Lesson Overview 

It is more than possible to write an exam that requires thinking and does not try to "trick" the student - but rather to try and assess how much the student has been paying attention in class to what's been going on.  Candide is the first of these.  It is also important to give thoughtful multiple choice exams because it is the kind of thing that the students may encounter again and again in their academic lives - starting with their ACT/SAT tests - and later in college.  For my exams - I always try to give 5 possible answers - 4 of them plausable - though only one is correct - and one that is a kind of joke.  First, to make it easier, second to put them at ease.  While my quiz average for students that did the reading hovered at about 92% - my exam average was usually around 70%.  I don't think that makes it a bad exam - I think it is another tool to try to get students to study and to process what happens in class.

Thoughts on the Lesson 

Since I first started teaching (some 35 years ago now) every time after I wrote an exam, I would think to myself, "Gosh - this is SO easy - the kids are going to ace it."  And then they took it.  The students would average between a 65% and a 70%.  The first exam of the  year always has the lowest scores.  The students don't take it seriously; some students don't take the class serioiusly.  I do know that the note taking always gets better after the first exam.  I used to run the questions through the machine and get an analysis of the questions: how many students got a particular question wrong.  What I found was a remarkably even distribution - it wasn't that certain questions were hard - students were just paying attention or studying different parts.