For many of the students taking the course, this is the first time they are taking a test with me. And there is a little bit of a learning curve there, I think. This is something we talk about quite a bit in the Education courses I teach: every teacher has his/her own preferences, quirks, and foibles that come out in a myriad of ways in our teaching practices. But one place this happens specifically is in the assessment vehicles we develop.
Students have agreed with me when I have asked them about this. Different instructors have different ways of putting tests together, for good or ill. And until you've taken a test with a particular instructor? You just can't be 100% of their assessment style.
I've said before that I take my work very seriously, though I try not to take myself too seriously as a teacher. Perhaps this is one way this shows up in my teaching practice in the assessments I write: I often ask my students how they are feeling at the beginning of a test. Here's what the top of the test paper looked like for this first exam of the semester in World Regional Geography:
