Regina Urban

Pressed For Time: The Timing of Online Exam Completion and Pre-Nursing Student Outcomes

Regina Urban, PhD(c), MSN, RN-BC, CCRN, CNE

Clinical Assistant Professor

College of Nursing and Health Innovation

Because of continuing employment growth in the field of healthcare, students are interested in obtaining a degree in nursing. Students must successfully complete specific prerequisite courses, including pathophysiology, to be able to apply to and be accepted for the nursing program. At UTA, the College of Nursing offers students the opportunity to complete nursing degree requirements in an online or in-person format. Online students must make many decisions regarding their school – work – life balance. The relatively unstructured nature of online learning means students must develop their own schedules for learning course content and completing course-related assignments and exams. In online pathophysiology, students are given a 42 hour window in which to complete course exams. The purpose of this PLC project is: For online pre-nursing students, what is the relationship of students’ exam submission times to their ability to successfully complete the course?

J. T. Dellinger

While what you studied makes sense from a practitioner perspective, it is good to get some evidence behind it! It is interesting to hear about that particular demographic that waited until the last minute to get work done and I would be curious to see some follow up work that examines that in further depth. Perhaps some qualitative work as well? Do you plan to share the results with the students? It could be a good point of discussion! I definitely encourage you to share with the BSN and RN-BSN programs as well - given the number of students that the program has and a heavy use of exams, that could definitely be something worth knowing about and exploring further in some different contexts!
Melanie Mason

Wow, Regina! I love pow toon. What an engaging presentation! What I want to know (as I’m sure you do, also) is why students wait until those last 4 hours. I wonder if you could do an exit survey of those that completed the course and were identified in this group. Are there other reasons besides the presumptive “procrastination” that might lead you to alter the days available to take the test? With the rigor of our nursing program, I’m not sure how many of your majors work in addition to taking classes. I know that many of our THEA and COMM majors use the weekend to get in hours at their jobs off campus. Just food for thought. I really enjoyed not only what you presented, but also how you presented the information. Thanks so much!
- Regina Urban
  
  Thanks Melanie! I am definitely interested in knowing why those who are submitting late in the submission window choose to do so. I think an exit survey is a great idea to ask about reasons why a student might have chosen to submit their exams in the last 10% of the time it was available. I also am interested in the literature (if any) on what exactly is “best practice” for when and how long to keep an exam window open. Hmmm….
Lydia Pyburn

Hi Regina, as former procrastinating I found your project very interesting. It was true that sometimes I waited till the last minute to complete tasks, but sometimes it depended on my schedule and how I prioritized what assignments needed to be done. Also, I thought if I was given this much time it meant I had more time to study. Were the testing dates giving at the same time each week? I’m curious if changing the days would change the data. Also, I know some nursing students have reached out to us on finding books about pathophysiology in order to refresh themselves on the course. Have you thought about recommended texts and exercises that students can look at before the class?
- Regina Urban
  
  Lydia, I think you are on target with the idea that our students are juggling many things…work…school…family and so some of their behavior may be related to prioritization of responsibilities. On the weeks exams were given, they were open on the same 0001 Friday to 1800 Saturday schedule. I’m definitely curious about “exam window best practices” which might be my next study. 🙂
  
  There are quizlet cards for the course which may provide a helpful overview (if anyone asks you): http://quizlet.com/join/VkBPpXx5q
  
  The syllabus (posted on Mentis) links course content with the related chapters in the textbook.
  
  Thanks for your comments,
  
  Regina
  - Lydia Pyburn
    
    Thanks, I’ll add the link to my resources list!
Kim Breuer

Regina, this definitely confirms my “gut instinct” on the procrastinators. It would be interesting to compare the results for different types of courses. For example, the nursing students in our AO freshman history courses or non-nursing majors v. Nursing majors. I wonder if this also holds true for submission of assignments.
- Regina Urban
  
  It’s an interesting concept to explore. What about how many classes are the procrastinators in my course taking at UTA in the same semester? How’s their GPA?
  
  Were there any that procrastinated on exam one, perhaps earned a low grade, and did not procrastinate again? How were their grades and submission times on exams 2, 3, and 4 after that? Also a good set of questions.
  
  Patho is a fairly hard-core science class (information dense, application level exam questions). It is unlikely that procrastination would have a good outcome unless the student has a very strong A&P background. The grades on these exams range from the mid-40’s to 100 and average in the 70’s.
  
  There are a few research articles published in the last 5 years about assignment submission patterns and timing of discussion board postings and course-level outcomes, but none on the timing of exam submission and course-level outcomes.
Cindy

This is really interesting! I am a definite procrastinator, and I work on deadlines. But submitting something at the last minute doesn’t always mean that I have not worked on it for an extended period. How can we effectively measure true procrastination and lack of preparation vs students who spend much more time preparing?
- Regina Urban
  
  Good point Cindy. Depending on how the course is constructed, it could be timing of logging in and frequency of engaging with course materials? I’m thinking that if you ask me, I’m going to tell you I spent LOTS of time preparing for an exam in your course, which might introduce bias into the data. 😉