failing due to less than .1 of a percent

[folin8]

Hello everyone, wanted to reach out here to see if anyone here has been in a similar experience. We are coming to a close on one of our classes before preceptorship, and as we are, not only did I but 3 other of my classmates finished less than a percent away from a passing grade in the class. With that said, there have been factors that have led to us getting a lower grade than we thing that we deserve such as our professor's refusal to throw out questions that a majority (if not all) of the class got wrong (faulty/bad questions), as well as a makeshift HESI constructed by our professor as well as some of the other nursing staff due to social distancing of the Corona Virus. That of which had extremely poor written match calculation questions that from my understanding, a huge portion of the class also had trouble with/answered wrong, as well as fill in the blanks (some of which I got marked wrong for even though I typed basically the same thing as the write answer. I know this as we were allowed to review it after). Our professor refuses to round the grade since it is apparently against our school's policy ( that of which I cannot find), nor refuses to even start a discussion which has led me and the other to take this to the director and the dean. With the pandemic going on and the changes being made, alongside other aggravating factors throughout the semester, I feel it's to the point of being unethical to simply let us fail by a percent that could be rounded up, or even give us some sort of assignment to add a point to the last exam.

Was wondering if anyone else has gone through a similar experience or know someone who has, and how it was handled. I'm going to be devastated if I have to repeat a semester being only .04%, another one of my classmates only being 0.01% away.

[TheDudeWithTheBigDog, ADN, RN]

On 5/11/2020 at 3:18 AM, JoC12345 said:

OK, you have some teachers that do a good job. Does that change the general view that you see in these forums about the teachers who don't?

[londonflo]

On 5/11/2020 at 2:11 AM, JoC12345 said:

You cannot grade the same way for online if the class states it’s a traditional face to face.

Would you fill me in on what your theory classes were like when you needed to quarantine? I am not teaching now and would like to know. Where you using Zoom? Several faculty FB groups dealing with Zoom said that students tuned in but did not turn on their cameras and were not available when called on. Was this your experience?

[londonflo]

Quote

our professor's refusal to throw out questions that a majority (if not all) of the class got wrong (faulty/bad questions),

Theory of test analysis states that when questions are thrown out because the majority of test takers get that question wrong, we must also look at the test questions where the majority of the test takers get the test item right. The result of that statistical analysis may be the decision to also throw that item out. When your faculty member through the item "out" did everyone get the item correct or was the whole number of test items possible decreased by one? If everyone received a point that was to everyone's advantage.

Statistical analysis of a test comparing each test item to evaluate how the top 25% of the class (on the grades for that test) answered with the lowest 25% (of grades on that test).There is a lot more to it but it does not boil down to "I like this class so everyone gets an A".

ts.

Quote

these boards tend to follow the general idea that the instructor isn't responsible for actually doing the job of a teacher, and is more there just to grade your tests.

When developing classroom content it took me a minimum of 6 hours to create each one hour of classroom presentation: reviewing student textbook content, developing Power Point and researching audiovisual content to liven things up. This did NOT include writing and reviewing test questions. Broad generalizations hurt those who proudly taught our future nurses and speak poorly of the educational consumer.

I have found in my student evaluations that most negative comments come from students who I think are not succeeding with the grades they think should be awarded to them, versus the grades they earn. Our evaluations are anonymous but sometimes students reveal a bit of their identity when angry and completing the eval. And those are the students we hear from on boards like AN.

[TheDudeWithTheBigDog, ADN, RN]

On 5/15/2020 at 3:27 PM, londonflo said:

Theory of test analysis states that when questions are thrown out because the majority of test takers get that question wrong, we must also look at the test questions where the majority of the test takers get the test item right. The result of that statistical analysis may be the decision to also throw that item out. When your faculty member through the item "out" did everyone get the item correct or was the whole number of test items possible decreased by one? If everyone received a point that was to everyone's advantage.

Statistical analysis of a test comparing each test item to evaluate how the top 25% of the class (on the grades for that test) answered with the lowest 25% (of grades on that test).There is a lot more to it but it does not boil down to "I like this class so everyone gets an A".

ts.

When developing classroom content it took me a minimum of 6 hours to create each one hour of classroom presentation: reviewing student textbook content, developing Power Point and researching audiovisual content to liven things up. This did NOT include writing and reviewing test questions. Broad generalizations hurt those who proudly taught our future nurses and speak poorly of the educational consumer.

I have found in my student evaluations that most negative comments come from students who I think are not succeeding with the grades they think should be awarded to them, versus the grades they earn. Our evaluations are anonymous but sometimes students reveal a bit of their identity when angry and completing the eval. And those are the students we hear from on boards like AN.

Yeah, and then a lot of us had teachers that just used the textbook company's premade powerpoint slides, read them word for word, and then "you're responsible to know the entire chapter." So then we email them with questions, and finally get a reply the day after the exam.

So we bring it up on these boards and "they're not there to hold you hand and they can't teach you ever little thing." If you can't do the job, you shouldn't be teaching. Any idiot can read a powerpoint slide then disappear until the next class.

That's why this transition to online classes were so easy for so many people. NOTHING changed. We were already teaching ourselves out of school since our teachers wanted to take the lazy approach. Meanwhile, I payed $12,000 to teach myself to get a nursing degree, finishing one of my classes with a 97% average, so it's not exactly about "not earning the grade I thought I deserved." I think we have the right to be a little annoyed when the teachers fail to step up and do their job since we're putting ourselves thousands of dollars in debt for it. Nursing school isn't some kind of gatekeeper to decide who's allowed to become a nurse, it's a service that the students are paying for.

[londonflo]

17 minutes ago, TheDudeWithTheBigDog said:

That's why this transition to online classes were so easy for so many people. NOTHING changed.

Was it easy? I asked above about what classes were like after face-to-face was changed to online. I really do want to know what it was like with examples. Actual examples - not nothing has changed. Enlighten me.

18 minutes ago, TheDudeWithTheBigDog said:

So then we email them with questions, and finally get a reply the day after the exam.

Did you faculty have office hours and were you aware of when they were or where you could find that information? You may find this hard to believe but we actually taught classes effectively when there was no email, no texting and no voice mail. We actually had to put forth the effort to meet with the faculty. And we did.

[TheDudeWithTheBigDog, ADN, RN]

2 hours ago, londonflo said:

Was it easy? I asked above about what classes were like after face-to-face was changed to online. I really do want to know what it was like with examples. Actual examples - not nothing has changed. Enlighten me.

It's all over these forums, and really all over any forums on college. The expectation of you have to teach yourself. YOu have to read through the chapter, take notes, be completely prepared to the point that lecture is more of a review than instruction. All that's changed for all of those people is that the "review," the lecture was switched to being a video online. The majority of learning, having to do it independently outside of lecture, all these people have been doing that already.

[Guest1142305]

I don’t see anything wrong with expecting people to come to lecture fully prepared and having read the material.

[londonflo]

8 hours ago, TheDudeWithTheBigDog said:

YOu have to read through the chapter, take notes, be completely prepared to the point that lecture is more of a review than instruction.

This has always been the expectation of college learning. Faculty are not going to give you a "Cliff Notes" version of the content. Instead, faculty are to highlight an area or theme of the content. If you weren't expected to read your textbook, why would we have you buy/rent them? I know that some students never buy the books or worse, brag about never having cracked them after buying them. Those claims may impress their friends but show a total lack of personal investment in their learning.

Truly I may understand your frustration with your nursing school and faculty. You enrolled thinking all would be presented to you, in bite size pieces and all that was required was 'seat time'. I outlived my usefulness in nursing education as I expected students to meaningfully participate in their learning.

I have wondered why NCLEX prep programs, books and test banks have proliferated in the last 10 years. Most of the students I knew did not have to use these resources to successfully pass NCLEX. I read on AN of graduates setting aside 4-6 weeks to prepare for the test. I wonder if many of them do not truly learn the content in their college classes and now must attend to learning it pre-testing. Just a thought.

Obviously you are succeeding and are on track to graduate. I guess the process of learning difficult content isn't entirely broken or we wouldn't have the capable graduates we have today.

[Here.I.Stand, BSN, RN]

I don’t know... we were expected to be prepared and had to do plenty of outside studying, but I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect instructors to be the expert in the room.

When I was in school we had a fair amount of in-class discussion and homework, but there was a ton of lectures prepared BY THE INSTRUCTOR... even if they used a power point it contained bullet points and we took the detailed notes.

That was true with other disciplines as well... I was a music major for two years before deciding to be an RN. All of my classes — calculus, history, music history, music theory, religion, literature, Latin.... ALL classes required both student engagement AND an expert in the subject being taught. They lectured, answered questions, and had office hours in which students could get help with the material if *after the prep AND LECTURE* they were still unclear.

I don’t think it’s at all unreasonable to expect the same of nursing faculty.

[JoC12345]

On 5/15/2020 at 2:12 PM, londonflo said:

Would you fill me in on what your theory classes were like when you needed to quarantine? I am not teaching now and would like to know. Where you using Zoom? Several faculty FB groups dealing with Zoom said that students tuned in but did not turn on their cameras and were not available when called on. Was this your experience?

No zoom, we used Google hangouts for lectures, and canvas for everything else. Nothing changed at all for us except we lost the availability to receive more points that were given to previous years. I don’t have facebook though. I deleted it when I started school to limit me being distracted. Which was a good idea.

On 5/12/2020 at 5:47 PM, TheDudeWithTheBigDog said:

OK, you have some teachers that do a good job. Does that change the general view that you see in these forums about the teachers who don't?

True. It’s hit or miss with this covid as well. I understand they struggle as much as we do. But you have to admit they know what to teach even if it isn’t extensively

[JoC12345]

Half our students failed ob/peds. Started with 27 in the program for our campus and technically have 6 left. Don’t be a cry baby, but admit what you did wrong, make an action plan, and file an appeal.

[TheDudeWithTheBigDog, ADN, RN]

On 5/18/2020 at 1:42 AM, JoC12345 said:

Half our students failed ob/peds. Started with 27 in the program for our campus and technically have 6 left. Don’t be a cry baby, but admit what you did wrong, make an action plan, and file an appeal.

Does that tell you something about your program? If 27 people studied and took it serious, way more than 6 should pass. When the majority of your class fails, the problem isn't your students, the problem is your teachers.