fin340

A student named Noor Hamad and his friend Hassan, both finance majors at the American University of Georgia, conducted an interview with a student regarding their experiences during spring break. The student mentioned feeling stressed due to having assignments and professors not understanding the importance of the break coinciding with a religious holiday. They also discussed a course called MCM, which the student found boring and unrelated to their major. They admitted to using ChatGPT to complete assignments and relied on test banks for exams. The student believed that using these resources was common among students and necessary to keep up with peers. They also mentioned the prevalence of academic dishonesty, such as taking illegal pictures of exam questions. Okay, so hello, everyone. Thank you so much for taking the time today to meet with us. So we won't be taking too long. We're just going to be asking a few questions. So before we start, may I just have your confirmation, please, that your questions will be confidential and your answers, but I just need your confirmation. Yes, sure. Okay, thank you. So my name is Noor Hamad, and I'm a finance senior at the American University of Georgia, and Hassan can introduce himself. My name is Hassan. I'm also a finance major at American University of Georgia, and it's also my final year here. Looking forward to interviewing you, though. Yeah, same. Okay, may you please just give us a quick introduction? What do you study and which year? I study here at the American University of Georgia. It's my senior year now. I'll be graduating in a month or so. I study finance. Okay. I talk with a bunch of friends, you know, stay with family, play sports, all of that. That sounds interesting. I think it was a great break, like, just, you know, to be away from the academics and studies. But do you think, like, did you have any midterms, or, like, was it stressful in the break? Did you have a lot to do? I had a bunch of assignments, pretty long essays to write, so that was annoying because it was interfering with my break, and a bunch of professors didn't understand that, you know, the break was in the last 10 days of Ramadan and Eid, which is a sacred holiday for us Muslims. Yeah. There was still a lot of work to do. Yeah, exactly. But, you know, I had to do it one way or another. So, did you feel a little stressed, like, throughout your spring break because of these assignments and the professors not really understanding that you're actually on a break, and especially because it's Eid break as well? Definitely, because I had a lot of, you know, family commitments during the break due to, you know, the religious holiday. And I was kind of stressed because I had a bunch of long papers to write and projects to work on. Yeah. So, yeah. So, these, like, long papers and projects, these are the courses you're taking, right? So, which ones are they exactly? Like, which courses? So, one of my MCM courses, global, no, intercultural communication. Okay. That course required a pretty long essay and also had a project. So, that was a lot of work. And for my luxury brand management course, there was a project for that as well. And, yeah. Is that, like, the most stressful course you think you're taking this semester? Is it, like, one of your, the MCM ones? Yeah, honestly, I'm pretty smart with the way I choose my courses. I try to balance my workload and I research about the courses before taking them. But this semester, unexpectedly, my MCM course was harder than I thought it would be. And, you know, it was pretty difficult. The rest have been pretty easy, to be honest, but the MCM course especially was harder. So, yeah. Okay, I just wanted to ask a real question. How do you manage, like, the stress? Let's say, like, as you said, for MCM, like, how do you manage the stress for assignments or midterms regarding… Honestly, the MCM course is pretty boring because it has nothing to do with my major, but I'm forced to take it because of the AUS requirement for GER. And I don't really pay attention in class because the professor just isn't that interesting and the assignment she gives us is just, it's very unrelated, you know. She gave us an assignment about one of the past experiences we've had regarding racism. And, like, to write a whole paper about one of our past experiences on racism is kind of redundant in the way where you don't know what to write. So, honestly, for the paper, I kind of relied on ChatGPT to kind of write the whole experience for me. And I just kind of, like, you know, kind of made some minor adjustments because, honestly, most of my class used ChatGPT. You can't really write a lot about this type of thing and it's pretty useless. You know, the course was more useful and practical, you know, something to do with finance, something to do with… something I'll use in the future, then maybe. But for this, I definitely use ChatGPT. Yeah, honestly, I think ChatGPT is very useful. Like, personally, I do find it a useful tool. I think it also applies, like, everywhere, even, like, just not just university, you know, it's a very useful tool. But since you brought up ChatGPT, so is it, like, one of your resources that you use to study for exams or prepare for any course or it depends on the course materials? Honestly, in the past year, ChatGPT has been vital to my studies, not only for helping me but also just to write whole projects and papers for me. Sometimes I'm just not bothered for a course that's not useful. For example, like, I have a thing where if a course is useful and if a course is practical and the professor is teaching in a way where I can learn instead of just memorize, then I try to do it myself, you know, and I try to apply my knowledge. But when courses don't give me enough knowledge and it's just very redundant, I don't really attend and I just ChatGPT the whole assignment I just submitted. Yeah, I understand. So, you have, like, you rely on it, as you said, like, in your courses and your studies, right? Yeah, for courses which I think are not very useful, again, I rely on it, to be honest, and I rely on, you know, previous assignments and all of that. I don't really use my own knowledge. Okay. Okay. Okay, so, aside from ChatGPT, as you said, do you think test banks are useful or any, like, previous exams are useful when provided? Definitely. And, you know, this is probably the most useful resource in the university. People always ask for test banks and always ask for previous exams because sometimes professors are lazy and they repeat questions. Yeah, exactly. And instead of asking the content and understanding the content, people just memorize the test bank and get a high score, which I think is unfair. But to be able to compete and to be able to get a high grade, sometimes you have to. So, I've relied in the past on test banks and just memorizing answers, which is, you know, counterintuitive, but in a way it helps a lot to get a higher grade, because otherwise I wouldn't be able to, even if I understand, because questions are just very weird sometimes. So, as mentioned just about previous exams, there's many conflicting opinions on whether it's, like, you know, it gives an unfair advantage to students. Do you believe in that or not, like, only? No, definitely. And I feel like there's some courses, even if I completely understand the material, the questions are just very weirdly worded from some professors and they're just very weirdly asked in a way where if I would study and if I would do the PowerPoints and I would look at my notes, I just wouldn't get a good grade because the questions would just be Chinese, you know, I wouldn't be able to understand them. Yeah. But using a test bank, it really helps. And, you know, I know it's kind of not allowed, but it's kind of an understable thing in the university where every single person uses it, and I think the professors are also aware of that. Okay. So, like, why do you think, like, it's not allowed? For what purposes would you consider it not allowed? It's not allowed because you're accessing questions which were provided to you by the instructor, and these questions are, these answers and these questions are of people who have previously taken the exam and, you know, sometimes took pictures illegally, like, behind the professor's back of the questions and sent them to their friends. So, I mean, obviously it won't be allowed because you won't be able to, like, this is, this is, you know, these are questions that were provided with confidentiality that is an exam, but, you know, some people found their way to take pictures and to record the answers. Yeah. So, do you think this kind of, we'd call it academic dishonesty of pictures or illegal acts that you would do with any test bank, do you think it's kind of common here in SBA? It's extremely common. Yeah, almost everyone does it. Sorry, I misheard you. Almost everyone does it. Okay, and, like, because you're saying almost everyone does it, do you think, due to it, like, being common, do you think that you need to go this extra mile to kind of, like, keep up with the people, because everyone, you know, is achieving high grades, maybe needs a test bank for other purposes, so would you, do you think you would go the extra mile to do that, to keep up with your peers? I mean, definitely, and, you know, even if there's a course where I understand and I think I can get a good grade, I would just use a test bank to be able to make sure that I know what I'm doing and I know the questions that are going to come, you know, just as an insurance policy. So this comes in both ways. If I don't understand the content, I'll use a test bank to memorize, but if I do, I'll also use a test bank to be able to get that extra edge, and I'm doing this solely because of the fact that everyone else is doing it, and if I wouldn't, then I would get a disadvantage, you know? And not only test banks, so I sometimes post the questions on ChatGPT, sometimes, you know, we get a tutor, which is, you know, and we pay the tutor to kind of do the test bank for us, or sometimes do the exam for us. Okay, all right. So that makes it a lot easier for us. Okay. So did you, like, did you hear of anything? You said you mentioned the illegal, like, pictures and things that people do, but do you have anything else you want to add, or is that, like, all you know about, like, whatever happens within or outside the classroom? Yeah, like, any other experiences that you've heard of, like, throughout your time in SBA? I mean, obviously, you know, there's the obvious way that, you know, when the professor is not looking in the big classroom, you use your phone, you know, you sometimes switch papers with your friend, and sometimes you can, you know, ask your friend for an answer. Yeah. And, you know, the scans, they're funny. Like, you know, the exams, they use Scantron. The Scantron sheet is very small, you know, so you can just easily switch it with your friend, and you can see what answers they have, and you can sit back, and no one will ever know. So that's another way of just, you know, validating my answers or helping a friend out. Yeah. Using your phone, again, you can Google formulas, and you can Google different things. And sometimes, I know stories of my friends using ChatGTT for the whole exam in class. They just ChatGTT the whole exam, and they get a decent grade. And, you know, it's kind of common in SBA. Yeah. All right. Lastly, do you think more controls should be implemented by the RSC to prevent any academic dishonesty? Do you think? I think it's not about controls, because if you add a million controls, students will find a way around it. As many controls as you add. Oh, you make the exam closed, but, okay, you don't allow electronics. People will, you know, find a way to sneak in their phone. Yeah. Okay, you have a teacher's assistant looking around, but, again, there'll be a time where you can cheat, you know. There's always going to be a time where you can cheat. So it's not about controls. It's more so about the way the questions in the exam is supposed to be structured. You know, this whole format about MCQs, it's too easy to cheat on MCQs. Yeah, exactly. You know, because I can just hit the code with my friend sitting across the class, and I can tell them, hold one finger for A, hold two fingers for B, hold three fingers for C. Yeah, it's very similar. Yeah. So if I point to him and I hold ten fingers, that means I'm asking for question ten. Yeah. And he'll hold three fingers, telling me it's C. It's just very easy to cheat in MCQs, and it's not about the controls the uni makes. It's actually about the way the exam is structured. So if the exam is structured in a way where it's targeted towards your understanding and you're supposed to write what you think and to interpret about the question and what you can analyze and partial credit is given to your calculations, not just your final answer, these things are what will incentivize people not to cheat and actually to understand. That's what I think. Yeah. I think it clearly, like, makes a difference, honestly. And you can tell in different exam structures, different ratings, different results of students. Definitely. And I can tell one professor, I have Professor Kimberly. I'm taking asset valuation with her this semester. And her exams, the way they're structured, even if you use your phone, people that use their phone and they cheat, they do worse than the exam. For example, in her course, I never cheat because, one, I understand the material because it's taught in a good way that helps me understand the concept, right? And then secondly, the exam is structured in a way where you can't cheat. For example, like, the numbers, first of all, are different for every person. And the way you're supposed to work things out, there are different ways of working out. So one question can have three different ways of answering it. Okay. And many steps. So it's just very difficult to cheat. And even if you Google these things, the cases are very specific. Yeah. Even Google won't help you. And tragedy will usually provide incorrect answers. So it's a good thing. Yeah. It really depends on the questions, honestly. Yeah. Thank you so much for your time. Sure. Sure. And the interview was very insightful. The information that you provided will be used in our project. And if you have any information that you'd want to share with us, you can reach out to us anytime. Thank you so much. Sure. Thank you. Thank you so much.