CASPer Assessment: Practical Nursing

Competitive Entry to Assiniboine’s Practical Nursing program

Assiniboine’s Practical Nursing program includes TakeAltus Suite's CASPer® assessment as a part of the competitive entry of its admissions process. This assessment enables applicants to demonstrate their personal competencies earlier on in the admission process.

Being a nurse is a moral undertaking. Assiniboine’s competitive entry admission process aims to admit students that are assessed for specific non-academic attributes or personal competencies, which are necessary to the nursing profession including collaboration, communication, empathy, equity, ethics, motivation, problem solving, professionalism, resilience, and self-awareness. These essential skills and abilities are identified to provide safe, competent, and ethical nursing care to meet the demands for a career as a Licensed Practical Nurse in Manitoba.

All applicants must meet Admission Requirements. Use the Program Application Checklist or Program Application Checklist (International) to help you collate your documents to ensure your application is complete prior to applying online.

WHAT IS CASPer®?

CASPer is a selection tool used by academic programs across North America to help assess applicants for non-academic attributes or personal competencies. It is not an Assiniboine-owned tool.

CASPer is a form of situational judgment test. Situational judgment tests are a type of psychological test that presents the test-taker with realistic, hypothetical scenarios and may ask the individual what they would do in the dilemma and why they would do it. Situational judgment tests tend to determine behavioral tendencies, assessing how an individual will behave in a certain situation, and knowledge instruction, which evaluates the effectiveness of possible responses.

CASPer® Test: This online test is 90-110 minutes in length and is made up of 2 sections (video and typed responses) and 14 scenarios (9 video-based and 5 word-based). First section, video responses: 2 word-based and 4 video-based scenarios. For each scenario, 2 open-ended questions are presented one at a time and you are provided 1 minute to record each of your responses. Second section, typed responses: 3 word-based and 5 video-based scenarios. For each scenario, 3 open-ended questions are presented together and you are provided a total of 5 minutes to respond to all 3 questions.

IMPORTANT: Full details about the test, including a video, can be found on the About CASPer website. Applicants are strongly encouraged to read the information about assessment preparation and FAQs. Applicants can ensure technical requirements are met and undertake a full practice assessment prior to their actual scheduled assessment.

Dates for applicants to Assiniboine’s Practical Nursing program for this portion of the assessment are noted below.

Once completed, the applicant is rated in 10 areas (collaboration, communication, empathy, equity, ethics, motivation, problem-solving, professionalism, resilience, and self-awareness), using a rubric and rating scale.

Your Casper test is evaluated by a team of Casper raters, who are a group of independent contractors employed by Acuity Insights. The rater pool is designed to be representative of the population of the country where your program resides – this includes individuals from a wide range of professions, including but not limited to the profession to which you’re applying (e.g., healthcare). Each of the 14 scenarios of your test is rated by a different rater, so no rater will see more than one set of your responses. This is to help ensure that each applicant’s test is evaluated using a balance of different perspectives, to ensure that each scenario is considered equally when determining your overall score (as opposed to any one rater’s first impression influencing your score on the other 13 scenarios), and to eliminate the effects of bias. Each rater only sees your typed and video responses to the Casper test – any other information (such as your name, your survey responses, or the programs you’re applying to) have been removed – meaning that they cannot consider any of this information when assigning a score.

In the end, the ratings from all questions are totaled for an overall rating for each applicant. Ratings are sent to Assiniboine Community College by CASPer and considered during application review and decisions.

Applicants who apply to more than one location of the Practical Nursing program need only take one CASPer® assessment. Applicants are responsible for the cost of CASPer.

*Note: Snapshot video and DUET are not required for Assiniboine applicants.

When can I take CASPer®?

Available test dates are as follows:

• Nov 2, 2023 - 8:00 PM EDT (7 PM in Manitoba)
• Dec 5, 2023 - 8:00 PM EST (7 PM in Manitoba)
• Jan 18, 2024 - 8:00 PM EST (7 PM in Manitoba)
• Feb 1, 2024 - 8:00 PM EST (7 PM in Manitoba)
• Mar 5, 2024 - 5:00 PM EST (4 PM in Manitoba)
• Mar 19, 2024 - 8:00 PM EDT (7 PM in Manitoba)
• Apr 9, 2024 - 8:00 PM EDT (7 PM in Manitoba)
• May 2, 2024 - 5:00 PM EDT (4 PM in Manitoba)
• Jul 25, 2024 - 8:00 PM EDT (7 PM in Manitoba)

Select Nursing-Undergraduate and the CSP-10202 Canadian Undergraduate Health Sciences test

You will need your Assiniboine Student ID to register for CASPer. IMPORTANT - Ensure you enter your Assiniboine student ID accurately to ensure the CASPer score is assessed to your Student ID. If you do not use the correct number, your score will not link to your application.

Fees are paid directly to CASPer. Specific details can be found on CASPer’s Dates and Fees webpage.

Note: All registration, fees, and any accommodation requests are direct with CASPer®. Please refer to the CASPer® website, and contact CASPer® if you have questions on these items or the test itself.

For questions about Assiniboine’s admissions process, please visit assiniboine.net/admissions and assiniboine.net/nursing. If your question is not answered here, email admissions@assiniboine.net.