[jjjoy]

In another thread, a nursing school instructor commented that they were restricted by school guidelines in writing tests to just 8 questions from 3.5 hr of lecture content.

Is this true in many schools?

If so, are you okay with that?

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I would think that such constrained test-writing policies do not encourage in depth learning.

A student could really know and understand much of what was covered but if they have the bad luck of missing just a couple of test questions, their grade is substantially affected. Isn't that's one reason students will fight so hard over one lousy test question? Each question weighs an awful lot yet only reflects a very small portion of content covered.

And students will fight even harder if the problem had to do with those often tricky 'best choice not ideal choice' questions. If the student knows the condition, symptoms, pathophys, lab values, nursing care, etc but gets a question wrong due to this quirky NCLEX style question, it doesn't do much to encourage students to continue to invest their limited time learning the content in such depth.

Overall, my point is that if in depth studying and comprehension of lecture & text content isn't tested for on tests or reflected in one's grades, students might judge that it's not a good use of their very limited time as nursing students... and instead turn to focused techniques that allow them to perform well on tests. It's not like they don't have plenty of other things to take up their time as students.

There appears to be a push from all sides the ensure that students will be successful in passing the boards upon graduation and it unfortunately seems to, in some cases, actually be taking away from student education instead of enhancing it.

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Please don't take this as personal critism of instructors. You guys have to deal with considerable constraints on time and budgets as well as other pressures I have no idea of.

Disclaimer: I'm not a student but did graduate from nursing school in the era of the computer-adapted-testing NCLEX. If I were a student, I probably wouldn't have time to write all this and think about all this!!

[llg]

The important thing is the QUALITY of the questions, not the number of them. I've had final exams for whole semester-long courses that were only 2 or 3 essay questions -- and felt it was a fair exam. And the NCLEX can be passed with only 75 questions.

Quality ... not ... Quantity.

[puggymae]

The general rule at our school is two questions per hour of lecture. You are allowed to make more if you think the content lends to more, but all of the questions have to be NCLEX style questions.

[jjjoy]

Originally Posted by llg

The important thing is the QUALITY of the questions, not the number of them. I've had final exams for whole semester-long courses that were only 2 or 3 essay questions -- and felt it was a fair exam.

I have no problem with this as that type of exam IS comprehensive.

And the NCLEX can be passed with only 75 questions.

I can see WHY schools have encouraged this type of testing but I'm not convinced it's useful to apply NCLEX style testing across the board.

The NCLEX is specially designed to "adapt" to students' performance on each succeeding question. I'm assuming rigorous statistical testing was done to determine the minimum number of increasingly difficult questions selected by a programmed formula based on previous questions answered that reflected a passing score on a the longer, paper NCLEX.

That is VERY different than an instructor giving a hand out test with a set number of pre-determined questions.

I'd think it could useful to have a two-part test for students. One part could be a comprehensive test with straight forward questions testing student retention and comprehension of target material. A second part could be the "NCLEX-prep" portion. The questions in this portion would represent a sample of the type of question they may see on a given topic on the NCLEX and give students a chance to become familiar with this testing style.

To ONLY test with NCLEX style questions doesn't seem a very effective way to evaluate student retention and comprehension of course content.

[lemonaidangel]

I agree with everything the above poster said. As a senior nursing student, I have often felt the same sentiments. I used to spend hours pouring over textbooks, learning all of the little details, memorizing the many steps to perform a nursing procedure, and feeling 100% prepared, only to get a poor grade on a test due to tricky wording of questions. And then there are others tests for which I barely even studied and I received excellent scores. Our school requires all students to attend an NCLEX test taking strategy seminar to help boost our exam grades. I feel that this teaches us not to even bother with studying, for as long as we know how to take a nursing test and how break down all of the key words, we can pass school without having to open a textbook. I realize it's important to prepare for the NCLEX, but isn't it more important to prove that we are competent nurses? In the real world, we are going to have to make life or death decisions in a matter of seconds. And we won't have multiple choice to help guide us in those situations.