Test taking policy, does your school do this too?

[MegNeoNurse]

Test taking policy for nursing classes (Theory, Concepts, Clinical-written) are as follows: students must only enter the classroom with a pencil and an eraser (no scratch paper allowed, no water bottles, etc.); once all students have completed the exam (my classes have like 60 people!) the instuctor will read each exam question and provide the answer, no questions are to be asked; tests are not returned to student to even review; student is notified of test score, but no of which questions were missed.

Okay, how the hell are we supposed to learn from the questions we missed if we don't even know that we missed them!!! Especially the fact that our finals are accumulative.

The reason these really really strict policies are enforced are because some stupid students in the past decided to make up extrememly elaborate cheating schemes (or so I hear....) and ruined it for all of us.

I'm so pissed we can't even see which questions we got right, and which we got wrong! How are we supposed to learn!?? I guess the only indication the instructors will give us is "you need to look at xxxx more carefully you didn't do so well on the exam in that area."

Feedback? I'm freaking out about this, as I'm sure everyone else in my class is as well!

[Jesus Rocks]

that is how most schools are, they have to take measures to ensure that people wont cheat. and people will cheat if you give them a chance. dont worry about the cummulative final, nobody did where i was at. if you do good on all your other tests than you shouldn't have a problem. get used to it though, nursing school is full of things that you nay find "unfair". they are just trying to make us competent nurses, able to function out there in the real world. and no one said this was going to be easy, right?

[Jules A, MSN]

We have to comein, put everything in the front of the room and sit down with our pencil and calculator provided by the school (we are not allowed to use any other calculator).

The test is taken and grades are posted at the end of the next class. We are able to write a question to the instructor regarding a question we got wrong. The teach can then write back and explain why the question was wrong.

That's it.

We do have a point deduction policy if you don't take tests as scheduled. If you are absent you have to take it the next time you come in or it's 10 points off. If you are late you can take it in the remaining time (all tests are 1 hour long) or take it at the end of class. If you don't take it that day you again take a 10 point deduction and it sounds like any other missed tests get an automatic deduction after that.

This sounds like a great overall policy to me. Cheating was a problem with a select few in my class mostly enabled by the lack of any incentive to take the exam when scheduled. It was the same exam with no penalty for people that missed it the first exam so this group just rotated the people absent and clued them in on the tricky questions.

At first it bothered me that we couldn't keep our exams to study from but the professor would give the answer to each question, no debate or comments allowed. Apparently they use the same ones year after year, which I think is kind of lame, but I got used to it and since I usually only got a handful of problems wrong once I heard the correct answer in the review I could memorize it and it stuck with me.

[fullco]

We are allowed to see our exams after the grades our posted. We review the material and then our tests are destroyed. While testing we only get one minute per question. Our bags, etc have to be on the floor--no books, etc on the table.

:monkeydance:

[MegNeoNurse]

Thanks yall for all of your feedback. :monkeydance: I have calmed down a bit about this and accepted that its the way it is, too bad so sad. I understand though that our instructors are working towards getting up to ultimately pass NCLEX and everything from here on out goes towards that. I have my first Clinical exam (not skill test-out, just written exam, its like 10 qs.) next Tues, so until then I am left wondering.

[Petite06]

I can understand how they would have procedures in place to help prevent cheating again. I was in a program where they were strict. However, what they did was that you could set an appointment up with the prof and she/he would allow you while in the office with you to review your questions. If you had to ask a question to id where your train of thought went wrong, they would help you...however you were not allowed to do any writing of any kind and it was a supervised review. Unfortunately when you are in a larger class...it kinda gets crazy and they have to make just as elaborate schemes to prevent problems!

[emllpn2006]

At our school we had to have everything in the floor and closed during the test. As soon as you were finished put the test and answer sheet into a box and left the room for the alloted amount of time. After the test was graded if over half the class missed a question the instructor would come back in and go over that specific question and it would be thrown out for that test but would be fair game on the final and the same question would not be thrown out for a test and the final. We were allowed to go to the instructors office and review our tests but nothing could be written down in that room. One way we found out to get around this though that our school did not consider cheating was when we left the room after the test everyone would highlight in their notes specific areas that they remembered being on the test. Then before the cumulative final we would have a review session and compare what every one had highlighted. Then someone in the class would write up a study guide using everyones compliled information.