posted
I am currently in school for nursing. I decided to go to a local school based on the strength of their LPN program, which is quite good.
My clinical instructor is brand new, hired by the school this semester because of the large size of the LPN class, the largest class in their history. We had a number of issues earlier this year, mostly with scarcity of resources....once again mainly due to the size of the class.
My teachers all have separate ways of grading,and even to people who are familiar with a lot of different grading systems it gets quite confusing. We have some tests weighted more than others, projects and papers that are worth either points or percent, depending on the grading system.....and despite the grades being posted online for us, the computer doesn't always have the right information, or calculate correctly.
I had 3 classes where according to the computer I had a 90%, which is an A. Our program doesn't award anything other than a straight letter grade, and anything less then a 75% fails the class due to the nature of our career choice. In particular, our Fundamentals of Nursing course is a huge grade, as the class is an 11 credit course. This means it is a huge grade for calculating GPA's and scholarship eligibility.
I JUST had a sit down with my clinical instructor this past Friday, and she was very impressed with our entire groups paperwork. As our grade for the class includes 15 points for clinical paperwork, this can really help or hurt a grade for the class. It was a little bit confusing, as the teachers kept saying that the paperwork was "15 points straight to your grade", a fact that was mentioned over and over again all semester. It turns out that there are 15 points possible, but that it is only 5% of your grade....
I was told that our entire group was getting all 15 points, or a 100%, because we did such a great job with it. In particular I was told that I was one of the better people at it, and she was impressed. She touched on several areas I could improve on, and I agreed with most of them, but not one of those was anything to do with paperwork. As paperwork is a fairly hard thing to learn, and it trips up even seasoned nurses at times, I felt really good about this part of my clinicals.
Today I log on....and I find that she had finally entered the paperwork into the computer....
She gave me a 60%.... which lowered my overall grade from an 89.6% (A) to an 87% (B). I am LIVID. The class AVERAGE was a 76,4%, for heaven's sake! And that is with all of the people who didn't even PASS averaged in!
I have never considered taking action against a teacher before, but unless I get a reply to my very respectful email I sent her, I plan on filing a complaint against her tomorrow, before final grades are posted. As she is part time I doubt I'll get a response from her....she rarely replied to her emails even when school was in session.
I also have no idea what my final grades are in 2 other classes, both of which I had A's in. With the grading irregularities I am not sure if my points for projects added correctly....once again a teacher said they were worth points "right to your grade" but it may or may not mean right to the PERCENT....
I have rarely been this mad before, and to be honest it is scaring me a little. I didn;t take action agaist my boss when I worked at Penney's, and it eventually cost me my job. I had PLENTY of cause to file a complaint aginst him, but I tried to work WITH him....and he waited 8 months then sandbagged me.
But I probably will be seeing this teacher again in the Fall....and since a part of our schooling is PASS/FAIL clinicals, and we also have hands-on skill testing, I could screw myself by acting against her this way. Even if I don't get her again this fall, acting against a teacher could cause the other teachers to treat me differently....
posted
Breathe. It could just be a mistake. (I once logged into the grade system to find an F in a class I was taking pass/no-pass and knew I had an A- average in. I was not a happy camper! It was a mistake. But the three days it took to fix it were some of the longest in my life.)
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
This could be, which is why I sent a very polite email to her asking IF it was a mistake...and if it wasn't, WHY did she tell me something other than that during out end of session clinicals.
I thik I know what MIGHT have happened, but if I am right I am screwed more than likely.
My teacher is new, and is't really knowledgble about how the grading system works. We had a review, which was graded on a scale of 1-5, and broke down our clinical skills into sections. You HAD to have at least a 3 in every category or you failed, with 1 being the worst, and 5 being the best. I saw a BUNCH of 2's on my first two pages, and I asked her why, and if she thought I was merely average at AL of the skills. She went to the back page and showed me a bunch of 4's at the end. The she said that paperwork was just a guide, and that as long as we got al 3's we were good to go.
The teachers said that we got up to 15 points for clinical paperwork, and then they talked about handing in our care plans, patient summaries, and journal entries on time each week. I wonder if they took the grades from the EVALUATION...which I signed based on what the teacher told me.
If so, she might not have known it. I know for a fact that she said I was getting all 15 points because my PAPERWORK was great. She meant the weekly paperwork....I wonder if our clinical grade was based on something other than that.
If so I;ll fight it tooth and nail. There is NO POSSIBLE WAY I deserved a 3, and I told her that in conference.....but she never said there was a letter grade attached to it.....and I am positive she made a mistake at that point then.
There is NO WAY I deserved a 60% regardless of how you break it down, as all I got all session was compliments about my clinical experience.
Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
I had something very similar happen to me last quarter. I earned an A in my music class, but on the last grade the teacher docked me 20 points for no good raisin, dropping me down to a B. I sent an email about it, but spring break was just about to start. My grade didn't end up getting fixed for like three and a half weeks.
I'm guessing you will feel much better when you get a response like "I'm so sorry for the mistake. It was all my fault. This brings your grade up to an A, good job! "
Posts: 1287 | Registered: Apr 2006
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Kwea, Speaking as a Professor, chances are really really really good that is just a clerical mistake. She told you were getting full credit and then it got entered as 60%. When you are filling out computer forms for a very large group of students its really easy to make mistakes either by mistyping something or by getting shifted by a line in the grades. I'm very careful entering grades and triple check them but I've still had an error like this creep through on occasion. That's one of the reasons Universities have adopted these programs so you can check how all your grades are entered and get these problems resolved.
Don't just e-mail her. If that is the only contact information you have for her, call the department office and get a phone number or have them contact her. It is very very likely that this can and will be fixed.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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posted
Haha, speaking of teachers making mistakes when entering grades... In one of my history classes last quarter I had earned a C- (I didn't feel like doing the last paper). I ended up getting an A- instead.
Posts: 1287 | Registered: Apr 2006
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quote:Haha, speaking of teachers making mistakes when entering grades... In one of my history classes last quarter I had earned a C- (I didn't feel like doing the last paper). I ended up getting an A- instead.
I got an A once that I never quite believed. I hated the class (first time professor who did everything half-assed) and only did the minimum I needed to do. I skipped entire assignments because I didn't feel like doing them.
I assumed I'd get a B- or even a C+ in the class. Then when the final grades came I had an A. My two friends that busted their humps all semester in this class and whom I honestly think scored higher on just about every assignment both received B's.
I didn't ask the professor why I got an A, but I certainly didn't deserve one. I'm assuming it was a clerical error. Either that or he just gave everyone the grade they got on the final exam, which I believe I aced. He was an extraordinarily lazy professor, and only wanting to look at one score when calculating the final grade sounds like something he'd do.
Posts: 5656 | Registered: Oct 1999
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Well, I'd say you should wait to get mad only after you determine whether or not it was a clerical error. If she said you were going to get 15 out of 15, I'd assume that was either true or there's some circumstances the instructor can explain to you. If she doesn't respond to your first email, you should figure out some way to talk to her. They should be able to either fix the error or give you an explanation as to why it's not an error.
Posts: 8120 | Registered: Jul 2000
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posted
I know, that's why I was very proper and polite when I asked her about it in the email.
However, this isn't the first irregularity with her, and I had been wondering if I had missed out on some learning experiences because she was new. A lot of our students had issues, but ovver al like her and think she did a decent job, but there were a number of situations where she went in a completel different direction than any other instructer, and it worried me.
A lot of nursing is using what tehy call your "nursing judgement: to make indivicual decisions. As students, we were told we ALWAYS had to do things by the book, even if the nurses we were working wiht might not, My instructer went directly against that, and several times instructed us to do things we had been specifically warned NOT to do by the instructors who run the program, and my our advisor.
She also didn't do our mid-term review, which our evaluation was based on, until 2 weeks AFTER it was suppose to be done, about 2 weeks before the semester ended, If we had areas to improve on we didn't even know about the specifics of it until 2-3 weeks ago.
Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
Isn't there a formal appeals process for disputing a grade? If so, that might be a less confrontational and more productive next step to take than making a complaint against the teacher.
Posts: 3275 | Registered: May 2007
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Before you go a formal appeal route, you need to wait and see if there is a response. My guess is clerical error too, I've seen it happen. It's happened to me, when a professor simply didn't give me a grade. I was an undergrad in a dual listed grad/undergrad course, and she "forgot" she had undergrads and only assigned grades to her grad students.
I was watching a television segment on one of the news shows about a week ago that mentioned one of the big contributors to our nursing shortage in the US is the lack of qualified nurse educators - we simply do not have the people to train the people we need. Much of that is due to the extreme shortage - people make more money as nurses than they do training nurses. So, it's no surprise many programs are struggling to find enough instructors.
Be patient. As long as you stay above 75% and graduate you WILL get a job.
Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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quote:Originally posted by MattP: Isn't there a formal appeals process for disputing a grade? If so, that might be a less confrontational and more productive next step to take than making a complaint against the teacher.
Neither a formal complaint nor a formal appeal are appropriate yet. Right now you need to communicate with the instructor and find out what happened. If she does not respond by later today, I would go to the office and see if they will either give you a phone number for her (they certainly have one) or contact her for you. If you simply can't get ahold of her, go to your advisor or the department head and say simply "She told me in our interview that I had received 100% but the online form says 60% and I haven't been able to get hold of her to discuss the discrepancy". That kind of informal complaint is much more likely to get the results you want quickly than any kind of formal process. Leave the formal complaint until you have tried every other avenue to resolve the problem.
Formal complaints make people defensive and rarely work to the students advantage. Making a formal complaint before you have tried to resolve this informally will likely get you branded as a problem student and that is something that will make the rest of your schooling a serious problem.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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quote:Neither a formal complaint nor a formal appeal are appropriate yet.
I was suggesting it as a "next step" in lieu of the proposed "next step" of issuing a complaint. Of course the first step is try to attempt to resolve it amiably with the instructor.
Posts: 3275 | Registered: May 2007
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quote:Originally posted by kmbboots: I would advise continuing the polite and proper tone but copying all of your emails to the dean's office and the registrar's office.
quote:Neither a formal complaint nor a formal appeal are appropriate yet.
I was suggesting it as a "next step" in lieu of the proposed "next step" of issuing a complaint. Of course the first step is try to attempt to resolve it amiably with the instructor.
What I meant about filing a complaint was the official appeals procedure.
It was both more and less what I feared. I KNEW I needed to talk to the teacher, and I knew it was more than a clerical error.
Today was frustrating, but it got the problem corrected. I went in and the teacher told me I had not turned in my McKessan paperwork, which was not true. McKessan is a very confusing data entry program, and we had 4 assignments that had to be turned in by April 30th. I did 3 of the 4 assignments the first day, and the last 1 a few days later, then turned them in on my teachers door as instructed. Turns out she never got them.....and 2 of the 3 teachers involved today suggested someone deliberately took them to sabatauge my grade. I had an issue, not of my making, earlier this semester with a girl in my class. I guess she has been talking crap about me all semester, and I only heard part of it. I have no proof, so no accusations will be made, but I'd offer 10 to 1 odds it was her or one of her buddies, if this is what happened.
Also, my teacher wasn't aware of points for paperwork, so when I said that she had told me I was getting all 5 points, another instructor called me a liar.
And I thought I was mad last night.
I had to recount the actual conversation, word for word (thank God for being I am the auditory equalivalent of a photographic memory), with her to get her to apologize to me. I told my teacher about the points, because SHE wasn't aware of them.....and THEN she said I deserved all 5 points.
Turns out what happened was that the teacher only gets 4 of those points to award. The other point is based on turning in the McKessan paperwork. So she told the other instructors in conference yesterday that I deserved all 4, and the other teachers said I never turned in the McKessan stuff, so I was going to lose 1 point. So my teacher deducted a point IN ADDITION to me not getting the point for the work....making it worth a 2 point swing in my grade. This was NOT accurate, and reduced my grade to a B.
We called the hospital, and they walked us though a process on how to call up any work that was done under my number for the last 30 days. The teachers were watching me like a hawk, and when the hospital said they could do that I was relieved, not worried. That reinforced the fact that I had actually DONE the work.
We went in, and I let a teacher try to figure it out for 10 min. I then asked if she minded ME taking a stab at it, but I also asked her to WATCH me do it so there wouldn't be any questions about how accurate the info was.... they HAVE had a lot of cheaters in the RN program this year, and I wanted to avoid even the APPEARANCE wrongdoing.
Took me less then 2 min to call up my work....and I proved that not only had I done the work, but that I had gone BACK in to help other people, and to learn more than required about the system.
They gave me all 5 points, and apologized for calling me a liar. I said " I am wrong from time to time, but I am never a liar.", and then thanked them for taking the time and spending the effort helping me figure my grade out. It took almost 2 hours from start to finish, and a few teachers looked a little pissed that I was making a big deal about a letter grade when either would pass me to next semester. I usually don't care much about grades per se, but if there was ONE class for the rest of my education I wanted an A in it was this one....and I KNEW I deserved one.
What a pain in the ass.
At least it is over and done with, and I managed to do it without completely losing my cool.
At least you got the points. And if you ever have a similar issue, you'll have credibility, which can be helpful.
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I hope we have learned a valuable lesson. Never, never turn in paper on an instructor's door. Slide assignments UNDER the locked door so no one else can touch them OR leave them with a department secretary if possible.
Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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posted
I have photocopies, signed and dated by me, of every single assignment given to me other than these. They originally suppose to be computer graded assignments, but then they wanted hard copies after the fact. Since we did them on dedicated computers at school we just turned them in right away.
I asked if I could turn things in directly to the teachers at the beginning of school because of the potential for error, and I was told " It's never been a problem before this, so just put on my door later".
I remember thinking : Bullshit:, but I didn't say it. There has always been issues with people stealing paperwork to copy it, or just to screw someone over, and I didn't believe that in all the years the nursing program was active no one had ever done it here.
It's water under the bridge at this point. My teacher won't ever forget that there are points due for clinicals again I bet, and I'll never turn anything in on a door, and I have the teachers blessings for that now.
On a positive note, the LPN Student Nurse Association sold flowers today for the RN pinning ceremony, and we made in about an hour. I sold 14 out of 30 bouquets myself. Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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Having known the struggle to make somebody of oneself by going to college, I just can't fathom what would drive a person to sabotage the efforts of another by stealing their homework. The potential repercussions are so bad it just sounds so beyond me.
Glad you got that all sorted out Kwea, at least the mechanisms were in place to correct the mistake.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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When I was TAing, we had a 3 ring binder in the library that students were allowed to check out for 2 hours and then they were expected to return it. They were supposed to photocopy anything they wanted to keep. Every time we checked on that binder, it would be cleared out, sometimes with blank pages replacing the study guides. The librarians said that was common- if you could be the only student in the class with the study guide, it gave you a slight advantage, but very little chance of getting caught and less unethical then like "real" cheating.
Posts: 2223 | Registered: Mar 2008
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No only that, but some people are lazy....and even people who aren't lazy sometimes have issues that could revome them from class. I was never in any danger of not passing, and some people in this class have an issue with anyone and everyone who are trying to Ace the class.
I learn very differently than anyone else I know. I know a LOT of people who CLAIM to not study, or not be able to study. I really have trouble doing it, at least in a classical sense. I just read the chapter BEFORE class....and sine I do that, I usually know the answer to the questions the teachers ask IN class. I don't usually volunteer answers, at least not more than once a class, but when no one answers the question correctly the teachers usually will ask one of three people last, because we usually know the answer (or are at least on the right track).
Some people have an issue with this. I'll admit that when class started I was a little too gung ho......but WFT, I had been waiting for this chance for 17 years. I calmed down, and stopped answering questions, so that other people would get a chance to participate.
That's why I LOVE my laptop. Most of my questions were too in depth for a LPN class, so rather than wasting class time, I started googling them. I probably have learned as much from mayoclinic.com and WebMD as I have from my teachers in at least 2 of my classes. Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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I had an issue, not of my making, earlier this semester with a girl in my class. I guess she has been talking crap about me all semester, and I only heard part of it. I have no proof, so no accusations will be made, but I'd offer 10 to 1 odds it was her or one of her buddies, if this is what happened.![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
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