I'm taking an online mooc for a comp science class. I feel that I've grasped the material in the lectures and have passed all the quizzes and problem sets without issue, however the midterm exam introduced many obscure twists to the topic that were never covered in the lectures. I recall this happening a lot when I was in college, and there must be a reason why. Isn't the goal of an exam to test one's understanding of topics covered in class? To all educators out there, why introduce new stuff in exams?
