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Faculty Publications - School of Nursing School of Nursing

2016

Answering Student Questions During Examinations: A Descriptive

Lorretta Krautscheid

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Answering Student Questions During Examinations: A Descriptive

Abstract
Examinations are used to evaluate individual student learning. Therefore, fair and consistent administration practices are
essential. One issue associated with testing administration practices includes whether or not students should be allowed to ask
questions during exams and how faculty should respond. Findings from this descriptive study indicate that faculty believe
answering questions disrupts the testing environment, inhibits effective monitoring of the testing environment, and could
provide unfair hints to students who ask questions. Yet, faculty permit students to ask questions to clarify unclear wording, to
provide definitions, and to appear receptive to student needs. Recommendations for nursing education and research
are provided.
KEY WORDS Nursing Education – Exam Administration – Student Assessment – Testing Practices – Exam Policies

O
utcomes of examinations have serious implications for stu- Source, Education Source, and PsycINFO for the following key words:
dents. Thus, implementing evidence-based testing adminis- test, administration, student questions, asking questions, testing
tration practices is critical. Conversations with faculty peers practices, disruption, assessment, proctor, nurse, education, belief,
revealed a variety of beliefs and practices, including whether or not perception, and exam policies. Despite this exhaustive review, no
students may ask questions while taking an exam; some faculty an- empirical research was located to guide best practices for ad-
swer questions on a case-by-case basis and others do not permit ministering an exam and the question of whether faculty should re-
students to ask questions. A review of the literature offered little em- spond to individual student questions during an exam.
pirical evidence on testing administration practices and, specifically, On the other hand, expert opinions about testing administra-
no evidence on how to respond to students who ask questions during tion practices were found in the literature. For example, Twigg (2012)
an exam. This study describes nurse educator beliefs about answer- stated that “to reduce student anxiety, the faculty should . . . avoid un-
ing individual student questions while administering an examination. necessary conversation before or during the test.” Twigg further noted
According to Twigg (2012), examinations are used to measure that “faculty should avoid giving unintentional hints to individual stu-
learning outcomes and provide faculty with information to make dents who ask for clarification of questions during the test” (p. 477).
grading decisions. Exam scores may also be used to compare ag- Zimmerman, Sudweeks, Shelley, and Wood (1990) cautioned
gregate student performance against standardized norm-referenced that faculty should not “provide unfair help to individual students
exams to evaluate curricular effectiveness (Waugh & Gronlund, 2013). who ask questions during the exam. Only provide information relating
In some cases, exams are used to determine the effectiveness of to the administration of the exam, not to the content of the test items”
teaching strategies (Bain, 2004). Because examination outcomes (p. 8). More recently, Waugh and Gronlund (2013) stated that “the
have serious implications for both students and the program of administration of a carefully prepared achievement test is largely a
study, it is essential to enforce testing administration practices that matter of providing proper working conditions, keeping interruptions
produce valid assessments of individual student knowledge. to a minimum, and arranging enough space between students to
An exhaustive literature review was conducted using ERIC, prevent cheating” (p. 84).
CINAHL, EBSCOhost, MEDLINEplus, GoogleScholar, Communication Common to these sources is the suggestion that faculty should
incorporate testing administration strategies that reduce anxiety
and minimize interruptions. Further, faculty should avoid giving hints
when providing clarification to students who ask questions.
About the Authors Susan B. Stillwell, DNP, RN, CNE, FAAN, ANEF,
is associate dean for graduate programs and associate professor, and
Lorretta C. Krautscheid, PhD, RN, is assistant professor and master’s METHOD
program director, University of Portland School of Nursing, Portland, This study used a descriptive cross-sectional survey design. Insti-
Oregon. For more information, contact Dr. Stillwell at [email protected]. tutional review board approval was obtained from the authors’ ac-
Copyright © 2016 National League for Nursing ademic institution. Consent was implied when participants completed
doi: 10.5480/14-1351 and submitted the SurveyMonkeyTM survey.
 Participants were identified from publicly available school of Two common topics emerged from the narrative text data
nursing web pages. Nurse faculty email addresses (N = 548) were among faculty who reported they did not answer questions during
obtained from 27 Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education ac- exams. First, participants reported that answering questions for
credited nursing schools representing 20 of the 50 states in the some students creates an “unfair” testing environment. One partici-
United States. Ninety-two individuals responded to the online survey pant observed: “Letting students ask questions during an exam intro-
(16.7 percent); 27 did not meet the inclusion criteria screening ques- duces too many uncontrollable variables.” Another participant wrote:
tion: “Please indicate if you currently teach a didactic course in an “It is difficult to answer questions without giving unfair hints.”
undergraduate nursing program that requires quizzes, tests or ex- Second, these participants tried to maintain a testing environ-
aminations.”A researcher-developed survey, informed by recom- ment free of noise and distractions. Participants wrote that answering
mendations from the literature and anecdotal faculty comments, questions during exams is disruptive to others. They also wrote about
was created. The survey underwent critical review by a panel of six their inability to effectively monitor the testing environment when they
didactic nurse educators from the researchers’ university. Two re- are distracted by a student who is asking a question: “Because of the
vision recommendations were incorporated, and content validity disruption, it does not support the student’s ability to master exam
was assured following a second critical review by the same panel. taking and it takes away from the ability to proctor an exam.”
The instrument consisted of two general questions about testing The quantitative findings support the finding that the ability to
administration policies, nine Likert-scale questions measuring faculty effectively monitor the test environment is disrupted when stu-
beliefs about nursing students asking questions during examinations, dents ask questions during an examination (M = 4.88, SD = 1.67)
and five narrative response questions. Likert-scale questions were and can provide students with hints (M = 4.73, SD = 1.41). Never-
scored on a seven-point scale; scores ranged from 1 (strongly dis- theless, although participants tended to not favor the practice of
agree) to 7 (strongly agree) and included reverse-order questions to permitting students to ask questions during exams, allowing stu-
limit response bias. The survey instrument was found to be highly re- dents to ask questions was identified as a common practice
liable (alpha = .87). (M = 4.61, SD = 1.38).
Other findings that emerged concerned attitudes about the fair-
RESULTS ness of answering an individual student’s question (M = 3.88,
A final sample of 65 nurse educators (11.8 percent) completed the SD = 1.80) and about whether answering a student’s question pro-
survey. Participants were primarily white (89.2 percent) females vides the student with an unfair advantage (M = 3.85, SD = 1.73).
(86.2 percent), ranging from 33 to 76 years old (M = 55, SD = The questions receiving the highest level of agreement were the fol-
8.81). Most worked full-time (89.2 percent) in public universities lowing: exams evaluate a student’s ability to independently select
(50.8 percent) and were primarily master’s prepared (41.5 percent). the best answer (M = 5.71, SD = 1.46), and tests provide a reliable
Their teaching experiences varied from one to 40 years (M = method to evaluate student learning (M = 5.21, SD = 1.24).
16 years, SD = 10.98). Most participants (n = 57, 87.7 percent) re-
ported that their schools of nursing did not have a policy regarding DISCUSSION, LIMITATIONS, AND
the answering of students’ questions during an examination. RECOMMENDATIONS
Overall feelings about allowing students to ask questions during Findings from this study present the differing beliefs nurse educators
exams were found to be generally negative (55.2 percent), generally have about answering student questions during exams. The variation
positive (39.7 percent), and neutral (5.2 percent). These calculations in faculty beliefs may be due to the lack of empirical evidence about
were generated by computing the mean of a respondent’s ratings test administration practices, thus contributing to an educational en-
across the survey items and comparing this mean to the original vironment based on tradition, personal preferences, and trial and er-
seven-point scale of agreement. ror. Without evidence to guide educational practice, it appears likely
Participants also reported a wide array of personal perspectives that these divergent views will continue.
about answering questions during an exam, including not answering Two important limitations to this study include a low response
any questions, answering questions only to clarify the content or rate and self-report; thus, causal inferences cannot be made. A num-
meaning of words in an exam item, instructing students to write their ber of factors could have affected our response rate. Faculty receive
questions on the exam, asking students to raise their hands to ask a multiple emails, including other requests to participate in research,
question, and instructing students to walk to the front of the room and may lack both the time and motivation to respond to research
and ask their question quietly. The 20 percent of participants who re- requests. In fact, some respondents asked us to remove their
ported having a personal course policy about asking questions dur- email addresses from our list. Faculty who did not perceive the
ing an exam described a variety of strategies for communicating the salience of the topic may have chosen not to respond. Offering
policy (e.g., communication before exams or during course orienta- incentives to complete the survey could have increased the re-
tion, in the student handbook, or in the syllabus). sponse rate but we chose not to offer incentives.
In response to the question “Why do you think some faculty Based on the findings from this study, we recommend that nurse
members allow students to ask questions during a quiz, test or ex- educators, individually and collectively, reflect on testing adminis-
amination?” a number of reasons were provided. The most prevalent tration practices and then collaborate on the implementation of
were to: a) clarify the definitions of words, b) answer unclear ques- agency-specific testing administration guidelines. These guidelines
tions, c) provide definitions of English words to English language should be communicated via course syllabi, appropriate handbooks
learners, d) appear responsive to student needs, and e) be perceived (student and faculty), and in the classroom to ensure consistent appli-
as being nice or helpful. Some suggested that insecurity about the cation across the curriculum.
quality of exam items was a possible reason for allowing students It is our recommendation also that the guidelines explicitly state
to ask questions. that individual student questions will not be answered during an
examination. However, we recommend that students have an oppor- This study highlights the divergent testing administration prac-
tunity to write comments about exam questions on a question query tices of nurse educators and the variables nurse educators should
form attached as the last page of the examination booklet. Students’ consider when establishing testing administration policies. It provides
comments should be reviewed by faculty for common themes, in- a basis for the examination of current practices and a rationale for de-
sight into student thinking, and information to consider during test- veloping standardized testing administration practices applicable for
item analysis. specific educational environments.
An additional recommendation is to establish a peer review panel
of colleagues who will review exams for content, formatting, syntax,
and spelling. It is important also to conduct readability analyses to
avoid colloquialisms, idioms, and cultural phrases that may be unfa- REFERENCES
Bain, K. (2004). What the best college teachers do. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer-
miliar to English language learners (McDonald, 2014). sity Press.
The study described in this article reports on faculty beliefs about McDonald, M. E. (2014). The nurse educator’s guide to assessing learning out-
students’ asking questions during examinations. It is important also comes. Burlington, MA: Jones and Bartlett.
Twigg, P. (2012). Developing and using classroom tests. In D. Billings & J. Halstead
to know how students feel about this question; thus, a follow-up re- (Eds.), Teaching in nursing: A guide for faculty (pp. 464–484). St. Louis, MO:
search study should be conducted to explore student beliefs. In ad- Elsevier.
dition, questions remain. One participant in the current study wrote Waugh, C. K., & Gronlund, N. E. (2013). Assessment of student achievement. New
York, NY: Pearson.
that “faculty know how to answer questions appropriately and fairly,”
Zimmerman, B., Sudweeks, R., Shelley, M., & Wood, B. (1990). How to prepare bet-
while others reported struggling when answering questions. A quali- ter tests: Guidelines for university faculty. Brigham Young University. Retrieved
tative study should be conducted to explore these opposing beliefs. from https://testing.byu.edu/handbooks/bettertests.pdf