9 Helpful Tips for Teachers on How to Prevent Cheating in Nurse Examinations
August 25, 2009 by Rn2b
Filed under Becoming a Nurse, Testing and Exam Help
9 Helpful Tips for Teachers on How to Prevent Cheating in Nurse Examinations
Cheating in exams has always been a problem of many teachers in colleges and universities. Not only does it leads to reflection of the inaccurate performance of the student but it also discourage students from taking their exams seriously and thus, will lead to less competent graduates.
From an ethical standpoint, cheating is a problem as well in the sense that students who are used to cheating in school are likely to have unethical behavior in the workplace or in their future professions.
As an example, if a school of nursing has a reputation for student dishonesty, then many will look down on its program which will lead to employers who will be reticent in hiring new graduates from the said school. Even students that don’t cheat are being shown in a bad light because they belong to a school notorious for cheating.
9 Helpful Tips for Teachers on How to Prevent Cheating in Nurse Examinations
Nowadays, cheating has its many form. Before, cheating was done by passing notes during exams, glancing at a neighbor’s test paper, carrying cheat notes, writing on one’s palm or desktop and many others. Now, cheating involves more technology and some use their gadgets such as cell phones, I-pods and even hacking the documents or files of the one who made the exam.
To safeguard the integrity of the school and also to discourage students from being lax in their studies, nurse educators should not be lenient when it comes to cheating in exams. Listed here are some suggestions that will be helpful in preventing exam dishonesty:
• Make sure the students respect the nursing school’s policies, as well as the ANA Code of Ethics.
• Refresh the students about the university or college’s academic policy on cheating and the corresponding penalties for failure to abide by the policies.
• If the department permits it, brief the students on the type and scope of the exam so that the exam will not come as surprising and the students will not have an excuse to cheat because they very well know and will expect what will be asked.
• Encourage students to study hard, because if they are very well prepared for the exam, of course, there’s no point in cheating anymore
• If possible, place at least a one chair gap between the students and require them to spread.
• Use proctors to monitor the students while having the test
• Make new test sets every semester to discourage others from getting previous test questionnaires from their upperclassmen.
• Inform students beforehand that leaving the room while the exam is not yet over will not be allowed. Tell the students to do what they need to do before entering the room.
• Students’ cell phones, MP3 players and other gadgets should be placed in their bags and stored away from their seats.
Therefore, ensuring that the exam is taken fairly and discouraging cheating is important but, teachers should not create an environment that will cause students discomfort, say, accusing a student directly or indirectly of cheating. If a teacher caught a student cheating, he or she should talk to the person privately in the office to avoid bringing much shame to the student.