WNMU is accredited by the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools and by the New Mexico State Board of Education. The School of Education is nationally accredited by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE). WNMU’s programs in social work, nursing, occupational therapy assistant and economic development are nationally accredited. The School of Education and Child Development Center have also received their respective accreditations.

The Department of Nursing at WNMU has the responsibility of preparing students for the Nursing Board accreditation exam and relies on Questionmark Perception to get their students ready for it.

“We follow the same format as the Nursing Board accreditation exam, also using multiple choice and some matching questions,” says Sean Souders, support analyst at WNMU. “We’re helping our students by preparing them for what’s to come, so that there are no surprises.”

Currently the department of nursing is made up of 65 students, who all take electronic exams throughout the semester. Tests are administered four days a week for 16 weeks. “Right now the students take exams in proctored classes, where we are able to use the delivery system to take one group and schedule all their tests at the same time,” said Souders. “That translates into fast delivery, reliability and ease.”

Aside from preparing students for the Nursing Board accreditation exam, Questionmark Perception exams also allow faculty to score the exams and focus on item analysis and question statistics to improve their questions.

“Clear and up-to-date results mean the ability to create better questions,” Souders adds. “When we were doing these exams using paper and pencil, not only were students not quite prepared for their computerized Board certification exam, but the faculty wasn’t able to see the statistics behind each question and improve it if it was weak or faulty.”

Faculty and staff at WNMU have created a shared question bank organized by topics; each class is a topic, with several subtopics.

“The subtopics are basically the subjects that fall under a particular, broader topic— for example the topic might be Nursing 101 and the subtopics would be Diabetes, and Electrolytes,” says Souders, who sometimes oversees the entry of the questions into Perception. “Each professor has a different way of entering questions, but all of the questions are geared to match the difficulty level of the Nursing Board accreditation exam.” The questions are either created by the professor or are uploaded by faculty and staff from the RTF-format textbook item question banks.

Souders says the questions are easy to maintain, as is the software. “Unlike some other tools used on campus, Questionmark Perception puts us at ease. It keeps all of our questions secure and is extremely organized and easy to administer—a couple of clicks and you’re done.”