THEPOINT.LWW.COM/PREPU
IMPROVING TEACHING FOR NURSING INSTRUCTORS
Customizing
Lectures to
Your Students’
Mastery Level
PAGE 3
Increase Student
Participation Quickly
PAGE 7
Better Preparation
for the NCLEX Exam
PAGE 9
RAISING
TEST SCORES
How a nursing program in Ohio
raised test scores over 20% by
adding a simple adjustment
to their curriculum.
PAGE 5
Does PrepU really work?
That was the question that led PrepU’s creators to enlist
educational psychology expert and assessment effectiveness
research expert, Julia Phelan, Ph.D, of UCLA’s National Center for
Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing (CRESST)
“Many people
will say that their
product ‘works,’ but
what evidence do
they have? We don’t
want to just rely
on anecdotes—we
want real evidence.”
Phelan designed and implemented an ongoing efficacy project to
study the use of PrepU in undergraduate nursing programs. She
hoped to connect with instructors and find out how they were
using PrepU in the classroom. She also wanted to measure the
impact of PrepU in a rigorous way by analyzing the relationship
between PrepU usage and student performance.
“Many people will say that their product ‘works,’ but what
evidence do they have?” said Phelan. “We don’t want to just rely
on anecdotes—we want real evidence.”
Phelan had several goals in mind when she launched the project.
She wanted to promote not only PrepU’s efficacy data but also
secondary research on assessment and learning that supports
PrepU’s approach and design. She hoped to help both sales
representatives and faculty members understand the research.
She wanted to build a short-term body of efficacy data while
laying the groundwork for longer-term studies. Finally, she
wanted to create an advisory board of nursing educators and
assessment/learning experts to help guide product messaging
and development.
Julia Phelan, Ph.D — UCLA National Center
for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and
Student Testing (CRESST)
The case studies in this publication offer real-world success
stories of nursing instructors who’ve used PrepU—evidence that
the system benefits both instructors and students by helping to
improve teaching and learning. These case studies also illustrate
the many different ways that PrepU is being used and showcase
the creativity of the instructors involved.
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features
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ON
THE
COVER
Customizing Lectures to
Your Students’Mastery Level
Growing Grades &
Raising Test Scores
Greater Student
Motivation
Better Preparation
for the NCLEX Exam
Smarter Learning
by Going Beyond Textbooks
100% Pass Rate
of Class and the NCLEX
Inspiring Greater Class Preparation
& Decrease Cheating
Creating
Caring Nurses
Results in the Real World
- Students & Teacher Speak Out
IMPROVING TEACHING FOR NURSING INSTRUCTORS
3
5
7
9
11
13
15
17
19
3 CUSTOMIZING LECTURES TO YOUR STUDENTS’MASTERY LEVEL
What do they
need to learn
better?
With students progressing at such different rates, planning lectures can be difficult.
Hawaii Pacific University was experiencing the same challenge, but found an
unexpected solution in PrepU’s custom reports.
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A
PREPNOW MAGAZINE. IMPROVING TEACHING FOR NURSING INSTRUCTORS
s director of clinical laboratories in
the College of Nursing and Health
Sciences at Hawaii Pacific University, David
J. Dunham taught Adult Health Care 1 in the
fall of 2010 using PrepU. The twelve-week
course covered entry-level medical-surgical
nursing. Each week, students attended three
hours of lecture and spent one day in the
clinical setting.
Having taught Adult Health Care 1 before,
David knew that students struggled to absorb
all of the required content. As the sole
instructor of 132 students, he hoped PrepU
would help him to pinpoint areas in which the
class needed help.
“My biggest challenge is a lack of time
to teach, so it’s really important to have a
tool I can use to see where my students are
having difficulties,” David said. “Then I can
better focus my lectures on the areas they’re
weakest in.”
David also hoped PrepU would increase
student preparation. “I’d been teaching for
a while, and I’d found that students didn’t
usually prepare for class,” he said. “But
this semester, my students were much more
engaged. They came to class with the quiz
questions they were having difficulty with,
which really stimulated our discussions
and gave me a better sense of their
understanding.”
David even noticed improved attendance
when he told students that pop quiz content
would be coming from PrepU. “It encouraged
them to use PrepU to practice,” he said. “And
using PrepU questions in my pop quizzes
ensured that students were reading before
“I’d found that students
didn’t usually prepare for
class, but this semester,
my students were much
more engaged.”
class and helped pave the way for lectures.”
In the end, about 85 percent of his
students used PrepU. Though he didn’t
formally measure the effects, average grades
for the course were up compared to previous
semesters. “Nothing else about the course
had changed,” David said, “so I have to
attribute the improvement to PrepU.”
David also believes PrepU will help his
students perform better on the NCLEX, the
national licensing exam for nurses.
“I’ve looked at studies that say nurses
should do 3,500 practice questions before
they take the NCLEX,” David said. “PrepU
prepares students better than ATI, which is
rather static and repetitive, and there’s only
one version of it. PrepU is better aligned
with what students will be doing on the
NCLEX, and its adaptive testing is similar to
the format of the NCLEX. It’s also a fun and
interactive way of learning.”
David J. Dunham, DHEd, MS, RN
is Director of Clinical Laboratories at
College of Nursing and Health Sciences
4
5 IMPROVING STUDENTS’ GRADE LEVELS
Growing
grAdes
How Central Carolina Tech College
raised students’ grades 20%
in a single semester.
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C
PREPNOW MAGAZINE. IMPROVING TEACHING FOR NURSING INSTRUCTORS
onnie Houser was concerned about
her students in Transition Nursing
(Nursing 201), an online majors course. At
Central Carolina Tech College, Nursing 201 is the
first course for licensed practical nurses (LPNs)
seeking to earn the associate degree in nursing
(ADN) and become registered nurses (RNs).
As LPNs, Houser’s students were
expected to have a great deal of prerequisite
knowledge, but many had been away
from school for a while and needed help
readjusting. Students also struggled
with the amount of material they were
expected to master in Nursing 201.
Houser’s challenge was getting all of
her students on a level playing field by
the time they finished her course.
Houser turned to PrepU as a tool
for helping her students identify
their strengths and weaknesses.
She assigned quizzes in PrepU and
encouraged students to take as
many as they wanted. Sometimes
she created quizzes to help students
gauge their mastery of reading
assignments. Other times, she
assigned the quizzes first and let the
results guide her students’ study and
reading.
“I liked the fact that PrepU was
aligned to the textbook I was using,” she
said. “That wasn’t the case with other
assessment tools I’ve used, and it was very
important for both me and my students.”
Houser didn’t offer credit for using PrepU,
but even so, every one of her students did, with
the average student taking between twenty and
thirty quizzes.
“I expected PrepU to help students
prepare for the course, but I received so many
more positive comments from students than I
had expected,” Houser said. “I even had
former students who heard about PrepU
from friends call me to see if they could get
an access code. They really wanted to use
it!”
She also saw more improvement
in grades than she expected: average test
scores increased by as much as twenty
points.
“I love seeing the student data
and the fact that misconceptions are
highlighted,” Houser said. “If a particular
topic is proving difficult for my students, I
can offer a case study that we can explore
more deeply. Having this information
really helps me target my instruction
and emphasize areas I might not have
emphasized.”
Next semester, Houser has even
bigger plans for PrepU, such as assigning
quizzes before class meetings instead of
administering in-class pop quizzes. “The
benefits for me will be that I won’t need
to grade all those papers, and I’ll save
valuable class time,” she said. “I’ll also
be able to see the data up front and know
in advance where students are having
difficulties.”
Connie Houser, MS, RNC-OB, CNE
Central Carolina Tech College
“I even had
former students
call me to see if they
could get an access
code. They really
wanted to use it!”
6
7 IMPROVING STUDENT MOTIVATION AND PARTICIPATION
More
eager,
excited
students
A contagious atmosphere of
learning and excitement can
lead to greater outcomes for
individual students.
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A
PREPNOW MAGAZINE. IMPROVING TEACHING FOR NURSING INSTRUCTORS
ssistant Professor Hediye Scheeler
had been teaching Foundations of
Nursing Practice (N210) at Lakeview
College of Nursing for five years when she first
tried PrepU.
The course had an enrollment of 48
students and focused on the mastery and
application of nursing concepts, health care
delivery, and the nursing process. Students
attended two three-hour lectures per week
and a two-hour lab session.
During her years teaching the course,
Hediye had noticed that students struggled to
apply the concepts they learned to the testing
format of the NCLEX, the national licensing
exam for nurses. She’d also noticed that her
students had a hard time with certain topics,
particularly medical math and administration
pharmacology. She hoped PrepU would
be helpful in addressing these and other
challenges.
Hediye didn’t make PrepU mandatory, but
she did offer credit to those students who
chose to use it. “I set the mastery level at 3 to
begin with and required students to reach at
least level 5 by the end of the term,” she said.
Over the course of the semester, Hediye
observed that PrepU helped students prepare
for exams and helped her get a sense of what
they were learning. She was able to adjust her
teaching to better address student difficulties
and misconceptions, and when she saw that
students had mastered a topic, she knew she
didn’t need to spend any more time on it.
“I loved using PrepU to access and review
my students’ data to get a picture of where
they were having the most trouble,” she said.
“I had done this a little before with ATI, but
now I am looking at data in PrepU only.”
In the end, Hediye felt that PrepU
encouraged and motivated her students to
engage with the material in a more interactive
way and, because of its adaptive capability,
better prepared her students for the licensing
exam.
“The students who used PrepU said that
it helped them because it had NCLEX-style
questions,” Hediye said. “And those who used
it were the students who ended up getting As
and Bs in my course.”
Hediye said she would recommend PrepU
to other faculty members because it provides
detailed information on students’ mastery of
course materials and allows students to learn
at their own pace. She also cited PrepU’s ease
of use.
“I was surprised at how simple it was for
me to master PrepU,” she said. “I’ve never
learned a new technology more quickly or
effectively.”
Hediye Scheeler
Assistant Professor / Course Coordinator Foundations
Lakeview College of Nursing
“Those who
used it were
the students
who ended
up getting A’s
and B’s in my
course.”
8
9 PREPARING TO TAKE THE NCLEX
Cleveland State University School of Nursing gives students a leg up on
taking the NCLEX with NCLEX-style questions and adaptive quizzing.
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PREPNOW MAGAZINE. IMPROVING TEACHING FOR NURSING INSTRUCTORS 10
hen the Cleveland State University
School of Nursing introduced a new
course called Professional Role of Nursing,
Assistant Professor Joan Thoman persuaded
the dean to let her try PrepU.
“The dean wanted a fresh approach,” Joan
said, “and I knew that with this new course, I
would need a tool to help me.”
The course combined two existing courses.
Its goals were to prepare students for their
transition into the nursing work force and
to prepare them for the NCLEX, the national
licensing exam for nurses. (Students had to
pass the ATI NCLEX predictor exam in order to
graduate from the program.) With an enrollment
of 80 students, the course comprised lectures,
discussions, role-play activities, and guest
speakers.
The instructor who’d previously taught
NCLEX prep had few resources to offer—just
photocopied handouts of sample questions.
Seeking a more dynamic study aid for her
students, Joan created seven mastery level
assignments in PrepU based on topics covered
by the NCLEX.
“I really liked the varying levels of questions
in PrepU,” Joan said. “The questions in ATI are
all quite similar. I feel that if students used only
ATI and nothing else to prepare for the NCLEX,
they would have a false sense of security. And
the fact that PrepU questions are written by
content experts means that I didn’t need to be
an expert on every single subject covered by
the exam.”
Joan introduced her students to PrepU using
these mastery level assignments. At first, some
students were reluctant to try PrepU. Others
were confused by the fact that some students
achieved the mastery level after answering 35
questions, whereas it took other students only
20 questions. Joan explained to them that PrepU
is an adaptive quizzing system.
“Once they understood that their
progress depended on the difficulty of the
questions they were answering correctly,
they were even more motivated to take
quizzes,” Joan said. “And once they started,
they couldn’t stop! They got very competitive
with each other, seeing who could get to the
mastery level first.” Ultimately, every student
in the class made use of PrepU.
Joan’s class also included students who
had already failed the ATI-NCLEX predictor
exam. When her dean asked how PrepU
might help those students, Joan was able
to use the system’s data to craft additional
practice quizzes that targeted the areas
where those students were weakest. She
then monitored the students within PrepU to
see if they completed the assignments.
“I loved being able to see the data in real
time—so I could do something about it,” she
said. “And the students saw me as someone
who was helping them succeed.”
PrepU also helped Joan address the
needs of her learning disabled students. “I
didn’t have to send those students to the
learning center,” she said. “They were able
to do extra work right there in the system.”
In addition to seeing what topics
individual students were struggling with,
Joan was able to look at PrepU’s aggregate
data for a big-picture view of her students’
learning. The data helped her show the dean
what was and wasn’t working in the new
course.
“My students graduated in May, and
they were still using PrepU in June,” Joan
said. “They kept emailing to tell me how
much they loved it and were glad that they
still had access as they were preparing for
the NCLEX.”
Joan Thoman, RN, Ph.D., CNS, CDE
is Assistant Professor at
Cleveland State University School of Nursing
11 SUPPLEMENTING TEXTBOOK INSTRUCTION
Improving
upon the
textbook
Lake Superior State University gives students
an improved approach to learning with
just textbooks.
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PREPNOW MAGAZINE. IMPROVING TEACHING FOR NURSING INSTRUCTORS 12
uring the fall semester, Jodi Orm
was scheduled to teach a nursing/
med surg course called Adult Nursing 1 in
the School of Nursing at Lake Superior State
University. She’d taught other course at LSSU
before, but this was going to be her first time
teaching Adult Nursing 1, which included
clinical work, campus labs, and two-hour
lectures twice a week. It would also be her
first time using PrepU.
Jodi knew she had a challenge on her
hands. Students were often poorly prepared
coming into Adult Nursing 1, and they typically
struggled with the amount of material they
needed to master.
“My challenge was figuring out how
to teach all the material I needed to cover
in fourteen weeks and still provide studentcentered learning,” Jodi said.
Once Jodi’s sales rep showed her how
PrepU aligned with the textbook, she saw that
the adaptive quizzing system might help her
address the challenges she was facing.
“It was really important to have a tool
that was linked to exactly the concepts I was
teaching,” she said.
Jodi began using PrepU to create and
administer quizzes and exams, as well as
to assess student understanding. She also
encouraged her students to study in PrepU.
She expected that struggling students would
embrace the system as a study aid, and she
was right. What surprised her was that the
rest of the class did too, even though she didn’t
require them to.
“I just showed my students the tools
that were available and said, ‘Use them if you
want.’ And they did,” Jodi said. “I had 100
percent student participation with a minimum
of five quizzes taken per chapter—way beyond
my expectations.”
The data captured by PrepU made it
easier for Jodi to analyze student performance
patterns, allowing her to see exactly what
subject matter her 26 students were collectively
having a hard time with. Without PrepU, she
said, she wouldn’t have been able to pinpoint
prevalent misconceptions.
“I might have just moved on,” she said,
“instead of spending more time clarifying the
concepts many students were having trouble
with.”
Instead, PrepU’s Misconception Alerts
enabled her to identify particular questions that
many students were getting wrong. She then
presented these questions in class for students
to answer using their clickers.
PrepU also help Jodi meet her goal of
individual, student-centered learning.
“I encourage students to come to me
if they don’t understand something,” she said.
“Now I can look in PrepU and see how many
quizzes a student has taken and what her
mastery level is for a certain topic. Using this
information, I can help her better focus her
studies.”
Jodi compared her students’ midterm
grades with those from previous semesters,
before PrepU was being used. The grades were
higher than ever, and not one of her students
was failing.
Next semester, Jodi plans to make even
better use of PrepU, requiring her students to
attain a certain level of subject-matter mastery
in PrepU prior to her lectures. She’s planning to
keep all of her exams in PrepU as well.
“My students were upset that their next
course doesn’t have PrepU,” she said. “It’s
perfect. I love it.”
Jodi Orm, MSN, RN
School of Nursing, Lake Superior State University
13 TURNING AROUND STRUGGLING STUDENTS AND CLASSES
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PREPNOW MAGAZINE. IMPROVING TEACHING FOR NURSING INSTRUCTORS 14
From
failing to
fulfillment
St. Charles County Community College turns two thirds failing risk into a
100% course and NCLEX exam success rate.
D
uring the spring 2011 semester
at St. Charles County Community
College, Professor of Nursing Marilyn Miller
was concerned that up to a thirds of the twelve
students in her preceptorship weren’t going to
pass.
The preceptorship involved students
working directly with a registered nurse (RN)
in a local community hospital, applying the
knowledge and skills they’d acquired in the
nursing program. During this rotation, Marilyn’s
students were preparing for the HESI and ATI
tests that made up part of the course grade.
These tests, in turn, were intended to prepare
students for the NCLEX, the licensing exam for
nurses.
Partway through the semester, Marilyn
was offered the chance to test PrepU in her
class. With only five weeks to go, she was
willing to try anything that might help her
struggling students. She didn’t make PrepU
mandatory, but seven of the twelve students
gave it a try, including those most in danger
of failing the course. Marilyn found that the
students who weren’t doing well were likely to
take more quizzes in PrepU.
“I had three or four students who
were barely making it through the class,” she
said. “Two of them I really didn’t think would
pass. One of them ended up answering 1,290
questions in PrepU and got a C in the class.”
In the end, all of Marilyn’s students who
used PrepU passed not only the preceptorship
but also the NCLEX that summer.
“They didn’t take a review course
but instead used the textbook and PrepU to
prepare,” said Marilyn.
Marilyn Miller
is Professor of Nursing at
St. Charles County Community College
15 REDUCING COMMON PROBLEMS OF MOTIVATION AND PARTICIPATION
A treatment brea
for senioritis, jus
& cheating-itis
S
Lander College discovers a breakthrough
in reducing common student learning maladies.
tudents struggle with ‘senioritis’ in my
course,” said Rebecca Cox-Davenport,
who teaches Clinical Decision Making in the
nursing program at Lander College. “They’re
ready to be finished with their studies, so my
big challenge is keeping them tuned in and
focused on taking the NCLEX.”
The course, designed for students
in their final semester, has no lecture
component. Instead, the 40 or so students
take turns teaching each other in small-group
presentations that address the areas they’re
struggling with. Rebecca thought PrepU could
help students identify those areas. She also
hoped PrepU would ensure that students were
actually doing the work.
“Previously, I had students answer
questions based on reading assignments
and then report how many they’d answered
correctly,” she said. “That was problematic
and led to lots of cheating.”
Rebecca made PrepU an integral part
of the course. She required students to answer
100 questions per week and get at least 75
percent correct. During the semester, students
also took three NCLEX predictor (practice)
exams. Students who passed the first one
were thereafter required to complete only 75
PrepU questions per week. Even so, most of
Rebecca’s students continued to answer more
than 100 questions per week.
“Having an awareness of your weak
areas is a good thing for a student,” she said.
“My students chose their own quizzes, but
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PREPNOW MAGAZINE. IMPROVING TEACHING FOR NURSING INSTRUCTORS 16
akthrough
st-getting-by-itis
I reminded them that if they always chose
topics they knew, it would hurt them in the
end. I encouraged them to let PrepU quiz them
randomly on all topics.”
PrepU also solved the problem of
cheating. “With PrepU, I was instantly able
to see exactly what each student had been
doing, and there was no opportunity for
cheating,” Rebecca said. “Some students
used to think they could ‘get by’ in my class.
Not anymore!”
If Rebecca saw that a student had
a low mastery level, she check how many
PrepU questions the student had answered.
“Usually,” she said, “the student hadn’t been
doing as many as he should have.”
Student feedback about PrepU was
overwhelmingly positive. In fact, Rebecca
said she received no negative feedback at
all. “My students noticed that their questions
got harder as they progressed through the
course,” she said. “They liked the fact that the
“I was instantly able
to see exactly what
each student had
been doing.”
adaptive nature of PrepU simulated the NCLEX
exam.”
In the future, Rebecca plans to
increase the required PrepU mastery level
from 5 to 5.5 and to have students answer
more questions each week. “Students really
love it that PrepU can tell them what they do
and don’t know—the data are right in front
of them,” she said. “It gets rid of any denial
students may have, which is really important
as they prepare for the NCLEX.”
Rebecca Cox-Davenport
Lander University, South Carolina
17 REFINING STUDENT ATTITUDES TOWARD NURSING
Teaching a love
for nursing
Instilling a compassionate attitude into the minds of nursing students
by reprogramming perspective at the course level.
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A
PREPNOW MAGAZINE. IMPROVING TEACHING FOR NURSING INSTRUCTORS 18
ssociate Professor Sheryl Cifrino
anticipated that students would
struggle in Conceptual Basis for Nursing
Practice, a new lecture course she was
teaching in the spring semester at Curry
College. The course arose from the Institute
of Medicine’s “Quality Safety Education in
Nursing Initiative,” which was based on the
idea that students need to think more critically
and see patients as full partners in their care.
“Nursing education used to be about
the task,” Sheryl said. “Now it’s about the
partnership with the patient—a much more
integrated approach.”
Sheryl knew her biggest challenge
would be changing the way her students—
sophomores in their first semester of the
nursing program—thought about nursing.
“Students have a hard time getting
away from the idea that learning is about rote
memorization,” she said. “They need to really
think about what they’re learning and not be so
focused on task-oriented nursing.”
She believed PrepU might help,
in part because the system makes use of
Bloom’s Taxonomy, a classification of learning
objectives that comprises three “domains”:
cognitive, affective, and psychomotor. PrepU
helped her focus her quizzes and exams to
achieve her target mix of questions: 20 percent
knowledge, 30 percent comprehension, and 50
percent application.
“Doing the quizzes really helped my
students train their minds to reason and think
more,” she said. “And that’s a big part of
preparing for the NCLEX—learning to read the
“Nursing
education used to
be about the task, now
it’s about the partnership
with the patient.”
questions the right way and being able to think
about what is being asked.”
PrepU also helped Sheryl’s students
focus their studies by making them aware of
their weaknesses. “I don’t always know off the
top of my head where to send a student who
is struggling with a particular concept,” she
said, “but PrepU does. The system tells them
specifically where to remediate. They can
challenge themselves to do better, and they
can do so privately.”
Sheryl’s analysis of final grades showed
that every student who answered at least 200
questions and achieved a mastery level of 3 or
higher earned at least a B+ in the class. “Using
PrepU was a guarantee that students could
pass this class,” she said. “And you could tell
who was using PrepU just by looking at the
grades.”
In the future, she plans to make PrepU
a more integral part of the course. “PrepU is
a great tool,” she said. “It’s user-friendly and
doesn’t take much time or effort to learn.”
Sheryl Cifrino, DNP RN, MA
is an Associate Professor at
Curry College (Milton MA)
19 PREPPING FOR THE NCLEX & COURSE EXAMS IN THE REAL WORLD
In the
RealWorld
Debra Benbow
Cecily Chamber-Mintz
Brant Vanhoy
PrepNow Magazine wanted to gain a complete understanding of how PrepU is
helping students, so we sat down with Assistant Professor of Nursing, Debra
Benbow of Winston-Salem State University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina and
two of her students, Cecily Chambers-Mintz and Brant Vanhoy.
PN: Thanks for sitting down with us today and
discussing the value of PrepU in your pursuit of a
nursing education. Cecily, let’s start with you. Will
you tell us a little about yourself?
but I am very competitive and like to do well in my
classes.
Sure. I am a nursing student here at WinstonSalem. I am also enlisted and the time
required of me for my military service takes up a
lot of my time as well. I am also married and have
a lot of responsibilities at home and to my friends.
Sometimes it seems like there is just too much going
on.
The Wolters Kluwer Representative came into
our classroom and showed it to us. I could
immediately see that PrepU was going to help me in
the course. I was excited to begin using it.
PN: You’re not alone, I think a lot of students feel
the same way you feel. We’ll get back to that in a
minute, but first I want to hear a little of Brant’s story.
Sure. Other than not being in the military, my
situation is very similar to Cecily’s. I’m a fulltime student working in emergency services. I also
have a family and other interests to pursue outside
of school. I’m not the picture of the perfect student,
PN: What was your first experience with PrepU like?
We were shown PrepU after we had taken our
first quiz and I hadn’t done well at all. Because
I am such a competitive person it bothered me that
I didn’t do well and to know that so many others had
done better.
When I saw PrepU, I was a little skeptical,
but I thought, if this is the thing that is going to get my
grade up and put me at the top of my class, I’m going
to give it a shot.
PN: So, after the representative left, what
happened?
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PREPNOW MAGAZINE. IMPROVING TEACHING FOR NURSING INSTRUCTORS 20
I told my students that PrepU was optional,
but that I strongly recommended that they
give it a try. I did not assign points to it, so I didn’t
feel I could require it of my students.
PN: I’m assuming that the two of you took
advantage and began using it, is that correct?
I did and I discovered right away that it
helped. Although my first quiz was not
considered passing, the second quiz I took over
the same content, resulted in one of the highest
grades in the class and they remained that way for
the rest of the course.
I did as well. I have major test anxiety and I
didn’t do well on the first quiz as well. I study
a lot for my classes, but sometimes the anxiety
gets the best of me and I end up not
doing well on a test or exam when I
really did know the stuff I was studying.
With PrepU, I was able to feel more
confident going into a test. Although
I still have some of the anxiety, it’s
manageable now and I have done well
in the classes that have used PrepU.
I like that when I used PrepU, I was able
to quiz myself on the material and find out
where I was strong and where I needed to step
it up a little. I could take a test and not get just
a score, but get a full rationale for why a certain
answer to each question was right and why the
others were wrong. I also liked that if I wanted to
study more about any topic, the rationales would
tell me where in my book I could go to learn more.
I agree with Brant. In fact, we were all
sitting around in class talking to Ms. Benbow
about why we like PrepU so much and the phrase,
“PrepU keeps us on point”, came out of my mouth.
Everyone in the class started laughing, because
it was exactly what everyone was thinking.
Someone in the class said, “You should suggest
that to Wolters Kluwer as a tag line.” We all agreed,
though, it just helped us know where we needed to
focus our studying, so we didn’t spend so much time
studying things that we didn’t need to be studying. It
probably saved me 3 to 4 hours of study time each
week.
PN: Ms. Benbow, what are your thoughts?
I share my students excitement about PrepU. As
I said, earlier, I didn’t require that they use it. I just
made it available to them and told them if they wanted to
use it they could. It was another resource for them and I
recommended that they give it a try.
94% of them did use it. Some more than others,
but almost everyone participated. Those who did,
averaged 15 to 20 points higher on course exams than
those who didn’t take advantage of the opportunity.
In Psychiatric Nursing, students seem to
struggle most commonly with three content
areas on ATI. I looked specifically at student
performance in those areas. I found that
the students who used PrepU outperformed
my past seven cohorts in those areas.
They scored significantly higher on the
ATI exam in areas of pharmacology, safety
and infection control and reduction of risk
potential. There was no textbook change, or change
in the way the ATI exam was administered. Faculty
remained the same. The only thing that changed was
that we added PrepU to the course.
I believe you have to keep your classroom fresh
and exciting. Any time you can get students excited
about an educational tool, then you are ahead of the
game. I have never seen such positive chatter among
my students. They are always looking for that edge;
the one thing that is going to help them do better in the
course without spending as much time studying. My
response to them is simple, ‘Read the text, review with
ATI text and then go to PrepU to test yourself on the
content you’ve studied.
Our sincere thanks to Debra, Cecily and Brant!
“Those who participated, averaged 15 to 20 points
higher in the course than those who didn’t”
There’s
a PrepU
for that!
PrepU is an
unmatched learning
resource in helping
nursing students learn
and understand their
subject better and
more efficiently which
is why we include it
with our leading
Nursing systems
shown here.
Want to improve
student performance?
Get PrepU today.
Contact your PrepU
representative today
or visit us online at
THEPOINT.LWW.COM/PREPU
Assessment
PrepU for Jensen, Nursing Health Assessment: A Best Practice Approach (Available now)
PrepU for Weber, Health Assessment in Nursing, 4e (Available now!
Drug Therapy
PrepU for Aschenbrenner’s Drug Therapy in Nursing, 4e
(Coming soon, class testing opportunities available!)
PrepU for Abrams’s Clinical Drug Therapy, 9e (Coming soonClass testing opportunities available!)
Fundamentals
PrepU for Timby, Fundamental Nursing Skills and Concepts,
10e (Available now!)
PrepU for Craven, Fundamentals of Nursing: Human Health
and Function, 7e(Available now!)
PrepU for Taylor’s Fundamentals of Nursing, 7e (Available
now!)
LPN-Intro to Nursing
Textbook of Basic Nursing, 10e
Maternity-Child Health Nursing
PrepU for Ricci’s Essentials of Maternity, Newborn, &
Women’s Health Nursing, 3e (Coming Soon-Class testing
opportunities available!)
PrepU for Ricci & Kyle’s Maternity and Pediatric Nursing, 2e
(Coming Soon-Class testing opportunities available!)
PrepU for Klossner’s Introductory Maternity & Pediatric Nursing, 2e (Coming Soon-Class testing opportunities available!)
PrepU for Pillitteri’s Maternal and Child Health Nursing, 6e
(Coming Soon-Class testing opportunities available!)
Medical-Surgical Nursing
PrepU for Pellico, Focus on Adult Health (Available Now!)
PrepU for Smeltzer, Brunner & Suddarth’s Textbook of
Medical-Surgical Nursing, 12e (Available now!)
PrepU for Timby, Introductory Medical-Surgical Nursing, 10e
(Available now!)
PrepU for Bates’ Nursing Guide to Physical Examination and
History Taking
NCLEX-PN/RN
NCLEX-PN 5,000 (Available now!)
NCLEX-RN 10,000 (Available now!)
Pediatric Nursing
PrepU for Kyle, Essentials of Pediatric Nursing, 2e (Coming
Soon-Class testing opportunities available!)
PrepU for Bowden’s Children and Their Families, 2e (Coming
Soon-Class testing opportunities available!)
Pharmacology
PrepU for Ford/Roach, Introductory Clinical Pharmacology, 8e
PrepU for Karch’s Focus on Nursing Pharmacology, 6e (Coming Soon-Class testing Opportunities available)
Psychiatric Mental-Health Nursing
PrepU for Boyd’s Psychiatric Nursing, 5e (Coming Soon-Class
testing opportunities available!)
PrepU for Mohr’s Psychiatric-Mental Health Nursing, 8e
(Coming Soon-Class testing opportunities available!)
PrepU for Videbeck’s Psychiatric-Mental Health Nursing, 5e
(Coming Soon-Class testing opportunities available!)
PrepU for Shives’s Basic Concepts of Psychiatric-Mental
Health Nursing, 8e (Coming Soon-Class testing opportunities
available!)
Focus is essential
to success in
Nursing.
(and Nursing Education too)
Cutting through the sheer volume of information can be
the difference between successful nursing instruction and
having struggling students.
Focus on Adult Health is a fresh approach to instruction
incorporating Wolters Kluwer Health’s industry leading
content with PrepU’s adaptive online quizzing to increase
student focus and retention of subject matter.
The Focus on Adult Health system helps you teach your
nursing students more effectively!
• Instant feedback also provides you with realtime status
reports of your students’ progress allowing you to customize
your lectures & instruction on-the-fly
• Adaptive quizzing allows students to self-evaluate and
FOCUS on subjects they need more learning in, increasing
retention.
• PrepU’s integration into the text content allows you seamless instruction and immediate evaluation.
Get your students focused! Get Focus on Adult Health with PrepU today!
Contact your Wolters Kluwer Health
Representative today.
IT’S POSSIBLE WITH PREPU
During the spring 2011 semester at St. Charles County Community College, Professor of Nursing
Marilyn Miller was concerned that up to a thirds of her students weren’t going to pass. Partway
through the semester, Marilyn was offered the chance to test PrepU in her class. With only five
weeks to go, her students gave it a try, including those most in danger of failing the course. “I
had students who were barely making it through the class,” she said. In the end, all of Marilyn’s
students who used PrepU passed not only the preceptorship but also the NCLEX that summer.
GET STARTED TODAY!
Contact your Wolters Kluwer Health representative
or learn more at
thepoint.lww.com/prepu