Responsibility 101

You're taking a class and the instructor says, "We're having a test on Monday," and hands out a study guide which she tells you to fill in during class time. She tells the class, this is exactly the material that will be covered on the test.

Someone else asks, "Is it going to be an open book test?"

She says, "Maybe, I haven't decided yet."

Would you study or not? Would you assume that yes, it is going to be an open-book test?

I am the instructor in the equation. I gave my class an EASY test on Microsoft Outlook and Word yesterday. When creating the test, I carefully chose the questions from those the class has already answered in the lab assignments, not re-wording a single one. They grumbled and complained and whined for the whole two hours of the class. I left work feeling so frustrated and fried.

The questions were literally the same multiple choice and fill-in-the-blank questions they'd already done as a lab from the end of the chapters and then there was a more heavily weighted practical section that had tough things to do, like "send me an email."

I am not kidding.

Based on the amount of complaining, I knew the scores wouldn't be good and that I'd have to assign a low point value to the fill in the blank section to avoid most of the class failing. I did. Half a point each for 20 FIB questions.

Two people still failed.

My mood: disappointed and feeling failure-ish myself.