The University of Waterloo has launched an investigation after learning that hundreds of students in a first-year math course may have had access to exam questions ahead of time.
Officials at the school believe a third-party tutoring service got its hands on the exam for “Math 136” before offering to share the questions with students enrolled in the course.
Student Sunny Li said she received and email in Mandarin offering a tutor who would “officially prepare” her for the exam.
“It was really sketchy,” she said. “They didn’t have details.”
While Li did not accept the services, the university fears other students may have.
“I just felt I was at a disadvantage because I thought the exam was genuinely really difficult,” Li said.
A student at the school notified administrators after the leaked questions surfaced on Facebook.
“Our students expect us to protect the high value of a UW degree and we're taking this incident very, very seriously,” said associate vice-president of academics, Mario Coniglio.
About 200 students are believed to have seen at least some of the questions before the exam, but the university said not all of them may have been aware they were cheating.
“We haven’t determined that any of these students have been guilty of cheating,” Coniglio said. “They participated in this tutorial seminar likely with the best of intentions.”
The University of Waterloo is now reviewing more than 1,200 exams written in the course. It may simply choose to remove the leaked questions and allow students who passed the test to write an optional supplementary exam.
While the university may never be able to determine which students had access to the questions, some students say the school is doing as much as it can.
“They won’t catch everyone who got an advantage from the tutoring service, but I think it’s the best option available,” said Math 136 student Ian Zinck.
Others, however, are unhappy.
“It’s also really frustrating because we have to remember this stuff after the exam,” said Christopher Leung, another student in the class. “We thought we were done with it. Now, we have to learn it again for the supplemental exam.”
With a files from CTV London
