Exam Question Challenge Policy

[Hawkeye4077]

Fellow DO student doctors, I am trying to gather some information so that students at UNECOM can propose an exam question challenge/review policy. Would you please post a message outlining your school's current exam question challenge/review procedure?

Specifically, I am interested in how your school handles inquiries from students regarding test questions that the students feel are not correct (i.e. in a text book or journal information was given that is contrary to the answer for an exam question).

At UNECOM we are trying to revamp our policy. As it currently stands students bring their inquiries to a student run challenge committee. Students must present their case and attach all cited references. References must be from the required or recommended readings, peer review journals or class notes. The Challenge Committee then brings the student inquiries to the faculty systems manager for that course. The systems manager ultimately decides upon whether to accept or reject the student challenges. Unfortunately, the faculty is not required to accept student challenges; it is a voluntary process. We would like to propose a system in which exam questions must be referenced (as they are for the COMLEX) and require that faculty review student challenges.

Your school's policy would be helpful so that we can gauge what other schools are doing, and glean information from other sources.

Thank you!

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[Homunculus]

referenced questions? good lord. you do realize that the more time they put into the questions the harder the difficulty the questions will be, right? hehe.

Well, as far as i know here at OSU if we have any issues, we take them to the class president and let him/her handle it. Most of our professors were open to "challenges". The worst results usually come after the gunner-ish lynch mobs that form immediately after exams bring in piles of highlighted textbooks, notes, and published papers on whatever test question they're complaining about.

I'm sure we have official channels to go through, but those i imagine are mainly for political purposes. I would just keep my mouth shut and let the other people in class complain-- in the end, I get the point back too, with much less hassle and much more saving face.

good luck with your policy revamping, but be careful-- i'm not sure about you, but i wouldn't want all my tests being anywhere near the damn COMLEX, even if i did do well on it. Life's too short to be tortured that long.

take it easy

homonculus

 

[Chagas]

Hey "H".... I'm not sure if this will help but I'll give you what I believe happens @ PCOM.... any test question is fair game for a challenge. Official exam-question challenge forms are distributed with each exam... the student must fill out the form and submit the challenge to the course director(s) by a due date. The course director then distributes the challenges to the professors/clinicians who wrote the questions to ultimately determine whether or not the challenge will be accepted. The course director still has the final say over the challenges and will usually listen to most appeals should it get that far. On the form itself the student must submit an answer to the question that they have found to be true that either wasn't one of the choices or was one of the choices but not deemed the correct answer. Your answer choice/challenge must be referenced from any published source ie. journal, text, etc. Class scribe notes are not permitted as reference material which I think is bogus because there are many lectures where no notes are distributed, the speaker goes way too fast to scribble everything down and the exam questions are based on lecture material, some of which is never found in Harrison's, Guyton, Robbins etc.! Don't get me going on this... I'm ready to pop a coronary! In cases of ambiguity, the student must clearly state why a question was wrong/poorly worded and why you answered it a certain way. In these cases, if they get enough challenges they will usually give you credit. It has always been policy that if one person is given credit for a challenge then everybody gets credit for that particular question. All in all it's not a bad system but there are certain professors who will never accept challenges no matter how wrong or stupid their questions are.

 

[Homunculus]

if one person is given credit for a challenge then everybody gets credit for that particular question.

mwahahahahahaha this is why you shouldn't sweat it, and let things fall where they may. in the grand scheme of things, a few stinky questions per exam won't kill you.

 

[Amra]

if you can hold off to middle of the week I'll give more details than you prbably want to know... as I'm my class president and I'm currently working through that scenerio...

If you want to take this off public (w/c i think might be better for some reason (..and that reason might be I'm brain dead ATM and have biochem in a few hours) email me at [email protected].

T'anks!
-A

 

[SammyK]

At COMP, the usually policy usually depending on the professor is to submit the question along with evidence from notes or texts showing the alternative answer(s) to one of the class curriculum representatives that we elect along with our class officers. Some professors would rather deal with individual students, but for the most part the protests are compiled and argued by the curric rep. It is the policy of the professor to accept or not accept the question challenges, some are very reasonable, while some are more rigid. It works fairly well....the reps have the chance to establish a working relationship with the faculty, and if you elect good people who are both diplomatic and passionate to argue within reason it works pretty well. As to the above mentioned comments of a few points making not much difference, this is true for people who do well or pass with a clear margin. But I imagine for some who struggle and are on the border of passing....those few points can mean the difference between passing and moving on with your class or in the worst cases having to remediate a class because you missed passing by 0.4%, quite a frustrating scenerio, but unfortunately has happened in the past.