Not fair to punish nurses
Posted on August 8, 2006 - Filed Under Punch Forum |
Ms. Ric
8 August 2006
It’s unheard of to nullify all those 17,891 individuals who took and passed the last nursing board exam, if only a selected few took the short cut and cheated. In my neck of the woods, there’s ground for lawsuits to say the least. The PRC or the governing body whose job is to control these tests has as much obligation to these would-be registered nurses. In fact, whoever wrote these tests have as much responsibility. When any assessment is written beyond an undergraduate degree, measures are taken to minimize the damage, if indeed test materials are leaked. Test banks are created by professionals whose job is to know their subject matter inside and out. Candidates either take these exams in front of a computer or in print. Computerized testing is becoming the norm, where there’s a different version for every single test taker. Test banks are created to queue problems given the same concepts but different wordings, numbers, and sometimes content with infinite possibilities. Most of these tests, if not all, are also in multiple-choice format which makes it even easier to catch cheaters. These tests have what’s called distracters, the wrong answers. For example, a problem with 4 choices has just one right answer but three distracters. These distracters have patterns. Based on the correct answer and wrong answer that a candidate chooses, a mathematician or in most cases, software designed to do just that, can narrow down an anomaly to the nearest percent, couple that with the limited version/test numbers and those cheaters are identifiable.There are computer programmers and software engineers coming out of the Philippines with the sophistication parallel to that of the Gates or the Wozniacs. (Remember that infamous love virus?) It’s hard to believe that we’re still living in the dark ages when it comes to generating board exams.
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