Nursing Research starting 2/24/14

MikeH2013 · Mar 25, 2014

Ready to beat my head into the keyboard right now? Seriously. It's all about hindsight at this point with this course. Punitive grade deductions on assignments that are broken up across a half-dozen rubrics are pushing me to the brink of having a CVA. We accept your paper as quantitative, but now we don't. There needs to be a course, 4325-500: Understanding How Nursing Research is Cobbled Together at UTA in Order to Avoid Stepping on a Grading Landmine.

Care of the Older Adult and Nursing Research have the most punitive and after-the-fact grading systems ever devised.

MBrickle · Mar 25, 2014

Ready to beat my head into the keyboard right now? Seriously. It's all about hindsight at this point with this course. Punitive grade deductions on assignments that are broken up across a half-dozen rubrics are pushing me to the brink of having a CVA. We accept your paper as quantitative, but now we don't. There needs to be a course, 4325-500: Understanding How Nursing Research is Cobbled Together at UTA in Order to Avoid Stepping on a Grading Landmine.
Care of the Older Adult and Nursing Research have the most punitive and after-the-fact grading systems ever devised.

Haha! I think we spend so much time piecing together the rubrics, OOH, Q&A to figure out about 75% of what they actually want that it leaves little time for anything else.

Clearly they are grading off of a much more comprehensive rubric...why can't they just post that one on the assignments?

I.HATE.THIS.CLASS.

It's everything people said it would be and more. Buh-bye 4.0...

vera4130 · Mar 26, 2014

I was deducted a point (I won't complain too much, my coach has been decent for once, total shocker), for including information not discussed in the OOH on the first assignment. Whatt??? I sat down, thought about the question, and had something to add, and I got a point deducted for that.

And I loveeeee how they are responding to the questions on the DB with "listen to the OOH" or not answering them (responding, not answering). I almost threw my coffee this morning. I wanted to respond to something by saying "I DID AND YOUR INSTRUCTIONS ARE AS CLEAR AS MUD - WHICH IS JUST SOP FOR UTA."

I almost swore in my class evaluation. I was thisclose to deciding it didn't matter.

If you ever watched Chapelle show, that scene where he's dressed in purple (supposed to be Rick James) screaming "[bad word] your couch" while kicking his feet into this guys couch - that's how I feel about this class.

The "rules" for this APA paper are stupid. It's APA the UTA way.

vera4130 · Mar 26, 2014

Haha! I think we spend so much time piecing together the rubrics, OOH, Q&A to figure out about 75% of what they actually want that it leaves little time for anything else.

I am, no joke, screen capping where Dr. H said it was "ok" to do something a certain way. Because I can so see them coming back and deducting big time points and going "well the rubric said to do x" or whatever.

MBrickle · Mar 26, 2014

Ugh. Don't even get me started. We got a 69% on our stupid JC....if they wanted us to take every damn additional point off of 9 questions and add like 40 additional pieces of info to the assignment, they should be more clear.

I always knew I wouldn't get an A in this class. Only very few do and honesty, with working 45hrs a week and having another class on top of this, I knew I wouldn't. But now I find myself fighting for a B. I think we will do ok on APA, but my big concern is the quiz tomorrow. I got a 75 on the first one and am gunning for an 85 on this.

Hate this class SOOOOO much!

MikeH2013 · Mar 29, 2014

Haha! I think we spend so much time piecing together the rubrics, OOH, Q&A to figure out about 75% of what they actually want that it leaves little time for anything else.
Clearly they are grading off of a much more comprehensive rubric...why can't they just post that one on the assignments?
I.HATE.THIS.CLASS.
It's everything people said it would be and more. Buh-bye 4.0...

I'm with you. The double-secret grading rubric, 20 pts off for not including critique 14.b subsection q article 36.7289 paragraph 846. When I saw the grade, a little mushroom cloud exploded out of the top of my head. I was lucky I didn't stroke out in front of the keyboard or throw my computer out the window. I'm waiting to meet someone I really don't like and then I'll encourage them to take nursing research with at least two other courses (because it's so easy, after all).

With regards to the other subject, I followed the coach's customized critiques in Older Adults and aced my last paper which closes out this mini-mester with two A's and a B (for research... I hope). Just depends on whether we hit the high points in the double secret APA paper rubric or not.

MikeH2013 · Mar 29, 2014

I am, no joke, screen capping where Dr. H said it was "ok" to do something a certain way. Because I can so see them coming back and deducting big time points and going "well the rubric said to do x" or whatever.

When in doubt... oh nevermind, there's always doubt because there's no clear answer.

vera4130 · Apr 1, 2014

I'd take a very careful look at your graded papers if you're borderline. I'm not, but I decided some of my teammates might be and I found what I consider to be grading errors on APA issues. I own an APA manual and looked everything up, and emailed my coach about several things I disagreed on. The biggest one is that we were deducted for using page numbers for parenthetical citations that were not direct quotes. So I emailed her a quote from the APA manual that states they encourage page numbers for paraphrased portions too. :)

I don't know that we'll get any additional points for it, but if they're going to harp on APA maybe they need to make sure THEY'RE correct in the first place.

MBrickle · Apr 1, 2014

Ugh. This class ruined my 4.0. I would have gotten and A save for our crappy JC grade due to the cryptic rubric they give us and the secret rubric they grade from. B it is. Ugh.

I think we lost points for spelling out numbers greater than 10. Oh well.

How did you fare overall? So happy it's done!!

inmyskin · Apr 1, 2014

Any words of wisdom about this class for those of us that have yet to take it?

maryannmartin75 · Apr 2, 2014

read the previous posts from others and prepare for five weeks of hell

MBrickle · Apr 2, 2014

Any words of wisdom about this class for those of us that have yet to take it?

If you don't drink. Start now.

I immediately took control and made assignments for my group on day 1. Luckily, my group was pretty decent but it was easy to see weak links by week 1.

I assigned a draft date by each Thursday, which gave a day to revise. Be prepared to sit at home all day Saturday revising other peoples work and submitting.

Three people in my group were great and very preset. One did good work that didn't require any revisions (other than those suggested in the critique) but was never too present. The other two did ok/not great work and were not very present, especially at crunch time. I spent a few hours every Saturday re-doing tier work.

Weeks 1-3 are awful. 4 is okay and 5 is pretty easy but I suggest you format all of your week 1-3 assignments in APA to make week 5 easier.

Quizzes are a crapshoot. I suggest not doing any reading (especially because between videos, OOH, assignment and managing a group you don't have time to read the 230+ pages from week 1). Wait for them to announce the blueprint and then read the notes/book specific to that.

Must participate in the OOH. Listen to it. The challenge of this class is that assignment criteria can be found in several different places and it is your job to find it and combine it to get a sense of what is required. Even then I found they grade off of an entirely different and come comprehensive rubric. Assignment instructions are found in the weeks video lecture, the assignment rubric and the OOH (which often gives answers). Every Wednesday I would listen and take specific notes on the OOH. I would make a list of the weeks questions for the assignment and under each question I would write the OOH-specific notes for that question, then info for that question found in the video AND the rubric criteria for that question and post it as a thread. This way, everyone in the group could see the various aspects/points to hit for each specific question listed.

Prior to the OOH, I would look through the assignment. Anything you don't know, ask on the Q&A board or during the OOH.

The JC is a cluster F in my opinion. Make sure you hit every.single.point for every question they have you reference from the critique form - regardless of how relevant you think it is.

Know this - VERY few people get As. Most of those people cut back on work during the weeks of this course and took it alone. I worked 50hrs/week and doubled with history II which was an insane amount of work. Would have gotten an A had we not bombed the JC assignment in week 4. Learn to love the idea that a 3.93 is almost as good as a 4.0, especially when research is over and done with.

Godspeed.