Who's taking A&P II this summer? (2010)

Published

I'm two days away from being done with A&P I, and A&P II is a 6 week class online this summer.

Who will be taking A&P II as well?

Yeah,Im in one of those medical business schools...Kaplan. They have a RN program at my community collage that I will finishing too. I hope it isn't too hard to get into the program. In this area 90% get in and transfer to Pitt.:nurse:Any one on facebook?

Up Vote Up Vote ×

Im on facebook but how do I send you my info? Or if you know how to do it, PM your info and Ill request you.

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Yeah,Im in one of those medical business schools...Kaplan. They have a RN program at my community collage that I will finishing too. I hope it isn't too hard to get into the program. In this area 90% get in and transfer to Pitt.:nurse:Any one on facebook?

When do you graduate?

Up Vote Up Vote ×

Woohoo! My 100% lab average is still in tact after taking the lab quiz for the digestive system!

Hopefully I can do well on the lecture exam as well and bring my grade up a bit.

Up Vote Up Vote ×

Final Grades posted today. I did get an A for lecture! Yippeeee! I got a B for lab, but I figured that would happen. I'm psyched to get another A in lecture though. Whew!

Up Vote Up Vote ×

Good job mango. I still have 1 more month. This class is very time consuming and mentally draining. I hate this class and will tell anyone who will listen to never take the Proff I have. I study all the time and am struggling. We have a test on 3 units and since learning the last 2 units I have already forgotten Urinary. I totally had this down and now Im back looking over my notes for the test and I have no clue what the answers are. This class is way too loaded with information for a short answer style exam.

Up Vote Up Vote ×

I also wanted to say that my teacher is creating an unhealthy competitive enviroment in her class by expecting to get a natural Bell Curve. The exams are really hard and we study hard, but she thinks if there are too many A's then the exams are too easy. This just leads to people not wanting to share information and help each other because we work so hard and know she will just make it more difficult if too many of us get A's.

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in Cardiac.
I also wanted to say that my teacher is creating an unhealthy competitive enviroment in her class by expecting to get a natural Bell Curve. The exams are really hard and we study hard, but she thinks if there are too many A's then the exams are too easy. This just leads to people not wanting to share information and help each other because we work so hard and know she will just make it more difficult if too many of us get A's.

I get a lot of flak when this eventually comes up in an argument, but I am actually a strong supporter of using a bell curve as a basis for exams. I don't think competition is unhealthy in the slightest.

Warning: This is going to go quite a bit off topic.

Modeling grades close to the standard distribution would be a huge positive gain to our educational system if all institutions were supportive. Essentially everywhere there is a problem with grade inflation, leaving very little room for differentiation between top scholars on basis of GPA. There is a HUGE difference between someone who masters a class and completely learns all of the material with a subsequent grade close to 100, and someone who studies just for exams and still gets a 90. With our current system these two are equivalent, but with a test designed to elicit a normal distribution this problem goes away almost entirely.

What this would effectively do is return GPA back to a meaningful number where an A in the class means you were a superstar. There would be no more "easy As" and the largest number of grades would become a C. In this revised system a C would equate to basic competency of the material. If you got a B it means you did better than average and an A means you were literally a top performer in the class.

The most common response when I discuss this platform is, "Wow, my GPA would be terrible, therefore that is a dumb idea." This is a completely ignorant statement as in the new system your relative ranking would be the same. If Joe is smarter than Bob then Joe is still more likely to have a higher GPA. The only change it implements is that Joe will have greater opportunity to differentiate himself from Bob via GPA.

I concede in an isolated class that implementing an exam based on a standard distribution will probably not be effective. Partially because it is impossible to compare a grade given in this environment with that of the industry norm, and partially because I don't think one class is a large enough sample size to expect a reasonable distribution a reasonable percentage of the time.

Grading on a curve will cultivate an academically competitive environment that will improve effective knowledge across every intelligence level. As long as the exams are standardized across a statistically significant population, study groups will still be effective as individual relative performance in a group of

Contrast a 3.5 being a ridiculously good GPA versus slightly above average. Right now a 3.5 is very ordinary and in many cases downright trivial to attain. It's only "half As and half Bs" after all. In the revised system a 3.5 means that in half of that student's classes they performed 2 or more standard deviations above the mean, WOW. A 4.0 is effectively genius level and is only obtainable by the very gifted.

Grades are trending upward and the national average GPA in post secondary education (in America) is nearly an A- (¹). Effectively this means if you get a B in a class that means you're belove average, pretty dumb eh?

Up Vote Up Vote ×

bhanson, I can definitely see your point about the big difference between a 90 barely keeping your head above water and close to 100 where you really know whats going on. Does this mean we all have to be genius level or end up serving up french fries the rest of our lives?

Up Vote Up Vote ×
Specializes in Cardiac.
bhanson, I can definitely see your point about the big difference between a 90 barely keeping your head above water and close to 100 where you really know whats going on. Does this mean we all have to be genius level or end up serving up french fries the rest of our lives?

Not at all, relative differences between students will be the same, the only difference is GPA could be used with more weight as an indicator of performance relative to peers. GPA is already used in this manner along with many other factors, except with a bell curve GPA becomes a more meaningful representation of actual performance.

I'd say it requires a paradigm shift for most of the population to understand.

Up Vote Up Vote ×

OMG, I got number 2 of a 15 point question wrong and had the remaining in the right order. Now they are all going to be wrong! I spend so much time studying and one stupid mistake is going to wreck my grade. I have had it with this class, I cant know every single thing and since we dont know what is going to be on the test I have to spend 30+ hours a week studying plus the 8 hours of classtime. This does not seem right.

Up Vote Up Vote ×

I just took my test on the urinary system and (somehow) got an 80! I say somehow because I didn't start reading the chapter til yesterday, and didn't finish reading it til right before I took the test. (And no, I didn't not do any work on it before yesterday, but what I did was listen to a couple lectures and read the material my prof provided us...so it wasn't much).

Just one unit/week left! The reproductive system.

At least I know that I'm in no danger of not passing. I currently have a 78% (C+) plus 3 extra credit points that will get tacked onto my final average...and my lowest lab grade was a 92, and lowest lecture a 59 (which I will admit is pretty terrible, but I spent maybe 10 hours at most going over the material)...and, in order to get a B-, I only need 80 more points, and there are still 105 out there.

Up Vote Up Vote ×
+ Join the Discussion