NR 537 Week 4
NR 537 Week 4 Collaboration Café: Discrimination Index
You are part of an educational unit of four educators. The item analysis of the recent examination is being reviewed. During this process, one test question in particular upsets you. From the item analysis, you can see that the question has a discrimination index of .15 and several of the upper- level learners … the same incorrect distractor. You believe that the distractor is … poorly and is confusing to these students. You want to remove the item and give the students who … it credit for the correct answer. You become upset when the majority of the educators vote to leave the test question within the examination. In fact, you become so upset that you raise your voice and the chair of the group calls for a 15-minute break for everyone “to calm down.”
Later that night, while self-reflecting, you suddenly recall that as a student, you were upset over a test question that you thought was confusing and “tricky.” However, the faculty member would not change your score, resulting in you failing the exam. You realize that this experience has … your work as an educator in reviewing test questions. Tomorrow, you must work with the same group of individuals on a task force.
How would you approach tomorrow’s meeting? Would you bring up your memory to the members of the task force? Would you decide to discuss it in a few days over lunch? What actions would you use so that this previous event does not impact your current work? How would you be fair to the learners who … correctly as well as to those who … incorrectly?
NR-537 Week 4 Scholarly Discussion: Item Analysis
You are a member of a 3-person educational team that has … a competency test that uses 50 multiple choice test questions to determine the knowledge and skill level of learners. After 30 learners have … the competency test, the team conducted an item analysis. From the results, there are 10 questions that are … as being problematic. One of the educators wants to consider each of these questions individually to see if one or more of the questions should … from the test. However, a second educator is strongly against this by stating, “This is a competency test; it has validity because we wrote it—the test questions should not … altered. The grade on the examination should stand!” The third educator wants to remove the ten questionable items from the test and raise all learners’ scores. For the educator in professional nursing development, this will result in staff nurses who have … the exam being … on performance improvement plans and possible dismissal from the agency. For the educator in the academic setting, the learner will not … to progress to the next course, must repeat the current course, and may … from the academic program.
What quantitative and qualitative information would you provide in order to assist these educators to consider the quality of the test questions?
