> The number of students I have that actively presume I am trying to trick them is truly astonishing.
> I've put parts of answers in the question text, underlined them, and then had students tell me they thought it was a trick.
Why wouldn't they assume that?
Tests are nothing but games where students figure out what answers you want. They can do that by learning the material, but there's a metagame. What were you thinking when you wrote down this question on the exam?
For example, once I took a english test which asked me the correct pronoun for ships. Choices: he, she, it, they. I know that "she" is almost always used to refer to ships, but I also know that "it" is also grammatically correct. So which is it? Is the teacher trying to test my understanding of this historical tradition? Does the teacher think "she" is antiquated? Will I lose if I pick "she"? There's enough uncertainty here for me to pause even though it's an absurdly simple question. I know the answer but I'm not 100% sure what will happen if I choose it.
There are serious consequences to getting these answers wrong and students simply can't afford to trust you.
Entire books could be written about this teacher-student metagame. Another example: choice order. Suppose the choices to the above english question were ordered so:
Which pronoun is used to refer to ships?
A. It
B. He
C. They
D. She
Deliberately positioning an almost correct answer as the first choice was extremely common in the schools I attended. A student who's overly anxious or running low on time might read that, pick choice A without even reading the other options and move on. The second we noticed this, "letter A is never right" became a meme and to this day I feel uncomfortable choosing the first option presented to me in any context. Preparatory schools actually offered test taking classes where we were taught to read questions backwards because of this.
Teachers eventually noticed that we noticed and suddenly the right answers were the first choices. Do you have enough confidence in your knowledge to assert that letter A is correct? Now it's a deeper level metagame: does this teacher know that I know?
This is what you get when education determines your future job prospects. It is no longer about "actual learning". It is a game and our future hangs in the balance.
My point wasn't that they shouldn't or should, its that they do. As you note it has been socialized into them. The problem is systematic, not something any one educator can fix. Bad teachers, and bad educational experiences create long term damage beyond not learning content.
Good tests actually assess learning - what you mentioned is not a good test. Just like a test that causes stress ends up measuring stress isn't measuring learning.
> I've put parts of answers in the question text, underlined them, and then had students tell me they thought it was a trick.
Why wouldn't they assume that?
Tests are nothing but games where students figure out what answers you want. They can do that by learning the material, but there's a metagame. What were you thinking when you wrote down this question on the exam?
For example, once I took a english test which asked me the correct pronoun for ships. Choices: he, she, it, they. I know that "she" is almost always used to refer to ships, but I also know that "it" is also grammatically correct. So which is it? Is the teacher trying to test my understanding of this historical tradition? Does the teacher think "she" is antiquated? Will I lose if I pick "she"? There's enough uncertainty here for me to pause even though it's an absurdly simple question. I know the answer but I'm not 100% sure what will happen if I choose it.
There are serious consequences to getting these answers wrong and students simply can't afford to trust you.
Entire books could be written about this teacher-student metagame. Another example: choice order. Suppose the choices to the above english question were ordered so:
Deliberately positioning an almost correct answer as the first choice was extremely common in the schools I attended. A student who's overly anxious or running low on time might read that, pick choice A without even reading the other options and move on. The second we noticed this, "letter A is never right" became a meme and to this day I feel uncomfortable choosing the first option presented to me in any context. Preparatory schools actually offered test taking classes where we were taught to read questions backwards because of this.Teachers eventually noticed that we noticed and suddenly the right answers were the first choices. Do you have enough confidence in your knowledge to assert that letter A is correct? Now it's a deeper level metagame: does this teacher know that I know?
This is what you get when education determines your future job prospects. It is no longer about "actual learning". It is a game and our future hangs in the balance.