Wolters Kluwer, a leading global provider of information and point of care solutions for the healthcare industry, today announced that students using its PrepU adaptive learning platform have submitted more than 1 billion responses to customized questions generated through formative assessments in their courses and preparation for licensure. Each new answer enhances the power of PrepU to deliver significantly higher pass rates and learning gains through personalized educational experiences and instruction. In turn, students gain test-taking confidence, while improving critical thinking skills essential for stepping into their clinical roles as practice-ready nurses.
For nursing students, PrepU promotes active learning and retention through customized adaptive study environments wherein questions challenge individuals at the appropriate pace and difficulty level, resulting in improved knowledge and greater test-taking confidence. For instructors, PrepU delivers real-time data to help maximize individual and class performance.
The 1 billionth response milestone underscores the power of PrepU as a truly adaptive learning engine. The unprecedented volume of nursing student responses available to PrepU for analysis enables determination of the exact difficulty of a question relative to all others for highly accurate and continuous calibration. This capability, in turn, enables PrepU to continually deliver personalized quizzing experiences based on each student’s demonstrated understanding and proficiency in comparison to all others who have answered the same questions.
Multiple investigations, case studies and testimonials confirm the efficacy of PrepU, including improved first-time NCLEX® pass rates and significantly higher overall pass rates. An overall pass rate of 97.18% was achieved by PrepU users across nine study cohorts, compared to the national average of 81.8% for 2015 and 84.5% for 2015.
“One of the biggest challenges for nursing faculty is developing critical thinking and test taking skills in under-graduate nursing students. The ability to learn and develop these critical skills can produce anxiety, frustration and confusion in students who are learning while simultaneously earning scores on unit examinations. PrepU addresses these issues through adaptive quizzing that assesses students’ knowledge and their ability to understand and ‘take the test’,” said E’Loria Simon-Campbell, RN, PhD, Assistant Professor, Sam Houston State University. “Also by analyzing and recording individual and group progress, PrepU allows faculty to evaluate learners’ areas of weakness and strengths prior to major course exams. Students get individualized remediation of course content, and content is presented in a manner consistent with all the components of the current NCLEX exam and Bloom’s Taxonomy. It is truly an asset to students, faculty and nursing programs in both rural and urban populations.”
Wolters Kluwer’s PrepU product line was launched in December 2010 for use in Medical-Surgical Nursing courses, followed six months later with a product to target preparation for NCLEX. Today, there is a PrepU offering for every core course in the nursing curriculum, expanded for Allied Health and Medical Education courses. The adaptive quizzing engine is also integrated into Lippincott CoursePoint, Lippincott PassPoint, and Lippincott CoursePoint for Nursing Concepts.
“Adaptive learning and formative assessment have transformed nursing education, enabling students to better retain knowledge and test more confidently and successfully,” said Cathy Wolfe, President & CEO, Health Learning, Research & Practice, Wolters Kluwer. “We’re proud to achieve this milestone with PrepU and remain dedicated to continuously enhancing this important learning tool to benefit instructors and students, and to address the growing need for practice-ready nurses.”
