EXAM REVIEWS IN PA SCHOOL

[ValHin]

Hi everyone!

I'm in 1st year PA school and our school has a policy? preference? inclination? It's still unclear, but they do NOT let us look at our exams after we have taken them, unless we FAIL THEM. This is during zoom/remote or on campus in person.  After almost every exam we've had so far, we have found errors that our Professors made in writing questions that we only remember due to our short term memory, and have had to email them to request changes/points/not be penalized for their errors. Many have given points for poorly worded questions, which is great. The issue our class has with this is: 1.) What about errors that we don't remember seeing or that we don't even recognize as errors? We also can't see what we got wrong and what we got wrong due to this "policy." We feel as a class it is a HUGE disservice to our learning and education, and we for sure are PAYING ENOUGH MONEY to get exam reviews for our tuitions costs. The feeble excuse reason we got was "it promotes cheating." 1.) The only way we could cheat is if they use the same exams year after year and USING THE SAME EXAM YEAR AFTER YEAR IS THE # 1 REASON WE WOULD BE ABLE TO CHEAT IN THE FIRST PLACE. So, to us it mostly sounds like laziness on their end for not WANTING to write/rearrange new exams. The other point is that even if we did cheat, we would still need to take the PANCE, and that's impossible to cheat on, so, we have no incentive to cheat. Or, if we did, we'd just have to learn it all later anyway, so we think this is a poor excuse. Cheating will happen if someone is determined to cheat, and it will eventually catch up with them. The point is, we want to look at our exams in order to learn from out mistakes and see where we understand and where we lack understanding. 

 

MAIN QUESTION FOR ALL OF YOU CURRENT/PAST PA STUDENTS:

WHICH SCHOOLS ALLOWED THEIR PA STUDENTS TO REVIEW THEIR EXAMS AFTER THEY TOOK THEM REGARDLESS OF WHAT GRADE THEY GOT?

We are looking into writing a request to change their "policy" as a class, and would love to find other examples of schools that allow exam reviews to help our case.

Please include which school you went to/are attending and if you graduated and they let you review exams, how you did on the PANCE?

 

Thanks so much!!

V-

 

Edited October 14, 2021 by ValHin
typo

[CAAdmission]

19 hours ago, ValHin said:

The only way we could cheat is if they use the same exams year after year and USING THE SAME EXAM YEAR AFTER YEAR IS THE # 1 REASON WE WOULD BE ABLE TO CHEAT IN THE FIRST PLACE. So, to us it mostly sounds like laziness on their end for not WANTING to write/rearrange new exams.

If a program uses the same (or very similar) exams every year, it allows them to perform statistical analysis to eventually develop good projections for how students will do down the road and intervene if necessary.

If faculty need to write new questions for each exam because the questions are "out" they lose this predictive ability. Students also get the impression that they are smarter than they really are, and wind up with a surprise on the PANCE. Needing to write new questions also increase the number of poorly written questions on each exam - the performance of questions should be evaluated after each exam and bad ones removed from the pool. After a few administrations, the exam should have very reliable questions. 

[ANESMCR]

On 10/14/2021 at 5:24 PM, ValHin said:

Hi everyone!

I'm in 1st year PA school and our school has a policy? preference? inclination? It's still unclear, but they do NOT let us look at our exams after we have taken them, unless we FAIL THEM. This is during zoom/remote or on campus in person.  After almost every exam we've had so far, we have found errors that our Professors made in writing questions that we only remember due to our short term memory, and have had to email them to request changes/points/not be penalized for their errors. Many have given points for poorly worded questions, which is great. The issue our class has with this is: 1.) What about errors that we don't remember seeing or that we don't even recognize as errors? We also can't see what we got wrong and what we got wrong due to this "policy." We feel as a class it is a HUGE disservice to our learning and education, and we for sure are PAYING ENOUGH MONEY to get exam reviews for our tuitions costs. The feeble excuse reason we got was "it promotes cheating." 1.) The only way we could cheat is if they use the same exams year after year and USING THE SAME EXAM YEAR AFTER YEAR IS THE # 1 REASON WE WOULD BE ABLE TO CHEAT IN THE FIRST PLACE. So, to us it mostly sounds like laziness on their end for not WANTING to write/rearrange new exams. The other point is that even if we did cheat, we would still need to take the PANCE, and that's impossible to cheat on, so, we have no incentive to cheat. Or, if we did, we'd just have to learn it all later anyway, so we think this is a poor excuse. Cheating will happen if someone is determined to cheat, and it will eventually catch up with them. The point is, we want to look at our exams in order to learn from out mistakes and see where we understand and where we lack understanding. 

 

MAIN QUESTION FOR ALL OF YOU CURRENT/PAST PA STUDENTS:

WHICH SCHOOLS ALLOWED THEIR PA STUDENTS TO REVIEW THEIR EXAMS AFTER THEY TOOK THEM REGARDLESS OF WHAT GRADE THEY GOT?

We are looking into writing a request to change their "policy" as a class, and would love to find other examples of schools that allow exam reviews to help our case.

Please include which school you went to/are attending and if you graduated and they let you review exams, how you did on the PANCE?

 

Thanks so much!!

V-

 

I’ve never heard of any PA school granting access to exams. It’s ludicrous you would even insinuate that as an option. There have been entire classes dismissed in the past when exams have been leaked. There are few exceptions. The testing software I used a while back granted viewing opportunity for 1 minute after submitting and seeing your score then it was gone forever. There can be high miss questions or multiple complaints about one question leading to a review and redaction. Agree with the above answer as well. Programs are required to meet numerous standards and it’s simply one of the many metrics they must use to report to ARC-PA. Students failing the PANCE also reflects very poorly on the program. I think you need to ponder a little deeper on this, use your head, and cut out the emotional aspect. 
 

My advice to you. If you really want to review exam questions, have everyone write down what they remember as soon as they exit the exam room. I’d also encourage you to write your own exam questions. You may find that you see a couple here and there on exam days, but also you’ll see how time consuming it is. 

Edited October 16, 2021 by ANESMCR

[dmdpac]

I don't recall any exam reviews while I was a PA student.  Faculty may have discussed a particular topic if answers to a specific question demonstrated widespread poor student comprehension.  Otherwise, we saw each exam only once.  When we turned in the exam at the completion of the test period we never saw it again.

Like has been mentioned above I'm not aware of any PA program that grants access to exams after they've been administered.

[PAtoMD]

I don't recall getting exam review in PA school. However, at my current institution we have an exam review under the supervision of faculty. We are cannot bring anything in the room with us and there is a white board where we write questions that we believe were miskeyed or need to be looked at again by the question writers. 

[Aunt Val]

All of this sounds kind of strange to me.  My program let us review almost all our exams, whether we did well or poorly.  My pharmacology professor (who rewrote every exam every year) even encouraged us to use past years' exams as study guides.  I think there was one professor who only let us see our online exams for a few minutes and then they were cut off.  Sounds like my program must be an anomaly.

 

EDIT:

Of course this was only for the didactic year.  EORs are a different story since they're from a PA organization, not the school.

Edited October 17, 2021 by Aunt Val