Unfair Tests?

labordude, BSN, RN · Nov 25, 2019

8 hours ago, stockmanjr said:
Concept Education seems like a great way for shady for profit schools to fail a bunch of kids on random exams and blame it on the students. It's about as good as when my school decided to get rid of lecture and just had us do case studies. Most of the class failed the first exam as no one knew what was going on.

Except that it's used by some excellent universities (ECU, UNM, and more) as well as collaboratives of multiple programs in other places, and from the top down in several states. It is definitely not something that is limited to "shady for profit schools" and there is evidence to support it. It's not a nursing specific method of teaching either, it can and has been applied to many other things.

llg, PhD, RN · Nov 25, 2019

I am the product of a "concept-based curriculum" from back in the 1970's. It's been around for a long time and has stood the test of time.

Patients (and real-life situations) don't present themselves exactly the way it may have been described in a textbook. Real life can be messy -- and it's the nurse's job to use her understanding of the concepts underlying the presentation to figure out what is going on and what he/she should do. We need to be able to act to unique situations that may, on the surface look very different from anything we have seen or reheorificed before.

The student's focus should be on striving to understand the basic concepts underlying situations -- and not on memorizing facts from a lesson -- because the long-term goal is not to be able to recall facts, but to assess a situation and use our understanding of general principles and concepts to act wisely to new and unique patients/situations.

If you really understand something well, you can recognize it in a new, unique situation, analyze it, and arrive at an appropriate response. That's a level of learning that is much higher than merely memorizing some facts and/or protocols.

Waiting for Retirement · Nov 26, 2019

One of two things is happening here. Either your concept-based curriculum has covered a topic and you are expected to understand the concept well enough to correctly answer questions or you have NOT covered the concept being tested and you have a legitimate concern for your professor and/or Dean.

Go to your professor's office during posted office hours to ask how you might better prepare for exams. Don't assume it's an inappropriate method of testing until you hear their explanation for test prep. If after talking it through you feel students are being placed at a disadvantage you can always take it higher up the food chain. Just be quite sure of where your ducks are---and that they are all in a neat row---before going there.

TheDudeWithTheBigDog, ADN, RN · Dec 2, 2019

On 11/4/2019 at 2:40 PM, JadedCPN said:
Not to sound like that stereotypical older "get off my lawn" type of person, but life is not fair and you better get used to things not being fair when it comes to your nursing school and nursing career.

This advice is part of why nursing school is becoming more and more of a disaster. It's expensive, and we're all paying for it, it's reasonable to expect that we're taught the material. No other industry in this country would get away with that. If your landscaper doesn't ever come at least cut your grass, you wouldn't pay him. You're not going to pay the restaurant for food you didn't get. You're not going to pay your cable company if your cable was out the entire month. Yet when it comes to college, you're paying for that classroom instruction, yet if your instructor wants to just take a nap the entire class, too bad, learn on your own. It's complete stupidity that we refuse to hold colleges to the same standards as every other thing that we pay for.

And for the career, unfairness affects patient care. Labor laws still apply to hospitals, you have rights.

People need to grow a backbone.

And being in a concept based school now, it's not uncommon to be tested on things that haven't been covered yet. Teachers love to use test banks, which are specific to chapters, meanwhile, you've only covered about 1/3 of the chapter that the questions are being pulled from. Sometimes mistakes happen, and sometimes it's just understanding the general concept. You don't have to know about something to know that what you're learning about can cause it, you only need to know it can cause it.

stockmanjr, BSN · Dec 2, 2019

9 minutes ago, tonyl1234 said:
This advice is part of why nursing school is becoming more and more of a disaster. It's expensive, and we're all paying for it, it's reasonable to expect that we're taught the material. No other industry in this country would get away with that. If your landscaper doesn't ever come at least cut your grass, you wouldn't pay him. You're not going to pay the restaurant for food you didn't get. You're not going to pay your cable company if your cable was out the entire month. Yet when it comes to college, you're paying for that classroom instruction, yet if your instructor wants to just take a nap the entire class, too bad, learn on your own. It's complete stupidity that we refuse to hold colleges to the same standards as every other thing that we pay for.
And for the career, unfairness affects patient care. Labor laws still apply to hospitals, you have rights.
People need to grow a backbone.
And being in a concept based school now, it's not uncommon to be tested on things that haven't been covered yet. Teachers love to use test banks, which are specific to chapters, meanwhile, you've only covered about 1/3 of the chapter that the questions are being pulled from. Sometimes mistakes happen, and sometimes it's just understanding the general concept. You don't have to know about something to know that what you're learning about can cause it, you only need to know it can cause it.

That's the sort of scam I'm talking about. You can't have it both ways. If you want to teach in a concept format that's fine, but you to make your exams are on what your class have covered or that it's just about the concept and not the actual condition. In the litigious society we have you think that would be simple. It's clearly not as twice lawyers were brought into my school for this sort of misconduct by professors and twice the school had to fold like a cheap suit because the professors committed professional misconduct.

TheDudeWithTheBigDog, ADN, RN · Dec 2, 2019

It's not as unfair as it seems. Sometimes, the teacher will make a mistake and pull out a question that was just something they never covered yet. But more commonly, that question about PEs is looking for making sure you understand why you walk your patients, or at least knowing that you should walk your patients. You don't have to know a single thing about PEs to know that you get your patient up to walk to help prevent them from happening.

stockmanjr, BSN · Dec 2, 2019

9 minutes ago, tonyl1234 said:
It's not as unfair as it seems. Sometimes, the teacher will make a mistake and pull out a question that was just something they never covered yet. But more commonly, that question about PEs is looking for making sure you understand why you walk your patients, or at least knowing that you should walk your patients. You don't have to know a single thing about PEs to know that you get your patient up to walk to help prevent them from happening.

I understand that concept as the NCLEX does that. I think it's very kind to say it's a mistake. For some it might be a mistake, but for others it's a way to weed out students or to make students experience what they went though. At my school we had a professor who took Prep U questions and put them on our final. Everyone though we were getting freebies because the class had been doing poorly. It turned out that she graded based upon her opinion of what the answers should be and not what Prep U had chosen. That wasn't a mistake. Only 3/69 people passed this final and only 15/69 passed the class. They ended up passing almost everyone after multiple lawyers paid a visit to canpus. Yet since she has tenure she still is teaching.