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I tagged this with "Math", because that is where I see this problem this morning. It looks like a student, under various user names, has posted an entire take-home exam, question by question. I was wondering what my eNotes buddies think about this, and thought I'd open up a discussion.

I am not sure if I understand your post. A student posted an exam to someplace? Was it here?  I don't see how anyone can post an exam here.  But if it was take-home, doesn't everyone have access to it anyway? 

Did they post it for people to do the questions for them?

I am not sure about the concept of take-home exams. What I am familiar with is of take home assignment, where the student is free to consult any available sources of information.

I see nothing wrong in principle in a student using enotes as a source of information. If  a teacher insists that the assignment should be completed without help, then it should not be given as a home assignment. And if taking help from other sources for information, it will be very difficult to check who has used what sources. In such a situation it is not proper to blame a student for using enotes for help.

Incidentally, it appears quite unlikely that same student has registered on enotes under so many different user names, to be able to post so many questions at the same time.

Yesterday morning a series of very similar math problems was posted, each a few minutes after the last, by user names that had kind of the same feel to them. It seemed to me that it was a take-home exam, and that concerned me a bit. It is kind like trying to by-pass the eNotes requirement that we don't answer multiple questions in one question post. And the fact that there were so many of them kind of concerned me. I want to be helping students to understand their work, not do an entire exam for them. Really, I just wanted to see if anyone else had noticed, and what you guys thought about the whole thing.

I certainly have noticed that the one question per day rule is a joke.  In English as well as math we often have a series of questions that are obviously posted by the same person.  Really the only way to enforce this would be for someone at eNotes to watch for this sort of pattern and then look at the IP addresses of the nicknames posting the questions.

Take home exams are frequently used by schools to improve the character of students.  I don't see anything wrong with that. I have the feeling that more and more schools are moving to a proctor free test system and take home exams.

Nothing wrong in take home exams, but pointing fingers at only some of the students who copy, is definitely wrong.

In reply to #5:

I agree with that. If students can only post one question at a time, it would take collusion between at least half of them to post enough to get the complete exam. And, that would be a serious problem with students at the school.

It boils down to ethics.  Students these days do not see anything at all wrong with getting answers from their classmates on assignments--in or out of the classroom.  If you gave specific directions that the students should work on the take-home exam individually, then these students are definitely cheating.  Not only are they not solving the problems on their own, but they are soliciting answers from the experts here at enotes.  The situation comes to this:  by getting answers in math from enotes editors, are they learning how to do the problem or just copying the answers down for a test grade? 

In reply to #1:  It's unfortunate that students may abuse this website; however, it is their right to post questions on here and have them answered.  There is no guarantee that all of their questions will be answered, but I believe it is our responsibility as editors to do our best even if they are taken from an exam.  I like to think that maybe the questions and answers will help another student in the future.