Please note: I do NOT promote the use of any use of test banks.
This is something I've kept in the back of my head for a few years and never really had a chance to speak about it until very recently. This situation involved a group of 5-8 students in my cohort. I'll just refer to them as my classmates.
During my last year of nursing school and in the beginning of preceptorship, one of my classmates invited me to a study group for our last Med/Surg 2 rotation final. We have gone over almost everything we could cram into our heads. Prior to my departure, one classmate mentioned something called a Test Bank. At first glance, I thought it was practice questions copy/paste from Quizlet. My classmates said that they have been using it since third semester as a study guide. I declined and didn't want to bombard myself with more information. I would just look up Quizlet for any practice questions when I got back home. After the final, my classmates asked me not to say anything. I ignorantly nodded my head as my mind checked out for Spring Break or anything nursing related.
I would hear the words Test Bank again from other college students while I was prepping for Preceptorship in my nearby Starbucks. I googled it out of curiosity and discovered its controversy with all college students and staff.
I hate to say, I chose to NOT do anything. I had no proof. Preceptorship was days away and reporting this to my class advisor would be another thing I have to add on my busy plate. Initially, sought advice from this forum and seen variations of They are cheating themselves. They will not pass NCLEX. I left it at that and minded my own business.
This was over three years ago. I graduated. I passed NCLEX. I found a job. I focused on my own nursing goals. I forgot about my classmates until I recently ran into them. We did a lot of catching up and found out they all passed NCLEX (most under 100 questions) and are all happy with their jobs.
I'm probably going to be in the minority here, but this seems like a case where honesty is not the best policy. You said the school is working with the publisher to find out who bought test banks from a website. Common sense tells me there is absolutely no possible way to find out who got onto a website such as Test Mango and made purchases. Is a publisher really going to contact an "illegal" website and demand things such as names, address, email addresses, and other personal information of their customers? Probably not. And even if they did (and were successful in doing so) is that publisher going to turn around and give the personal information of thousands upon thousands of people to your school? Again, probably not. My advice is to keep your mouth shut and take this as a lesson learned.
I know what test banks are, I discovered them awhile back while taking a sociology class over the summer. In this case I used the questions to test my knowlege and understanding. I found them quite useful in this regard. I guess they could be misused if someone was merely trying to memorize answers, but I think that would be next to impossible and especially for an exam as involved as the NCLEX. Maybe this is news to some, but quizlet is often a kind of test bank. You might try searching a few of your exam questions verbatim and you'll most likely will see what I mean, but no one seems to think there's a problem using quizlet, or is there? Also, I have had a couple of classes where the professors provided study guides, is using a study guide cheating? I think you can make an argument that it is, after all, it is someone telling you what's going to be on the exam, so why isn't it? Certainly you would say it was cheating if someone who had taken a paticular exam was doling out advice, wouldn't you? I guess I'm just not seeing what the big deal is, isn't it that you either know the material or you don't come test time?
You used Quizlet? So you used test bank questions then. Almost all the stuff you find on Quizlet is taken from publisher test banks. If your teacher is lazy enough to be using test bank questions, they arent a very good teacher.
To be honest, it just sounds like you're upset that they succeed as well and you feel as if they did half the work you did. Not saying that using a test bank that you know the professor is using to make the tests is right (it's not) but you don't know how much studying they were actually doing or even how they were using the resource, initially. I do believe that after they took the exam and saw how many of the questions were on the exam the continued use was wrong. But, as long as they maintain patient safety and quality of care then live and let live. In order to pass clinical they still had to exhibit safe practices before the instructor.
Test Banks are the worst kept secret in nursing school. They are a legitimate supplemental study tool. If that's the only thing you do to prepare for exams of any reputable program it certainly won't be enough and you will fail. It's no different from practicing questions from Saunders or from Quizlet or anything else. If you don't want to use them because you feel some sort of way about it than don't, but to say that students who do use them as a resource are somehow less capable of being quality nurse is disgusting. Nursing school is a means to an end. You will learn more on the floor in 1 month than over the 4 years it takes to get your degree. The questions from test banks are one of many, many resources available in this day in age to acquire the information needed to get that degree, get a spot in a hospital, and begin a fulfilling career.
There is a huge difference between practice questions and test banks. Bottom line, if you have access to the potential test questions before an exam, it's cheating.
Because that information somehow changes? If you have to define a disease, does it have a different definition if you looked it up on a test bank than if you read the definition from a book? Are these somehow 2 different diseases?
It doesn't matter how you study, for a written test, if you can read the question and know the answer, you know the answer. A lot of these test questions are part of your resources you get with your textbook. The majority of your multiple choice questions come straight from your textbook's study guide, word for word.
You're just studying potential test questions, there's nothing wrong with that. That's way different than being handed the test a day early and memorizing all the answers.
Specializes in Education. Public health. Psych board cert..
Faculty are expected to not share test bank data as part of your agreement with the text book publishers. I write all of my own exams because of student cheating in the past. These students have all failed or not reached the passing score of their exit HESI exams. (I know they cheated with banks as they confessed when they realized they could not pass and graduate). Realize that you are only cheating yourself. You cannot cheat and pass the NCLEX exam. The ethics of student cheating and possibly becoming a nurse frustrates me. The ethics of someone cheating in nursing school shows great lack of personal character. Our program no longer allows faculty to use test banks. Our pass rate is excellent.
They are a legitimate supplemental study tool. It's no different from practicing questions from Saunders or from Quizlet or anything else.
So if you walked past your instructor's office and found a copy of your test, took it home and memorized the answers. Then the next day took the test, would that be cheating? They are the same questions as the test bank and you knew that they were the exact questions on the test.
Lemon Headed said:
but to say that students who do use them as a resource are somehow less capable of being quality nurse is disgusting.
So you are saying that every person that only memorizes the test bank would pass nursing school even if they didn't know the answers?
Lemon Headed said:
Nursing school is a means to an end. You will learn more on the floor in 1 month than over the 4 years it takes to get your degree.
Which means cheat as much as you can because nursing school is irrelevant. Why don't nursing schools just give out test banks instead of teaching classes. You learn what you need to know in the first month of a job.
So if you walked past your instructor's office and found a copy of your test, took it home and memorized the answers. Then the next day took the test, would that be cheating? They are the same questions as the test bank and you knew that they were the exact questions on the test.
And like what I pointed out, so are the questions on the study guide given to the students by the textbook publisher. These "test banks" are literally hundreds to thousands of questions depending on the subject. It covers every single piece of information in the chapter, your teacher just picks which one to put on the test.
Nobody is memorizing all of those answers. But by studying these, you're studying at the level of what the test is going to be. You're not just memorizing that the answer to this question is C, you're memorizing that this is how you'd treat a patient with this symptom.
Guy in babyland, you took every point I made and turned it into something else. I'm not going to entertain any of your strawman arguments. I passed nursing school and I utilized test banks as a way to become more familiar with the material as well as to become more familiar with NCLEX style questions for the boards. I've been an excellent bedside nurse for over a year already and my employer as well as my patients are lucky to have me. It sounds like you are just bitter for some reason.
C0SM0
103 Posts
I'm probably going to be in the minority here, but this seems like a case where honesty is not the best policy. You said the school is working with the publisher to find out who bought test banks from a website. Common sense tells me there is absolutely no possible way to find out who got onto a website such as Test Mango and made purchases. Is a publisher really going to contact an "illegal" website and demand things such as names, address, email addresses, and other personal information of their customers? Probably not. And even if they did (and were successful in doing so) is that publisher going to turn around and give the personal information of thousands upon thousands of people to your school? Again, probably not. My advice is to keep your mouth shut and take this as a lesson learned.