You know, there I was, all happy with myself: I'd done a ten-year rolling upgrade on all my 2nd and 3rd year teaching material on the Web; I'd put together a linear version of everything as a singel Web page so they didn't have to skip about too much; I'd even PDFised a version so they could download and print it easily - with the same progression as I'd used in my lectures, and no extraneous material included. I more or less told them what the questions would be - it's OK, Hugh, I do it every year, and the distribution of marks is still normal, and people still fail - and I sat back, secure that I had done my job and possibly enlivened the learning experience as well.
Then the students started to trickle in. Holding old exam papers. Papers set when there were more lectures in the course I teach. When more material used to be included, now shifted to 3rd year. Asking "How do we answer this question?".
"It's OK, I didn't teach that, you don't need to learn it", I said to the first batch. "If it's not in the revision notes, you don't need to learn it", I said to the second. "Did I teach that this year?" I asked the third - dangerous question, that; they may not know the answer as they may not have been there. No answer from that lot - so I took pity, and said: "No, it's not in this exam".
By the fourth, I was fixing them with a steely gaze, and saying "Show that section to me in the revision notes". They, of course, didn't have them. I showed them the lack of same section on my computer. They looked bemused. They tried again: "But didn't you teach that?" I said: "Show me in your notes". They didn't have a set with them. I said "It's fine, it's not in the exam". Still looking bewildered, they left.
Fortunately, they write tonight. I'm still wondering if someone, convinced I should have asked the question they will have spotted, will try and work the learned answer in for another question.
As I have said before: I hate exams.
