Does anyone else's program do this? (Grades)

[CaptScrubs13]

Just wondering how common this is among nursing schools:

When we take an exam (always Scantron) our professors seem to take FOREVER to post grades. (Ours are posted on Blackboard). Also, sometimes when we are taking multiple exams in one week, they will not post the grades until every student has taken each exam.

This week we had one exam Wednesday morning, and one this morning (Friday). They are 2 entirely different classes, but everyone is taking both classes .. so our Weds. exam grades will not be posted until our Fri. exams have been corrected, and both grades will be posted at the same time. Their rationale is if they posted Exam #1 and you got a poor grade, you would not study as much for Exam #2. I personally think if I saw a bad grade, it would motivate me to study harder for the second exam! Who wants to do poorly on 2 tests!?! This is also the practice during final exams - even if the entire class takes a final on a monday, but the last final exam for the college as a whole is not til Thursday, we won't see our grades until Thursday.

It drives me CRAZY! They must know how anxious we are about grades. Teachers -- any insight here? How long does it really take to correct a scantron 80 question exam? Anybody else have a program where this is the norm? Do you like it/dislike it?

[~Mi Vida Loca~RN, ASN, RN]

Ours our posted pretty quickly. Our first semester fundamentals instructor wouldn't post them though until after class or clinicals. If people did bad she didn't want them freaking out in clinical or not listening in class. Also so we weren't checking our phones ever minute for grades.

95% of the time our grades are posted the same day. Every now and again it might take a day or two.

[ohcomeon]

Well my school doesn't do that, however some instructors take FOREVER to get the grades posted. I am still waiting on a grade to be posted for an exam I took on Tuesday. She said they would be up by Friday afternoon.... We do the scantron too and I know the tests get sent off to be graded. Then our instructors like to do an item analysis to see how many people get certain questions wrong. So I can understand it may take a little bit of time, but it drives me bonkers!! We spend all this time studying for an exam, and then have wait days to find out how we did! Ugh...

[caliotter3]

I think they do it more to accommodate slow as molasses instructors. On the other hand, I had an instructor who would input grades within a couple of hours on his website. Then we went over the tests at the next class meeting and any discrepancies could be addressed individually during office hours. He wasted no time.

[Boog'sCRRN246, RN]

Our grades are posted within two hours of everyone finishing the exam. I will say though, that if certain questions are considered "high miss" questions, the instructors will go back over those particular ones and decide if it was a "good" question or not. Sometimes that can delay the grading. Also, Scantron machines are not perfect by any means. Just because the form went through the machine and was marked, it does not mean the marks are always correct.

[starmickey03, MSN, RN]

Our grades are posted the same day. But we know our scores before grades are even posted because the instructor puts all the answers on the wall with the rationales after everyone has completed the exam.

But we do have an instructor that takes two days to post grades. He does this so he can do an item analysis, as a previous poster stated.

Sorry they take so long at your school. I know how anxious exams make us!

[CrazierThanYou]

This is something that I have been very frustrated with since the semester began. We take a test and then.... we wait. And wait, and wait, and wait. Our school has a policy that a test or assignment must be returned within a week.Our instructor doesn't seem to care a whit about that. Either of them. Personally, I think they're doing it on purpose.

It only takes a second to scan the tests, I know that from previous classes. After the first test, we were told we might as well get used to waiting, that we were "spoiled" by teachers who got grades back quickly.

[texasRN_14]

our tests are all on the computer and we get our grades instantly as soon as we finish the tests. we then have a test review one week later and go over our tests and sometimes we get points added if they threw out a question or something.

[ziggysgal,RN]

Our tests go like this -

test day - we are given a second paper to write our answers on.. once finished with the exam, we can take that second paper in to the 'key room' to compare and figure out our score... any challenges to test items are recorded on that sheet and turned in... if you're not challenging a question, sheet is turned in and instructor discards it. You know (assuming you used the paper properly) what your score is on the test day.

within 2 weeks, the instructors from all of the campuses for this program do a conference call to discuss challenged items and make a determination of whether to throw out the challenged items...

within a day of the conference call, grades are posted to the blackboard site

If you're not 100% sure about your score, it can be a nerve-wracking wait... but at least we have a general idea about the score from the key room...

[amymina]

Last fall when I started school, they would post the grades outside of our nursing lab, and we sometimes had to wait up to 2 weeks for the results. Last semester, they switched to an online reporting of grades, so they are usually posted within 3 days from the test. It takes a little longer sometimes, because there is also an evening class that takes the same test on the same day, and they aren't graded by scantron till the next day. It can take up to two weeks for a test review, because anyone that missed had to have taken it already.