Evaluation in the Learning Laboratory
Read this excerpt from a student who failed a third attempt at a skill and is therefore dismissed from the program.
“I just failed my final attempt at my lab check off. I am in my fourth semester of nursing school. I am so humiliated. Now I have to withdraw from the program entirely and re-apply for next year. I am not a bad student..I passed all previous check offs. I get decent grades in class and clinical. It doesn’t seem fair for one failure to have such a huge impact on my life. I am frustrated since I felt it wasn’t an optimal environment to pass a critical checkoff. I could hear others in the room doing their check offs which was distracting. The instructor interrupted me a few times to ask question which made me nervous. Some of the equipment was missing and we had to improvise.”
Evaluation of students is a difficult part of being a faculty member. Skills lab check offs are stressful for both students and faculty, and the outcome is sometimes devastating. In your initial post, consider your thoughts about skills check offs from an instructor’s perspective. Consider such things as:
Should students be allowed unlimited attempts to pass a skill? Why or why not?
What responsibility does the faculty have to create a positive testing environment and what would that look like?
Will you be able to fail a student if necessary? Instructors who struggle with this may pass students on to the next course/instructor, which can have significant legal and ethical ramifications.
Students often believe that faculty are trying to “weed out” students. Do you think that is true?
Finally, how has being a practicing nurse changed your perspective on evaluation of students in nursing school?
Response Posts: Read all of the initial posts and respond as something interests you. Contribute to the discussion with your own original ideas. To meet the rubric requirements, you need a minimum of two peer responses. However, I would like to see more back and forth interaction to achieve the maximum number of points on the rubric under Classroom Engagement. Have your fellow students’ ideas changed yours?
Support your posts with relevant documentation. One reference must be from a peer reviewed nursing journal on best practices for skills/simulation lab evaluation. Describe the highlights as they pertain to this case study. Cite your sources in APA format.
Answer Preview for Evaluation in the Learning Laboratory
APA
300 Words