A Problem with Med School...

[wrigliarows]

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[TruTrooper]

I'm a second year and am frustrated at my school's new test policy. Our tests are no longer given back to us so that we can see which question we got right or wrong. The majority opinion of my medical school class is that we want to see the tests so that we may learn from our mistakes, not to challenge the questions. Knowing what questions we missed will help us better understand not only the material the questions covered, but the style and critical thinking that went into solving them. Furthermore, we want to ensure that we understand the questions we got right since some answers were reached by educated guesses or mere luck.

Any advice on what to do, or what happens at your school...

We got a chance to view our test during an exam review session but had to return them afterwards.

As one of my professors stated, it is really difficult to come up with really good questions to test you on particular subjects so they protect the exams so the questions won't float around to future students who may have an unfair advantage of others. I guess with the growing technology such as camera cell phones and all of that, they must be over-protective at your school but I partly understand since I was once taught for a short while. I learned just how difficult it is to come up with test questions that adequately asseses as student's knowledge as well a protect the test from students that try to challenge every single word on the test and twist the context to their favor. Honestly, some students could make great lawyers considering how well they can challenge how questions and answers are worded. Can you imagine trying to design multiple test questions to thwart the effforts of guys like this especially in an academic setting with exceptionally bright students?

I think your school should at least review the test through powerpoint presenation and just have some faculty roaming the room. Test reviews are great learning sessions after all.

 

[shorrin]

At UIC we never got to see the tests. It was an endless source of frustration, but that was the policy.

 

[Silverfix]

We got a chance to view our test during an exam review session but had to return them afterwards.

As one of my professors stated, it is really difficult to come up with really good questions to test you on particular subjects so they protect the exams so the questions won't float around to future students who may have an unfair advantage of others. I guess with the growing technology such as camera cell phones and all of that, they must be over-protective at your school but I partly understand since I was once taught for a short while. I learned just how difficult it is to come up with test questions that adequately asseses as student's knowledge as well a protect the test from students that try to challenge every single word on the test and twist the context to their favor. Honestly, some students could make great lawyers considering how well they can challenge how questions and answers are worded. Can you imagine trying to design multiple test questions to thwart the effforts of guys like this especially in an academic setting with exceptionally bright students?

I think your school should at least review the test through powerpoint presenation and just have some faculty roaming the room. Test reviews are great learning sessions after all.

Wow, fancy that! A professor having to do something difficult. Outrageous.

 

[TruTrooper]

Wow, fancy that! A professor having to do something difficult. Outrageous.

This is why I said "really" difficult as in exceptionally difficult so this would at least curb sarcastic comments such as this one but I guess some will always get through.

Anyway, unless it is your job to design quality challenging questions regularly, year after year, in such a rigorous academic setting, I guess it is just a difficult concept to grasp.


Now you say: "Wow, fancy that! A student having to grasp something difficult. Outrageous."

 

[akpete]

Exams are secured at MCW too. We have our first block exams next week. I know for anatomy and human development we get to write down our answers on another piece of paper. Then for like 3 days the exam with the correct answers is posted on a bulletin board 9am-4pm. Then you'll never see it again. As for other classes...I can't remember.

 

[Rogue_Leader]

We have kind of the same policy at my school. They don't give back the exams, but they do post them for a few hours after the exam for people to review them and challange them if they want, but nobody's allowed to keep a copy of the exam. The professors say that we can see our exams if we want, but it involves setting up an apointment with them and reviewing the exam in his office. The reasoning they gave seemed to be pretty good. They make a bank of questions that they pull from to make the exams every year. If we had all the questions from the previous years, then they would have to make new questions that would test different material than what was asked in previous years, and instead of asking questions about the most important concepts, they would have to asked very detail oriented questions about material that is relatively insignificant, but hadn't been asked before. So yeah, it might be slightly frustrating not having very many recent exams, but the trade off is that you don't have to get bogged down learning the physical structures of all the billiruben synthesis intermediate steps and stuff like that.

 

[loveumms]

At my school we took all the exams on our laptops (they want us to be prepared for computer testing for the boards). So, we would get our scores back right after submitting the test to the server ... which was sometimes a blessing and sometimes ruined the rest of the day.

We were allowed to see which questions we got right and wrong and sometimes there was a "mini" explanation of why the answer was correct.

Usually after spending two to three hours taking the test I was in NO mood to go over which ones I got right or wrong. We were not allowed to write anything down about the questions (they would actually make us throw all the scrap paper away that we used during the exam) so it was pretty much impossible to remember any of the questions.

I think we were also allowed to meet with our academic advisor a few weeks after the exam and go over the questions again but, we still were not allowed to take the questions and answers home.

We were given the same story about how difficult it is to write quality questions ... yada yada. Plus, the orof would always add like five to ten "new" questions onto our exam that they were testing out for future exams. These didn't count towards our exam grade however, when we got our scores back right after submitting the exam they would be factored into that score so I could never be completely sure about the score I was received.

 

[synapse lapse]

At my school we took all the exams on our laptops (they want us to be prepared for computer testing for the boards). So, we would get our scores back right after submitting the test to the server ... which was sometimes a blessing and sometimes ruined the rest of the day.

We were allowed to see which questions we got right and wrong and sometimes there was a "mini" explanation of why the answer was correct.

Usually after spending two to three hours taking the test I was in NO mood to go over which ones I got right or wrong. We were not allowed to write anything down about the questions (they would actually make us throw all the scrap paper away that we used during the exam) so it was pretty much impossible to remember any of the questions.

I think we were also allowed to meet with our academic advisor a few weeks after the exam and go over the questions again but, we still were not allowed to take the questions and answers home.

We were given the same story about how difficult it is to write quality questions ... yada yada. Plus, the orof would always add like five to ten "new" questions onto our exam that they were testing out for future exams. These didn't count towards our exam grade however, when we got our scores back right after submitting the exam they would be factored into that score so I could never be completely sure about the score I was received.

If you took the tests on your laptop, why couldn't you just take a a bunch of screen shots and save the questions that way? Not to mention other ways to intercept and save date coming into your computer. That seems like an even less secure form than giving a paper test back for review.

 

[loveumms]

If you took the tests on your laptop, why couldn't you just take a a bunch of screen shots and save the questions that way? Not to mention other ways to intercept and save date coming into your computer. That seems like an even less secure form than giving a paper test back for review.

We took our laptops into our pods (we all had to buy the same laptop when we started). The pods are rooms that accomodate like 15 - 20 students located within the med school. We hooked our computers into the T1 lines, signed onto the server and then took the exam. You could not take "screen shots" or save the data in any way. Not sure what you mean by screen shots, I'm assuming you mean copying and pasting the information. Each page got a question with its corresponding answer choices. You marked your answer then moved onto the next question. You could flag questions you wanted to come back to and could go through the question as many times as needed within the alloted time period.

I am not a computer person - and don't really understand much about them but I'm pretty sure that there was no way to take shots or save the data.

Furthermore, we signed an oath before each exam saying we would not cheat or copy any of the test material before the test began. If they caught anyone doing so, it would more then likely result in dismissal from school (or at least a severe repremanding from the honor board via a letter in your file). Additionally, professors would circulate throughout the rooms to make sure that no one was cheating so even attempting to copy the materials would probably result in getting caught.

Hope this makes sense - its kinda hard to explain.

 

[Labslave]

We took our laptops into our pods (we all had to buy the same laptop when we started). The pods are rooms that accomodate like 15 - 20 students located within the med school. We hooked our computers into the T1 lines, signed onto the server and then took the exam. You could not take "screen shots" or save the data in any way. Not sure what you mean by screen shots, I'm assuming you mean copying and pasting the information. Each page got a question with its corresponding answer choices. You marked your answer then moved onto the next question. You could flag questions you wanted to come back to and could go through the question as many times as needed within the alloted time period.

I am not a computer person - and don't really understand much about them but I'm pretty sure that there was no way to take shots or save the data.

Furthermore, we signed an oath before each exam saying we would not cheat or copy any of the test material before the test began. If they caught anyone doing so, it would more then likely result in dismissal from school (or at least a severe repremanding from the honor board via a letter in your file). Additionally, professors would circulate throughout the rooms to make sure that no one was cheating so even attempting to copy the materials would probably result in getting caught.

Hope this makes sense - its kinda hard to explain.

If you don't mind me asking, what med school is this?

 

[loveumms]

If you don't mind me asking, what med school is this?

University of Maryland

 

[Rogue_Leader]

You could not take "screen shots" or save the data in any way. Not sure what you mean by screen shots,

If you hit the print screen button on your keyboard (or the prt scr button or however it's represented), an image of whatever is on screen will get copied to memory. You can try it out right now, hit print screen, then open up MS paint or some other graphics editing software, and then press "Shift+insert" to paste the image in memory. There are also other programs out there that do the same thing.

 

[loveumms]

If you hit the print screen button on your keyboard (or the prt scr button or however it's represented), an image of whatever is on screen will get copied to memory. You can try it out right now, hit print screen, then open up MS paint or some other graphics editing software, and then press "Shift+insert" to paste the image in memory. There are also other programs out there that do the same thing.

I'm pretty sure that the testing softward would not allow this function. Also, the sever would probably be able to record this function (if we tried).

 

[Paws]

I think it is better not to have old copies of the exams floating around. We had that first year and so people would study the old exams, and - unfortunately - some of the profs would also just keep using the same test questions.

Great, this meant that the averages were unrealistically high and that those people who were able to get the copies did well, while the rest who might not have had them - or who were actually trying to learn the material - did not do as well. In the end, it's a stupid policy because we have a pretty high failure rate on the usmle so yeah, you might get an inflated 92 on your immuno exams but you may not understand the material for the boards.

I would rather struggle and learn the material and be able to reason my way through board (and clinical years) questions than try and gun for a meaningless grade. This year (second) all exams are strictly witheld and that seems to equal the field a bit more. If you want to check and see what you got wrong, we are allowed to sit in the deans' office and go over the exam - but they have someone sit with you as well.