> it seems possible the teacher's instructions were confusing.
Yes; I've been on both sides. I've written assignments that I thought were clear and unambiguous, only to find that a significant number of students misunderstood what I meant. They weren't intentionally trying to make the problems easier, they just weren't sure what I wanted. (And, of course, who is going to interpret an ambiguous problem so as to make more work for themselves? A few students will do it both ways -- the easier interpretation and the harder one -- but most won't.)
And on the other side, I've taken continuing education classes taught by other teachers where the instructions were confusing, ambiguous, or sometimes just plain impossible to follow ("You'll find the answers to this quiz in the article you just read." but the article was revised and now uses different terminology from the quiz.)
I find that students talk to each other and spread interpretations of the assignment. They might be correct, they might not - either way the interpretation spreads (never through anything like 'official' course forums set up for students to ask about interpretations, of course). They've also gone through shared experiences in other courses beforehand and will often simply come up with the same incorrect interpretation. For 5 years the basic assignment was clear and easily understood, then the next year it's almost universally misinterpreted. Those shared misunderstandings have easily outnumbered creative interpretations to help grades in my experience.
> who is going to interpret an ambiguous problem so as to make more work for themselves?
I did.
In fact I always tried to find a unique or novel solution to my problem sets, ambiguous or not. (If the problem set contained a hint I tried mightily to not use the hint, I'd always try to replace a proof by contradiction with a constructive proof etc...)
My marks suffered for it. I even almost failed a first year exam cos I didn't want to perform a grody 4x4 matrix multiplication. Later the prof said: "Your exam was crap, but you came up with a better answer for problem four than I'd thought of."
It's still one of my most cherished memories from undergrad.
I always hated the: "Will this be on the test" type of attitude. Are you there to learn and break new ground or to just get marks? I had crappy marks but my work spoke for itself.
Students should put more effort into creating their own body of work. If they spent half the energy they put into finding tricks and gaming the system, they'd be much better off for it.
I was never one to game the system until I was failing 3 classes while on academic probation (2 Fs would have gotten me kicked out). Then I gamed the shit out of the system.
That was my breaking point. Others it's losing a scholarship; others, getting a B.
Yes; I've been on both sides. I've written assignments that I thought were clear and unambiguous, only to find that a significant number of students misunderstood what I meant. They weren't intentionally trying to make the problems easier, they just weren't sure what I wanted. (And, of course, who is going to interpret an ambiguous problem so as to make more work for themselves? A few students will do it both ways -- the easier interpretation and the harder one -- but most won't.)
And on the other side, I've taken continuing education classes taught by other teachers where the instructions were confusing, ambiguous, or sometimes just plain impossible to follow ("You'll find the answers to this quiz in the article you just read." but the article was revised and now uses different terminology from the quiz.)