Test stumps athletic trainers
Faculty seek to improve exam results after last year’s low passage rates
At the end of their senior year, students within the athletic training program must take an exam in order to receive certification and qualify as an athletic trainer.
Training — Students in the athletic training program must go through clinical rotations in which they get hands-on experience. Photo credit: Courtney Russo
The reason for the exam is that every state in the U.S., other than California, requires people to be certified in order to qualify as an athletic trainer and to go to
graduate school.
However, after dismal, first-time passage rates from the 2013-2014 academic year, the faculty have increased the pressure on the students in order to boost the test scores. According to Liberty’s website, of the 21 people who took the test last year, only 10 successfully passed the exam on the first try.
Although the overall passage rate of students has always been more than 70 percent, Jerry Pickard, associate professor of athletic training and health professions, said the Commission on Accreditation of Athletic Training Education (CAATE) is the accrediting body of Liberty’s undergraduate program and that the commission only looks at first-time passage rates. The poor performance of last year’s students dropped the three-year aggregate to 58.97 percent for first-time passage rates (the standard is at least 70) and 84.62 percent for overall passage rates.
“We fell below the 70 percent mark,” Pickard said. “We are not on provisional accreditation. We are not on probation — we are still on full accreditation. But we have to write some progress reports for the CAATE indicating what we’ve done to improve our first-time pass rates.”
Pickard said in order to better prepare the students this year, the faculty has increased the standards for a class called senior seminar. In that class, students review test-taking philosophies, competencies and content.
“You don’t ever like using your educational process as an experimental process, but we were not having success on first-time pass rates,” Pickard said. “We thought, ‘OK, either we’re not communicating to our students the significance of their responsibility or we are not preparing them well. So I decided to make sure we did everything we could (their) senior year to get them focused on the test.”
Shannon Jamerson, a senior who recently passed the athletic training program exam on her first try, said senior year primarily consists of reviewing the material, and the spring semester of senior year is pretty much wide open to prepare for the exam.
“We had a review class in the fall that kind of exposed us to different topics that would be on the test,” Jamerson said. “(The review) kind of exposed what weaknesses we had on some areas and where we needed to focus in on our studying. We did a workshop-type program, (which was) paid for us to take, in December. That was on how to prepare for a test.”
Pickard said students have to be in the last semester of their senior year and on track to graduate in order to take the exam. The Board of Certification for Athletic Trainers holds the test, which consists of multiple parts and takes four hours to take. Students must pay $350 to take the exam, which is a culmination of everything they learn. Parts of the test include multiple choice and ordering a sequence of events on how to respond to various situations.
So far, the four students who took the test in February have passed. The test results for the students taking the April exams will not be revealed until May. The remaining students will take the exam in June.
“You can take it as many times as you want, but it’s kind of bad if you fail multiple times,” Jamerson said.
Pickard said the plea of the Athletic Training Program faculty to the students was to not take the test if they were not ready.
“(We said) ‘We are going to create a class where we are going to try to prepare you, but we ask you, as seniors, not to go into the test unprepared,’” Pickard said. “‘If you don’t do well on it, you can take it again and pass it. But, it hurts us as a program and as a profession.’”
Students had to recall material from their first year in the program. According to Jamerson, freshman year contains the basics of athletic training and foundational material. Sophomore year is when students apply to the program and get in if they meet the GPA requirements. They start learning about lower body evaluation and therapeutic modalities. Junior year is more in-depth, containing two rehab classes, a general medical conditions class, upper body evaluation and a few exercise science classes.
“Honestly, the best preparation is just to learn the material as you go through it through college,” Jamerson said. “Take your classes seriously when you are a sophomore and the test is two years away. If you take your classes seriously, then when you get to be a senior all you have to do is review. You don’t have to re-learn the information.”
While the percentage of students who fail the exam cannot be attributed to one factor, Jamerson believes the fault lies in the students who do not study correctly.
“My guess (on why students fail) would be (that they are) not taking it seriously,” Jamerson said. “Thinking that it’s going to be more simple than it is. It is a basic athletic training entry-level test, but if you don’t study for it, you are not going to learn all of the little details that you learned as a sophomore and as a junior.”
Pickard believes the divide in the success rate of students is between those who really know the material and those who only learn questions for the test.
“As a program director, (it is hard) not being able to prevent anyone from taking it, (or) being able to say ‘This person hasn’t studied enough,’” Pickard said. “And so first-time pass rates are a little scary for program directors because we really don’t have any control over it.”
Janney is the asst. news editor.