Can't decide between Maryville, Walden or La Salle Nurse practitioner programs

Dodongo, APRN, NP · Dec 27, 2019

5 hours ago, djmatte said:
The proctored environment is more to ensure and verify a sterile testing environment more-so than to minimize cheating between students. To be fair, the kind of cheating you note can be similar to boards as well. Similar situations are present on facebook as we speak as other NPs have pointed out to me. There are private groups out there that encourage this under some guise of board prep. People actively compile board questions after their tests and pass it on. Boards are only rewritten so often and if memory serves, there are only two specific tests they pull from.
I do think at least the scenario you present may be a bit of a stretch. At Frontier, I was with the same students over the course of 3 or so years. We met in person at multiple functions, formed longstanding friendships and collegiate bonds that still exist to this date. Likely much more than most other online programs are able to emulate. Nowhere in our time (to my knowledge) did something like this occur. Maybe on small scales in smaller study groups. It still doesn't diminish the importance of remote proctors.

I just had this conversation with a nurse on the unit this weekend. She admitted that her a few other students do this. It's not a stretch. My program had us all test at the same time, so I was not aware this was an option/issue at other programs.

And the boards are a complete farce. I am still a member of a "boards review" group on facebook and there are documents containing a significant chunk, a majority even, of the actual questions on the boards. It's an enormous problem. There should be a committee devoted to writing new test questions. There is no excuse for giving the same test questions year after year after year. Of course students will do what they can to cheat and to pass. That's human nature. The certification bodies should do what they can to prevent it.

djmatte, ADN, MSN, RN, NP · Dec 27, 2019

1 minute ago, Dodongo said:
I just had this conversation with a nurse on the unit this weekend. She admitted that her a few other students do this. It's not a stretch. My program had us all test at the same time, so I was not aware this was an option/issue at other programs.
And the boards are a complete farce. I am still a member of a "boards review" group on facebook and there are documents containing a significant chunk, a majority even, of the actual questions on the boards. It's an enormous problem. There should be a committee devoted to writing new test questions. There is no excuse for giving the same test questions year after year after year. Of course students will do what they can to cheat and to pass. That's human nature. The certification bodies should do what they can to prevent it.

Not sure whether to commend the honesty of that nurse or disparage her overall integrity. I believe there is some help on my schools part that they maintain significant test bank questions on their exams. They have been doing video-based proctored exams since 2012 and had secure browser exams since at least 2008. Randomized and from banks much larger than the 40-60 questions you are answering. Maybe that's the equalizer in exchange for online flexibility?

buenorg10, BSN · May 2, 2020

On 11/20/2019 at 1:07 PM, schoolisexpensive said:
All of those are terrible online programs, I hire for my clinic and anyone with an online NP degree I throw out

Jeez!