely are intended for that purpose, just as homework solutions are. (But then if you're used to writing pedagogically helpful solutions, why not write them for the final as well?) – JeffE Apr 22 '19 at 09:19
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    Well I think the differences of opinion here probably answer the question of why sometimes solutions are provided and sometimes they are not. Perhaps it would be useful to have an answer why some instructors provide solutions. – atom44 Apr 22 '19 at 09:26
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    @mg4w some instructors do provide solutions to their practice questions as those are designed to take students through the processes / methods explained in the course. Final exam questions are not always designed for the same effect or reasons. – Solar Mike Apr 22 '19 at 13:49
  • Just to clarify, the OP is asking about providing solutions to past final exams for the purposes of studying from (for future exams). Of course it does make sense for the instructor to use past exams/midterms/quizzes etc and their solutions as part of the planned teaching process. But I'm sceptical of the educational value of simply providing a database of past exams & solutions to students. Naturally others can/do feel differently about this. – atom44 Apr 22 '19 at 14:47
  • People can do very stupid things, and students are even less developed than the typical person. I've seen students memorize answers, and then simply plop them down... it's just absurd what people will end up doing if you gave them "answers". – Nelson Apr 23 '19 at 01:16
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    @mg4w I am right now not a lecturer, but I am mentoring juniors and "the learning happens in the struggling" seems to be a very archaic notion. I tell 'my' juniors to never struggle for more than 15 minutes, because it's just a waste of time and come ask for help instead (it's more efficient to spend that same time on more exercises or work than struggling on a single one). And this approach I have taken from a 4 month educational program which in my experience backs up all their decisions with actual pedagogic research. – David Mulder Apr 23 '19 at 14:24
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    Are there any scientific studies that would support this viewpoint? I'm reluctant to put much stock in a purely anecdotal answer. My own anecdote: it's difficult to benefit from struggling through a question if you have no confirmation that you have succeeded afterwards. – Adam Williams Apr 23 '19 at 18:45
  • @DavidMulder, certainly that is a good approach. I think you are misinterpreting my answer. I'm not suggesting that students struggle to no end with no help and no way to check if they are correct. I'm saying that providing the answers at the outset provides the temptation to take a shortcut and just copy the answer believing they know how to do it. What should happen is what you say, they should try and get help if they don't succeed, or at least revise the relevant material. I think this is unlikely to happen if they have the answers at hand. – atom44 Apr 24 '19 at 07:04
  • @AdamWilliams, a scientific study showing what? That students will use the answers as a shortcut if they are provided? I'm not aware of such a study, this is just what I have observed. I'm not suggesting that students have no confirmation of success. There are many ways of accomplishing this without providing the solutions. For example, they could ask their TA/Instructor. It also depends on the subject and question, sometimes it's obvious if the answer is correct. Equally, just because an answer doesn't match the provided solution doesn't necessarily mean its incorrect. – atom44 Apr 24 '19 at 07:16
  • @mg4w In a flipped classroom (the methodology used by the educational program I was earlier referring to) it's possible to always have a human at hand during exercises, but in classical academic education the student will be at home and the only thing preventing long struggling seems some type of access to answers. Ideally maybe a system could be developed limiting the number of answers that can be viewed, but not sure that would ever be worth the trouble. I personally suspect the argument (cont.) – David Mulder Apr 24 '19 at 07:54
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    that '"struggling through the questions" is good' is more a case of after-the-fact rationalization by teachers who prefer not investing the time to create unique exams each time. (Of course there will be those who copy this argument from experienced educators without 'laziness' actually being their personal reason) – David Mulder Apr 24 '19 at 07:57
  • @DavidMulder I completely disagree, but I also think that this depends quite a bit on the field. I do believe that both in undergraduate and graduate studies I did learned most from the problems on which I spent hours and hours finally solving, but again this may be specific to mathematics. I also believe that in mathematics, it is important to discover that certain things cannot work in certain situations. I know that there is a point where one needs to stop and go see the instructor, which depends highly on the class (maybe the 15 minutes you mention for introductory first year classes... – Nick S Jan 01 '21 at 03:28
  • ...but much longer for more advanced classes.... As for coming for help, I am always willing to help the students with any question as long as they show me that they tried something. But I also run into students which "worked two hours on a question" (and I quote one here) but didn't even know the definition for what he was trying to prove...Struggling through the questions can mean a lot of different things, and can mean different things in different courses/fields. – Nick S Jan 01 '21 at 03:38
  • Going back on topic, my strategy is the following: in introductory classes, I post a past exam about a couple of weeks before the exam and I post the solutions only 1-2 days before the exam. This way I give the students plenty of opportunities to solve the exam by themselves. I do this for Midterms and Finals. Even so I get often questions from students which are trying to understand my solutions line by line, which in my opinion is not helping them at all. And every now and then I get a student regurgitate word by word a solution from the past exam for a problem which is completely unrelated. – Nick S Jan 01 '21 at 03:44
  • @NickS The 15 minute mark might not be the correct time limit for each field, but the point is not that afterwards the student gets the answer, just that after the 'time limit' the instructor can confirm that 'hey, you're going in the right direction' or 'hey, go check this and this chapter' or maybe 'it looks like you have made a mistake somewhere, try to restart from this point'. And I can indeed imagine that in a non-flipped classroom or higher level context the system would have to adapt.The point is mostly that 'working through more problems' beats the education value of 'being stuck'. – David Mulder Jan 01 '21 at 14:14
  • @DavidMulder "Struggling through the questions" is not the same as "being stucked", at least not in my opinion. Struggling through the question means, in my opinion, the student trying various approaches and seeing what it works and what it doesn't. A student staring at a problem without having any idea about how to approach it is not struggling through it. – Nick S Jan 01 '21 at 18:16
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Most professors do not like to give out the solutions to exams (and the exams by themselves) because they do not want students to create collections of past exam questions. This is for two reasons:

  1. Some questions might be re-used later. This is not only laziness but there are usually a limited number of meaningful and unambiguous questions that can be asked.
  2. Professors want to stop students form just learning past questions by heart and they want students to focus on the actual content.
lordy
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    If there's a short least of reasonable questions, and students can answer them all, what's the issue? – paul garrett Apr 22 '19 at 13:07
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    @paulgarrett: The issue is not that there's a short list of reasonable questions, the issue is that there's a short list of reasonable questions that can be solved in a few minutes during a one-hour exam. – Galendo Apr 22 '19 at 15:52
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    @Galendo, "... solvable in a few minutes during a one-hour exam" would be part of "reasonable" in this context, I think. – paul garrett Apr 22 '19 at 16:22
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    @paulgarrett it's also the fact that the goal technically is not to pass the exam, but to learn and apply the contents of the topic. This will not be achieved, when student simply memorize every answer, as many would(and that will hurt them later on, when understanding the topic is needed and not the specific answer to a specific question - it might be the same question, but you do not recognize it). – Chieron Apr 23 '19 at 07:42
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They don ‘t give out those solutions as they use the questions in future exams.

If they handed out those solutions then that question bank is not longer useful.

Writing suitable questions to the correct level takes time.

They are well within their rights not to provide the solutions to those final exam questions. Those exam questions may not be officially available either.

They have provided practice questions with solutions for your benefit throughout the course.

Also, being able to solve questions without having a pre-prepared solution to refer to is a skill you need to develop.

Solar Mike
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    There are student groups that collect questions and share/sells them. The obstruction is not really working. – kelalaka Apr 22 '19 at 11:44
  • @kelalaka true, but for my final exam questions they have to rely on memory as they don’t have access to them, but they do have access to plenty of practise problems. And the students leave for holiday after the finals and when they come back they have forgotten the exact questions... – Solar Mike Apr 22 '19 at 12:07
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    I remember that there were people waiting outside of the exam rooms to collect from the most fresh memories. And, some people are very good at remembering the questions. – kelalaka Apr 22 '19 at 12:43
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There is a very prosaic answer that somehow hasn't been mentioned yet. The partial exam happens during the term, when the professor is dedicating a lot of time to teaching and wants to help their current students learn. The final exam happens at the end of the term, when the professor is done teaching and typically wants to spend time on something else.

user107008
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    I think we all new what "final" meant in terms of "final exam"... – Solar Mike Apr 22 '19 at 17:43
  • @SolarMike: Amusing anecdote: I have had community college students who actually did not know that. "Professor, what will we do after the final exam?" – Daniel R. Collins Apr 22 '19 at 21:56
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    @DanielR.Collins I had a student express surprise the other day that they had a final exam at all - even though I made it clear at the start of the course (we are now over halfway..) - playing on the phone no doubt... – Solar Mike Apr 23 '19 at 04:01
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I think this totally depends on the course or more importantly, the advisor. I've had courses where the final exams of previous years were discussed in the next years so that students learn from them.

As for why that can be the case, well, maybe the advisor intends to use similar questions and that's why they prefer not to reveal them (again, this comes from personal experience)

EhsanK
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In addition to some of the good reasons already given in other answers, here is another idea:

The instructor is trying to help current students improve in the course. Solutions to in-term tests can do this, especially if later course material builds on earlier, or if there is a cumulative final exam. However, the final exam is the end, and no further improvement in the course is possible.

paw88789
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When I was teaching — I am now retired — I often posted old final exams, sometimes with answers. I wanted the students to use them to check their understanding, to answer the question themselves then compare their answer to mine. I tried not to put questions on exams after they had been webbed, because I didn't want the students to simply try to memorize the answers.

David Friedman
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It could be a lot of different factors. Trying to stop lawlerly debates. Reducing self study (it is competition). Re-use of questions. (This is not purely laziness or to restrict learning. I do agree that if you have learned all the expected questions you may have mastered the course. But in some cases questions may be reused for psychometric purposes, to compare instructors or classes. For instance the SATs reuse questions for this reason.)

Also, schools, courses will differ. So some may post the answers.

For what it is worth, I disagree with the idea to keep solutions secret for exams, homework, etc. If people can learn from drilling the materials, they should be allowed to. This is an area where things have actually become much more restrictive, less open than several decades ago when it was normal to post solutions after tests or have texts with answers to every single drill problem (not just the odds!) I have the discipline to decide how much effort to spend on problems before checking a solution (am a big boy).

In addition, I see tests as very high stakes practice but as a PART of the learning process. You learn preparing for the test, while doing the test, and afterwards reviewing it. So I think it makes little sense not to share the solutions. But obviously many academic gatekeepers disagree.

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    Looking at my desk copy of Introductory College Algebra, Rietz and Crathorne, 1923/1933: only answers to odd exercises are given. So that claim above seems shaky/evidence lacking. – Daniel R. Collins Apr 22 '19 at 21:55
  • Why would an instructor seek to reduce self-study? And how does keeping test answers private do that? – Azor Ahai -him- Apr 23 '19 at 19:16