Quality of Students

nwhitney

nwhitney

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Wondering if any one has seen a decline in the quality of students coming through EMT class. I help to teach the skills portion of an EMT class and it seems as if the quality of students has gone down the last couple of classes. We've been losing a lot of students lately due to low test scores. I have my own theories as to why this is happening just curious as to what others think.
 
It's only the last couple of classes that I've noticed this. The previous classes only lost 1 or 2 out of 24. This current class I'm helping with is down to 7 out of 16.
 
nwhitney said:
Wondering if any one has seen a decline in the quality of students coming through EMT class. I help to teach the skills portion of an EMT class and it seems as if the quality of students has gone down the last couple of classes. We've been losing a lot of students lately due to low test scores. I have my own theories as to why this is happening just curious as to what others think.
Click to expand...

Students are a function of the effort you put into them, and the quality of instruction. Assessment should not just be cognitive and didactic, but also within the affective domain.
Rather than complaining about the quality, consider investing some time and effort to change it!
 
emt.dan said:
Students are a function of the effort you put into them, and the quality of instruction. Assessment should not just be cognitive and didactic, but also within the affective domain.
Rather than complaining about the quality, consider investing some time and effort to change it!
Click to expand...

Valid point. I'm not the lead instructor and I'm typically not there for the didactic. I know I have some bias going on but from what I see and hear during lecture I don't feel it has changed for the worse. I suppose I could be wrong. They always seem to do just fine with the skills portion.

It seems as this all started when the new Brady book came out. We now require students to come in to the class already obtaining their BLS-CPR which I feel could be preventing some great students from enrolling.

Perhaps more is going on with the instructor than I realize.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
nwhitney said:
Valid point. I'm not the lead instructor and I'm typically not there for the didactic. I know I have some bias going on but from what I see and hear during lecture I don't feel it has changed for the worse. I suppose I could be wrong. They always seem to do just fine with the skills portion.

It seems as this all started when the new Brady book came out. We now require students to come in to the class already obtaining their BLS-CPR which I feel could be preventing some great students from enrolling.

Perhaps more is going on with the instructor than I realize.
Click to expand...

Why would having a CPR card keep "great students" from enrolling? Every EMT class I've been a part of requires CPR prior to class.
 
DEmedic said:
Why would having a CPR card keep "great students" from enrolling? Every EMT class I've been a part of requires CPR prior to class.
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It's just a thought. Maybe calling them "great students" is a bit much. It's an evening class geared towards people who work during the day. It's already a struggle to get students there on time as it starts at 5pm. Add the CPR requirement and I wonder if some get discourage and decide not to enroll.

Really the only factor I've noticed that has changed recently is the CPR requirement. I'm at a loss as to why enrollment numbers have dropped and why so many students fail out.
 
I haven't noticed any change in the quality of the students. There are students who fail no matter how hard you try to keep them from failing. Some semester we get more than others.

One of our instructors has a doctorate in education and he still has semesters that quite a bit of students fail out from.

I can see how making all students get a CPR card before class can keep students out. It's an extra class that they have to find, enroll, pay, and pass. We ended up adding the CPR class into the EMT class. Even if a student already has a CPR card they still have to take the CPR class. There are way too many crappy CPR classes. So we solved a lot of the issues by adding it on to the normal class and extending it into a 16 hour class instead of a 8 hours.
 
DEmedic said:
Why would having a CPR card keep "great students" from enrolling? Every EMT class I've been a part of requires CPR prior to class.
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Mine didn't. That could have been due to the fact that my class was 260 hours vs the state mandated 140, though. Had extra time to do all that in class.
 
My layperson CPR-etc and CPRO students have gotten better since the rush for home health care givers to get it in 2010-2011.
 
Another major impact on overall student success is the "bad apple factor". Sometimes there are one or more students who can poison a group and make them less successful. This may be a seemingly benign as a student frequently asking irrelevant or "what if" questions that slows down or frustrates the rest of the class, or it may be a student(s) that has a poor attitude that ends up affecting other students. Beware the "cool guy" who is above buckling down and practicing and would rather screw around. Other students may fall for the act and imitate their behavior.
 
If getting BLS certified is what stops someone taking EMT school, I doubt they were very motivated to be an EMT to begin with. Nursing students may have to take a couple years of pre regs before they can begin the clinical portion of their training. I don't think its too much to ask someone to take a half day class before starting EMT school.
 
Beware the "cool guy" who is above buckling down and practicing and would rather screw around. Other students may fall for the act and imitate their behavior.
Click to expand...

My Paramedic class has an annoying clique in it with a few students who know each other from high school apparently. The are continually laughing at inside jokes and snickering when someone makes a mistake or asks a question. It got old pretty quickly. Sadly the ones in the clique are at least book smart enough to pass all the tests, so were stuck with this group for a while.

At least one has gotten in troubles in clinicals because he's such an arrogant know it all(with zero EMT experience). I expect it'll get worse for them as the class continues. They'll either have to accept that they don't know anything, or learn it the hard way.
 
emt.dan said:
Students are a function of the effort you put into them, and the quality of instruction. Assessment should not just be cognitive and didactic, but also within the affective domain.
Rather than complaining about the quality, consider investing some time and effort to change it!
Click to expand...

To a point...yes. But blaming the instructor for a group that refuses to put in their own effort is the kind of BS excuse I often see out of sub-par students as well.
 
I was in a class with 14 students, we ended with 8

1 dropped the class day 3 cause they were about to finish nursing school, but wanted to be a paramedic and found out they didnt need our class

1 got dropped for missing 4 classes, could only miss 3

1 dropped cause they couldnt pass piss test, weed smoker

3 got dropped for failing final

nobody brought anyone down in that class, we were pretty good at challenging each other to excel, it just came down to who wanted to study outside of the class...
 
Lofton said:
I was in a class with 14 students, we ended with 8

1 dropped the class day 3 cause they were about to finish nursing school, but wanted to be a paramedic and found out they didnt need our class

1 got dropped for missing 4 classes, could only miss 3

1 dropped cause they couldnt pass piss test, weed smoker

3 got dropped for failing final

nobody brought anyone down in that class, we were pretty good at challenging each other to excel, it just came down to who wanted to study outside of the class...
Click to expand...

In my basic and medic class, it literally came down to who studied and who didn't.

The teachers would often be available to help study or practice skills before and after class. They constantly recommended new study resources and quizzing opportunities.

There were people who met once a week for study groups. They also spent a little part of every day studying and quizzing themselves. They did phenomenal and passed. Every single person who failed literally did the bare minimum of homework (which was never recommended), or did none at all, only quizzed themselves for an hour before each test and never met for a study group.

You could tell one week into class who would be there at the end and who wouldn't. Also, people who passed would get a really high grade like a 98%, but always ruminate over what questions they got wrong. People who failed out would have a barely passing grade, like an 83% and be like, "Whew, yes, I passed! No, I don't care what I missed, I passed."
 
CPR was started the first day or so of class after registration and the such for entry into the EMT program

I think a big part of it is the expectations a lot of shows like Chicago Fire and Rescue Me showing all these "heroic actions" and then they find out for the most part that's 1% of the calls you will do as a EMT or Paramedic. When this is shown to be the truth They say yah Eff this I'm out cubscout

I started my EMT class many moons ago and I can say I think 12 of the 25 that started stayed. 1 dropped out after being accepted to Nursing school a few others failed out and decided that they couldn't pass the tests. and the rest just stopped showing up.

My paramedic class 1 dropped out she was 18 and was too worried about having a social life vs. actually putting effort into the course. when my instructor told her she needed to pass the last 3 tests with at least an A and get a near perfect score on her presentation for class to pass with a 70 she dropped the course.
 
Generally, the better you are and the more you know your stuff, the more it'll seem to you like the new people who don't know anything are complete noobs who are completely unprepared. This is true for every class, for every training scenario, in every walk of life. The only difference are those rare people who study what the lesson is before they come to class.
 
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