Allowed to see exam answers?

[M12008]

---

Members don't see this ad.

I did a quick search but didn't turn up anything obvious, so here goes.

I'm an M1 at a school that has a policy that exams are for assessment purposes only. This means that after an exam has been taken, the class is not given an opportunity to see what the answers to an exam are (tests are taken online). We are given our score, the mean, sd, median, and histogram of class scores- so we know where we stand. Some exams will list problem areas from the questions you got wrong (for example, off an anatomy exam, one question's problem area for me was "Innervation." Not sure how valuable this info is- I think it's mostly useless).


Now, I am definitely not a grade grubber, never have been. However, I like to use exam answers as a learning tool- it helps keep me from reinforcing an incorrect ideas (I might think it's right because that's the answer I picked), and not only helps me better understand material, it's also useful in seeing which kinds of questions typically trip me up. All useful in long term boards prep in my opinion.

From my understanding, test questions are re-used from year to year, and the school does not want to compromise these questions for students next year. Understandable, but to me it conveys a lack of trust in the integrity of their students. Drama, I know.

I'm curious to find out if other schools have this policy or something similar, and what other people think?

Also, I'd like to approach the dean with a logical, well thought-out request to reconsider this policy. In an ideal world, I'd like to find some kind of educational literature supporting the idea that reviewing exam questions and answers after the test support long-term learning. Any suggestions?

 

[Jolie South]

we have the same deal at my school.

i guess it's to keep them from having to "reinvent the wheel" so to speak each year with the exams and to keep people that have access to old exams from having an unfair advantage.

 

[TMP-SMX]

At Wayne we can see our tests with the answers for about 30 minutes and then have to turn everything back in. I did it last year but don't anymore.

 

[Depakote]

We don't get to keep our exams but there's a general exam review after each test where we get to look at our tests with a copy of the key and a list of the questions we got wrong. You don't get to write anything down but it's usually enough to figure out which mistakes you made. If this wasn't enough you are allowed to make appointments to see your exams again at a later date. Of course I'd like to have it to refer to whenever I want, but this is reasonable enough.

 

[astrocreep96]

We have a half-hour or so meeting in the lecture hall where we can go over the questions and discuss the option to contest answers (there's a whole process for that).

Doesn't do much good for the written since they recycle answers, but you can potentially score a point or two on the practical that way I guess.

 

[Tired]

I went to a school where you were allowed to review your answers for about an hour or so.

At least half the class had access to previous years' tests as a consequence.

It makes grading a joke. If you're a good student, be thankful you go to a school that doesn't show the answers.

 

[Dirt]

We have an exam review day where we enter a room, get our tests with an answer key for about an hour. We cannot write anything down and we hand everything in at the end.

I think it is ridiculous that you cannot see your tests as seeing what you actually got wrong is a great learning tool. Don't you have a class representative to suggest stuff like that?

 

[146233]

We have no opportunity to review the exams or our answers.

 

[coldweatherblue]

we can't see our exams after we turn them in.

It's good because it allows instructors to re-use fairly basic questions. If each exam had to be 100% different each year it would encourage the exam committees to write some ridiculously obscure questions in order to avoid asking the same questions.

 

[Alteran]

We have no opportunity to review the exams or our answers.

Don't feel too bad. My school does the exact same thing. Our faculty are so incompetent in writing questions (we're talking so bad they can't even get the grammar right 1/4 of the time) that whenever they actually make a decent question they want to save it for posterity. Though in all fairness to my school, reviewing the exams would have been meaningless in the long run because what they chose to "assess" our knowledge with was useless as far as the boards are concerned.

 

[TarHeelEMT]

Our school won't let you take the answers with you, but they'll gladly show them to you.

 

[Non-TradTulsa]

I don't think you'll have much luck changing the policy at your school - as you can see from the posts, I think it's pretty standard. I had one class first year where you could go to the department head's office and check out an exam form and your answer sheets to review - but the security was so tight (you practically had to strip naked before you could enter the conference room where the secretary had put the exam form and your answers - and you couldn't take in anything - no backpacks, phones, paper, pencils, nothing - no notes allowed) that it almost wasn't worth the effort.

The only thing we could do was use the answer sheet that we got to transcribe our test answers (since the keys were posted immediately after the exam) to jot a few notes - if you had a really bizarre question, you could jot enough notes about it in order to make an intelligent test question challenge - but, even then, I think precisely transcribing the question stem and the answer foils would have been considered "over the line."

Test questions are re-used from year to year and the "test bank" of questions is questions that are validated - meaning, they've been used before and at least 50% of the class got the question right - which is why we never had curves on pre-clinical exams. You could definitely tell when an instructor was trying out new questions - ridiculous questions that nobody could answer. Although our school's policy was never to curve - questions that were ruled "invalid" (meaning nobody got 'em right) were generally thrown-out.

Again, I think you'll find the policy that "exams are assessment tools - not learning tools" is pretty standard - that is exactly the wording that was always used at my school.

 

[braluk]

We are allowed to review exam answers but generally the department head or secretary is right there (its on her desk) doing her own things, but also serves as a deterrent for anyone sinister enough to copy test questions and answers.

 

[SQUmedic]

Yeah it sucks man. U dont even get to see what mistakes you have done and which part to improve. But on the other hand, it makes u work harder and you think better.

 

[njbmd]

This means that after an exam has been taken, the class is not given an opportunity to see what the answers to an exam are (tests are taken online). We are given our score, the mean, sd, median, and histogram of class scores- so we know where we stand. Some exams will list problem areas from the questions you got wrong (for example, off an anatomy exam, one question's problem area for me was "Innervation." Not sure how valuable this info is- I think it's mostly useless).



I'm curious to find out if other schools have this policy or something similar, and what other people think?

Also, I'd like to approach the dean with a logical, well thought-out request to reconsider this policy. In an ideal world, I'd like to find some kind of educational literature supporting the idea that reviewing exam questions and answers after the test support long-term learning. Any suggestions?

Likely your dean has this policy because your board exams, specialty in-training exams and specialty board all fall along this line. Once you have taken the tests, you see where your scores fell but that's about it. In light of this, you may want to change your "learning strategies" to something that doesn't require review of test answers.

My school did allow students to keep old tests. At the beginning of every year, most of us received a box of old tests for each class. They were useless clutter for the most part because our tests were not recycled and our courses changed somewhat from year to year.

Test "postmortems "are usually "tainted" by your emotional reaction to something that you either knew or didn't know at the time of the test. I certainly remember the angst that followed after we took USMLE Step I. Everyone went around "stewing" over what was and was not on their test. In the end, it actually doesn't matter as long as you passed.

 

[OncoCaP]

We just get our scores except on certain types of practical exams, where we would be given the answers after the exam and our scores later on.

 

[45408]

Wow, I'm surprised this many schools are like this. For a number of our classes, we got the entire exam back (biochemistry, anatomy, embryology, physiology, neuroscience, pharmacology and a few others). For several others, we got to review the test in a glass case in a public hallway (pathology, histology, microbiology). I don't think we had any classes where we couldn't see the answer key.

Yes, Step 1 is hidden from you. No, Step 1 is not a learning tool. All your other exams should be. God forbid your faculty have to write new questions. You might actual get your money's worth for your tuition. My physiology course even posts the last five years of exams with a PDF answer key included. Were the phys tests any easier? No! Did I learn more because of these materials? Yes! I thought our phys course was directed extraordinarily well.

Honestly, I think these policies are a result of laziness. It's easier for the faculty to keep re-using the same questions, and they don't have to bother arguing against students who picked a different answer that is actually also correct. On a few of our exams, we legitimately argued for a second answer to be accepted.

 

[Doctor Bagel]

Wow, I'm surprised this many schools are like this. For a number of our classes, we got the entire exam back (biochemistry, anatomy, embryology, physiology, neuroscience, pharmacology and a few others). For several others, we got to review the test in a glass case in a public hallway (pathology, histology, microbiology). I don't think we had any classes where we couldn't see the answer key.

Yes, Step 1 is hidden from you. No, Step 1 is not a learning tool. All your other exams should be. God forbid your faculty have to write new questions. You might actual get your money's worth for your tuition. My physiology course even posts the last five years of exams with a PDF answer key included. Were the phys tests any easier? No! Did I learn more because of these materials? Yes! I thought our phys course was directed extraordinarily well.

Honestly, I think these policies are a result of laziness. It's easier for the faculty to keep re-using the same questions, and they don't have to bother arguing against students who picked a different answer that is actually also correct. On a few of our exams, we legitimately argued for a second answer to be accepted.

I'm with you here. It just doesn't make sense to me for a school to close off one whole entire way of learning. Yeah, the board exams are "for assessment purposes only," but your medical school exams are really there to help you pass your board exam.

 

[nogolfinsnow]

We can sign up to go over our exams. You have to go to a certain room, but we're allowed to take notes, argue with professors, etc. I know it's led to the acceptance of multiple answers before. The guy in charge said they used to give brief online access but there was some abuse of that. I agree with Prowler, it's pretty much a cop-out to deny access on the basis of not wanting to write new questions.

 

[M12008]

Wow- I'm surprised to see that so many schools have this same policy- I guess that's a little reassuring. We get the exact same line "exams are for assessment only," and I am also of the opinion that this is fine for an end-of-line assessment (MCAT, boards all the way through), but not when you are supposed to be in the learning phases of medical school. Honestly, I don't even care about getting extra points or disputing questions- they already throw out questions here if they need to. I'm just worried that I think I'm doing something right when I might be way off base. Plus, even if the questions aren't a good approximation of boards q's, the performance under pressure aspect is pretty close, so I feel that it's important to know where I make my mistakes (i.e. knowledge deficit vs. incorrect interpretation of question). Ok, and I'm going to be a little lame- I pay a heck of a lot of money to go here (OOS tuition is painful). In light of this, I think a school should cater to the best interests of their students, and I do not see how a policy like this adequately does so.

I agree that allowing any kind of access to exams after the test means people might share test q's with the next class- our school has us sign statements saying we won't discuss/share info etc. Plus almost all of us are placed at a new campus 2nd year- it's not like very many of us will have direct discussions with incoming students. You'd think a basic honor system would be, well, honorable. History has shown that isn't the case, I'm sure.

Also, I'm not optimistic about changing policy, but I think it's important for all opinions in the matter to be considered and reconsidered on a regular basis.

 

[alphaholic06]

Wow, I'm surprised this many schools are like this. For a number of our classes, we got the entire exam back (biochemistry, anatomy, embryology, physiology, neuroscience, pharmacology and a few others). For several others, we got to review the test in a glass case in a public hallway (pathology, histology, microbiology). I don't think we had any classes where we couldn't see the answer key.

Yes, Step 1 is hidden from you. No, Step 1 is not a learning tool. All your other exams should be. God forbid your faculty have to write new questions. You might actual get your money's worth for your tuition. My physiology course even posts the last five years of exams with a PDF answer key included. Were the phys tests any easier? No! Did I learn more because of these materials? Yes! I thought our phys course was directed extraordinarily well.

Honestly, I think these policies are a result of laziness. It's easier for the faculty to keep re-using the same questions, and they don't have to bother arguing against students who picked a different answer that is actually also correct. On a few of our exams, we legitimately argued for a second answer to be accepted.

I agree with Prowler here. These policies are the result of pure unadulterated laziness.

 

[cpants]

I agree with Prowler here. These policies are the result of pure unadulterated laziness.

I have to disagree. I think it is less laziness and more not wanting to fight over a dozen answer choices on every test. People don't use wall reviews to learn from mistakes, instead they just look for a way to justify their answer and get credit for it. It cheapens the whole process. The time to learn the material is pre-exam.

 

[Tired]

Likely your dean has this policy because your board exams, specialty in-training exams and specialty board all fall along this line.

Actually after the OITE, all applicants are given a copy of the exam and the answers are made public.

 

[Captain Fantastic]

Pre-clinical years we have the opportunity to go into the Office of Medical Education and review our exams and the key. We also are allowed to review "model" answers to the problem-based portion of the exam, so we can compare our hypotheses and management of the case to what they were looking for from us. Same story as others have posted: no notes, no cell phones, etc. We are encouraged to review our exams.

 

[45408]

I have to disagree. I think it is less laziness and more not wanting to fight over a dozen answer choices on every test. People don't use wall reviews to learn from mistakes, instead they just look for a way to justify their answer and get credit for it. It cheapens the whole process. The time to learn the material is pre-exam.

It's lame if you fight for a question that you guessed incorrectly on, and you find some loophole to try to argue for a point. It's NOT lame if the professor wrote a question that has two correct answers but only wants to give credit for one of them, and if professors want to avoid doing that by simply not telling you what you got wrong, that's absolutely pathetic. Dare I say, UNPROFESSIONAL. Secondly, I use the individual exams to prepare for the final, and I use exams from previous years to prepare for an upcoming exam.

 

[alphaholic06]

It's lame if you fight for a question that you guessed incorrectly on, and you find some loophole to try to argue for a point. It's NOT lame if the professor wrote a question that has two correct answers but only wants to give credit for one of them, and if professors want to avoid doing that by simply not telling you what you got wrong, that's absolutely pathetic. Dare I say, UNPROFESSIONAL. Secondly, I use the individual exams to prepare for the final, and I use exams from previous years to prepare for an upcoming exam.

Once again, I'm going to have to agree with Prowler.

 

[PeepshowJohnny]

Our school does allow us to view our grades, but we aren't allowed to bring any references or class notes with us at the time. It's a huge pain if you want to challenge a question since you have to make a mental note of what the question said (not allowed to write down questions, obviously), go back to your books/reference later, THEN make an appointment with the instructor to discuss it.

 

[SketchLazy]

Same here...we get an answer key but no corresponding questions, so those of us without photographic memories are screwed.

 

[alwaysaangel]

Wow, I can't believe so many schools are like that.

We get all our old tests back and everyone has access to previous years test questions, which is hugely helpful when studying to test knowledge and get used to a given professors testing style.

I can't imagine having 8 professors for a given test, all with different styles of questioning and being left blind as to what to expect.

 

[DoctorPardi]

My school also does this kind of thing. Just out of curiosity I would like being able to look over the test in detail at my own leisure. Honestly though I doubt many people if given the opportunity would really use old tests for studying purposes. I mean who has time to really pick through wrong answers and restudy stuff from the last test in the middle of everything else going on?

We have a review session where they will show specific questions to us and give reasoning behind them. In general we can not challenge questions either, but if we notice something undoubtedly wrong we can bring it up and might be changed, like a question being scored for A when it should be B or something like that.

Plus if you don't miss any questions on the test what is the point in reviewing it? 😴