Level UP Elevate - Nursing Education Webinar Series: Replace Your Pharmacology PowerPoint - January 2026 [FULL VIDEO]

Cathy Parkes: Hello, everyone. I'm Cathy, and welcome to our Level Up Elevate series. We're going to give everybody a couple minutes to join and log in before we get started. And we have a chat going too. So if you want to share where you're from, what you teach, it'd be great to hear from you all. So we'll just give it a couple minutes here for everybody to kind of get settled in and log in. And thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule to join us today. We super appreciate it. So we're really excited to have everybody here. Varied courses from Rhonda. That's the life of a nursing instructor, isn't it?

Donna Meyer: And we have a brand-new instructor from Nash Community College in North Carolina.

Cathy Parkes: Oh, welcome.

Donna Meyer: Thanks. Welcome. Florida. Let's see. Union, Missouri. So I know where Union is because I grew up in St. Louis. So I very much know where Union, Missouri is.

Cathy Parkes: Nice.

Donna Meyer: Is it? And yeah.

Cathy Parkes: Welcome, everyone. We're just waiting for everybody to get logged in. So if you want to share where you're from, what you teach in the chat, we'd love to hear from you. And then in a couple minutes, we'll get started with everything. Colorado Med Surg and Mental Health, which are some of my favorite topics to teach for sure. Howard Community College in Columbia. Welcome, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us. Pennsylvania. Outcomes specialist at College of the Desert. Pharmacology, Gerontology. Welcome, everyone. We're just going to give it a couple minutes before we get started. So, so glad you could join us today. Thank you for taking time out of your schedule. And Diana, Kendra, welcome, everyone. Lots of diversity in terms of what people are teaching and where they're from, so it's really exciting to have so many participants from different areas and different specialties. Maybe give it one more minute, you would think? Get everybody logged in?

Donna Meyer: Yeah, I think so. Yeah.

Cathy Parkes: Okay. Then we'll get started. I'm Cathy, by the way. This is the Level Up Elevate series, just so you know you're in the right place. We're just going to give everybody a few minutes to log in. But if you want to share in the chat where you're from, what you teach, that would be great if you haven't already done so.

Heather Breaux: Nobody's there. Let me forward it to you.

Cathy Parkes: Hope everybody's staying warm if you're from a--

Donna Meyer: Yeah. Most of the country is cold.

Cathy Parkes: Most of the country, yeah, for sure. I'm headed to Virginia this Saturday, which is supposed to be pretty snowy and cold. So going to get bundled up. All right. You think it's okay to get started, Donna?

Donna Meyer: I do. I do.

Cathy Parkes: All right. Awesome. Welcome, everyone. My name is Cathy Parkes, and I am the founder and chief educator here at Level Up RN. And this is our first webinar as part of our Level Up Elevate series. And we're so happy to have you guys join today and take time out of your busy schedule. So thank you so much. So we have an amazing group of nursing educators here today who are excited to share how they use our resources in the classroom. But before I turn things over to my team and our featured educators, I want to take a moment to share my experience as a nursing student and talk about the origin of our company, Level Up RN. So I went to school back in 2013, nursing school, as a second-degree student. My first degree was in engineering, and I spent about seven years in the field as an IT manager. And when I made the decision to go back to school to become a nurse, I mistakenly thought to myself, "Well, how hard can it be?" Because I went to engineering school. And as you can imagine, I quickly found out that it can be really, really hard. Nursing school is hard. Pre-recs are hard.

Cathy Parkes: And I think the thing that makes nursing school so hard is really the volume of information that students have to learn in a very short amount of time. But as a second-degree student and as an older student, I had a pretty strong work ethic, and I was pretty disciplined. So I hunkered down, and I spent a lot of time studying, and I made my flashcards. So flashcards were my secret weapon in nursing school, and I took them everywhere with me, to the kid pickup line, on walks, etc. And they helped me immensely and really helped me be successful in nursing school. Well, in my cohort and in a lot of cohorts, is my understanding, we had to pass a comprehensive predictor exam in order to graduate. And you get three tries to pass this exam. And after the first try, half of my cohort failed. And after the second try, still a quarter of my cohort failed the exam. And these were my friends and classmates, so I decided to help them. I started holding study sessions for several hours, several times a week at coffee shops to kind of help them learn the material and share my silly ways of remembering things.

Cathy Parkes: And the good news is, is in the end, they all passed the third time, and we all graduated together, which was awesome. Well, my nursing instructors were definitely paying attention to this, and they started sending other nursing cohorts my way from Cal State San Marcos. And so for a short period of time, I had study sessions for 30, 40 people in my family room in my home, which got to be a little much after a while. I had kids. My husband was trying to work out of home, and there were cars blocking the whole street far down the road. So my husband and I decided, "Okay, we got to not do this." So instead, I decided I would film my study sessions and then post them online for students from Cal State San Marcos to watch. So I did that. I filmed myself. I decided to post them on YouTube because that was super easy. And before I knew it, it wasn't just Cal State San Marcos students watching the videos. It was people all over the world. And it didn't take long before I figured out that my videos were helping people immensely. They were making a meaningful difference in their lives and really helping them through school. And that's when I knew that that was my mission in life. That was my purpose, was nursing education. So I really leaned in and doubled down on that.

Cathy Parkes: So shortly after I first started releasing videos, I decided students really need flashcards. Flashcards are so important when you have that volume of information you have to learn. So I created our pharmacology flashcards, and shortly thereafter, we released flashcards for all the other nursing subjects. So fast forward to today, we have thousands of videos on every imaginable nursing topic there is. We have our flashcards, which are the best-selling nursing flashcards on the market. And then we also have Flashables, which is an awesome platform that pairs our digital flashcards with our videos so students can see and hear the information explained together, which is a really powerful combination. Our Flashables program also has NCLEX, NGN-style questions as well as other resources. So it's pretty awesome. So a lot has changed since I started holding study sessions for my classmates back at Cal State San Marcos. Our company has grown and our resources have evolved. But what hasn't changed is our commitment to the nursing education community. So it's been an honor and pleasure to help both nursing students as well as nursing educators. And with that being said, I'm going to pass it over to Donna Meyer, who is going to share information about our Level Up Elevate series. So I'll hand it over to Donna.

Donna Meyer: All right. Thanks so much, Cathy. And I've heard Cathy's story before, but I really encouraged her to say it again to start this series that we're having because I think it's an inspiring story. And I think as nurse educators, we can relate to a lot of things that she has said that we heard from our students that we have taught. So I just want to, again, welcome everyone as we will launch this new interactive educational series. My name is Donna Meyer, and I currently serve as a nursing education advisor for Level Up RN. I did spend 32 years in associate degree nursing education, faculty, director of nursing, dean of health sciences, like many of you can relate to. Through those experiences, though, I did gain a lot of understanding of both the opportunities and our challenges that are inherent in nursing education. Following my academic career, I had the privilege of being the inaugural Chief Executive Officer for the Organization for Associate Degree Nursing. And that is where I met nursing educators from across this country. And what I observed consistently with nurse educators is that they're very dedicated, they're resilient, and they have a passion to bring to their work and particularly help students be successful.

Donna Meyer: This series was created in that same spirit, to support educators, share best practices, and foster meaningful dialogue. Level Up RN shares the same commitment to supporting educators and students. The Level Up RN team and our special guest of nurse educators are excited to begin this interactive series designed to bring together a vibrant community of educators who are passionate. This series is all about connection, conversation, practical strategies you can use right away when you leave the webinar in your classrooms, in your lab, in your clinical settings. And it also can be helpful for remediation and retention of your students. Each month, we are going to spotlight two timely learning strategies through a brief 20 to 25-minute presentation, followed by open discussion, idea sharing, and insights from all of you. This is meant to be a very interactive space where we learn from one another and that we can talk about some of the issues we're facing. Whether you're looking for some fresh learning ideas, ways to streamline your teaching, or simply a space to connect, this is your place.

Donna Meyer: Throughout this series, we're going to explore topics such as reducing faculty prep time, which I know we're always interested in, moving beyond PowerPoint, and using your Flashables for your PowerPoint, keeping everything in one place, easy to access, rethinking how we teach because students, as we know, learn differently today. They don't read their books. They need other ways to learn. Quick content refreshers renew for faculty. So if all of a sudden you walk in one day and the director or dean says, "We really need to teach you mental health," and you're like, "Oh, the last time I had mental health was when I was a student," this is another way for you to be-- they can help you, all of these resources. We're also going to talk about some of the real-life student challenges that we have. So with that, I want to thank you for being here. I want to make sure that you have a great experience. And I'm going to now hand it off to Kelley. Kelley Larson, who is one of our other nurse educators, is going to give you a short Level Up RN tour to see all of the resources that are available to you. So Kelley, take it away.

Kelley Larson: Thank you, Donna. Appreciate that, Donna. As Donna mentioned, my name is Kelley Larson. I am a nurse and a nurse educator. I've worked in all areas of education, from curriculum, taught all the classes. And really, my passion is helping new faculty learn the art of truly effective teaching. And so I'm super excited to be working with Level Up. And as Donna and I and the team were getting prepared to start this webinar, one of the things that we thought would be really helpful is to start from the very beginning, "How do we navigate through the platform?" So I'm going to share some information on the screen in a second, but I did want to point out that in the bottom part of your screen, you'll see-- really on the right-hand side, there's a tab that says Resources. If you're new to Level Up and you're working on getting an account, I would check out that Resource section because there's some more information there. So I just wanted to highlight that for the group.

Kelley Larson: All right. So if you are brand new to Level Up, there's some information in there to get an account started. You may also have already started an account. So if you're at that very beginning of that process, a couple of things I just wanted to point out. You might want to search your email for something from Support at Level Up RN, and you might have received an email. So if you've received that email, then you want to go ahead and find that and click on that purple Activate Account button. Once you've done that, it's going to redirect you to the login screen. And so you'll want to go ahead and click on the purple box if you are just getting started. It will prompt you for some login information. So we'll go ahead and put in your credentials and password. If you don't have an account, you'll notice at the bottom of the screen, there is a Create an Account button. So that's a different way to be able to go about doing that. So once you've logged into Flashables, what you'll see is this is what we call the Dashboard screen or the Home screen. At the top, there's a couple different buttons that I just want to point out that are helpful for navigation.

Kelley Larson: So if you ever wanted to get back to this screen, you'll go ahead and click on the Dashboard button. It will bring you back to this Home screen. If you're searching for a subject, you can do that by Subjects, and I'll show you a couple different ways, but just wanted to point out that's another toggle button at the top that you can activate. Or if you've saved content, there's another place here to click on it that will bring you directly to that. And I'll talk through how to do some of those steps. So to get started with Flashables, I really start-- for myself, I like to start with the subject that I'm focusing on. So I can do that by clicking on that button at the top that says Subjects. It will open up a menu. That is one way, but there's also a second way. So let's say you are looking for some material because you're working with students and you just need to search for it.

Kelley Larson: There is also a search box that you can put in the topic information. Or if you continue to scroll down on the screen, you'll see there is also a list. So three different ways to search for the topic. So I'm going to start up at the Subjects area. So I would click on that button, it will open up this screen, and then I would go ahead and click on Med Surg. We're going to start there. When I click on that Med Surg button, what it's going to do is it's going to open up a stack of cards. So there's a series of flashcards and videos that are coinciding together. In this stack, what you'll see is that there are 393 cards. That's a lot of cards, right? And there's also a series of 156 NCLEX-style questions that students can use to practice or verify their content knowledge. Now, from here, you may want to kind of streamline that search down a little bit. So I just wanted to highlight that as you scroll down in the screen, what you'll see is there's a place as you scroll down where you'll be able to see all the cards in the stack. So if there's specific topics that you want to be able to focus on, you'll be able to see that full list.

Kelley Larson: And then you can save specific cards. So by clicking on that Heart button next to the card, that will add it to your saved cards. So you'll see here, I had Hearted a couple items because I want to work with my students on the fundamentals of the respiratory system, making sure they understand oxygenation, and then I would dive into doing some teaching on chest tubes. So I could save those cards, and they'll show up in my saved content. And just remember, at the top, there's those toggle bars. To get right there, I can click on my saved content, and it will open that right up for me. So as I'm getting prepared to teach, just to kind of show you around, within that Med Surg stack, I wanted to focus more on the respiratory system. So you'll see within here that there are 36 cards associated to the content that I want to talk about with my students in review, and there's 22 questions available. When I click into the individual cards, what you'll see is that both the video and the card display together.

Kelley Larson: And there's a couple of really cool features that I think are super helpful for students. So you'll notice at the bottom of the screen, there's a scoring system. This is an opportunity for the students to self-evaluate and say, "I feel really comfortable with this material, I'm not quite comfortable, or I don't know it at all." And that's helpful in teaching our students to kind of level set or really self-identify, "What do you know and what do you need to know?" So they can rate themselves before they flip over the card, and they can have the card present while the video is playing. So when you press on the button to flip over the card, what you'll see is the information and the key points are really highlighted there for the student, okay? So if you can imagine then, our students will have gone through the flashcards, reviewed the information, and then they can come back and quiz themselves with NCLEX-style questions to confirm their understanding.

Kelley Larson: Now, within here, you'll also see that there's questions that would be associated with all Med Surg content, or because I was focused specifically on the respiratory issues, you'll see that there are specific questions that are associated with that more focused content. A couple of different ways to access that. I also wanted to just share or highlight that gamification is important in engaging our learners. So as they're working through the cards and they're self-identifying their knowledge level, but also their consistency and use, you'll see that represented here on the screen. And I think that's really helpful because our whole point, the whole point of any type of tool, is to get the students to use it consistently so their progress can be tracked and mapped here. Now, if you're a part of the Unified program, you'll see just a little bit different stuff on the screen. So in that right-hand corner, I would click into my classes. I can also access that information at the top right under My School.

Kelley Larson: So if I click into that, what you'll see is it's just a little bit more streamlined view. The classes are mapped to the course syllabus, and the information is laid out within units. So just a little bit different view depending on how your school is participating with Level Up or how you're using it as an educator. And so with that, it brings us back to the dashboard. I want to take a pause there and see if there are any questions we can answer at this point. Any questions from the group or in the chat? All right. So with that, I really want us to be able to have some time to jump into our next thing. So I get the pleasure of introducing Mrs. Heather Breaux from Lamar State College out of Texas. And she'll be sharing some ways on how she's using Level Up RN in the classroom.

Heather Breaux: Well, thank you so much. Like Kelley said, my name is Heather Breaux. I am the chair of the Allied Health Department at Lamar State College Port Arthur. I, 100%, love Level Up RN. As you can see, we use the dosage calculation book as one of our resources. And if you couldn't see my book, it is earmarked with 100 little tabs because we use it often. So for us, our students are required to take a dosage test each semester. Probably like every other program in the country, they are required to make a certain score. And because of that, patient safety is number one. And if you do not understand dosage, you are not being safe with patients. So we require our students to use Level Up. And the beauty of why we chose Level Up RN is you have dosage calculations for dimensional analysis. They also have ratio and proportion. They have formula-based methods. And we do not require our students one type of way to learn. That's the beauty of it because students do not all understand dimensional analysis. That's how my mind thinks. But other students, their mind is ratio and proportion.

Heather Breaux: The fact that they can have the book and then follow along with the videos, it helps supplement my faculty. Even my faculty have had to use it because you have newer faculty who's been out of school for years and years, and they're like, "Oh, I don't remember how to do that." And it's broken down in steps. So in our first semester, we have those basic math problems. But then it goes-- over the three semesters that we have, they then have ICU problems. So we love it because of that. So it's been able to scaffold throughout our programs. And that's the beauty of the book, the program, the videos. And it's very simple. As we've learned, students are not the same as when I went to nursing school. They want something a couple of minutes, and then we're done. That's why we also like it. The videos are not long. The students also do not like cartoons, so they see a real person. So that's another thing that we like about it because it's not a cartoon. They're like, "We're adults. I do not want to sit and watch a cartoon try to teach me math. I want a real person to teach me math."

Heather Breaux: And that's what Cathy does. She's a real person teaching math. I think that the fact that we use it, it helps with their anxiety. They have a lot of practice problems. And so my faculty and I are not trying to create practice problems. And these are real-world practice problems that they're like coming in and saying, "No, this is really a good problem, not us making up something, and we're never going to give somebody 500 tablets." So we know that when we go there, it's going to be real life. So I think that's kind of why we have adopted, for our program, Level Up RN, especially the math dosage calculation. So our students purchase the book, as well as we are Unified. So they have access to the Flashables. They have access to all the videos. It's simple. It's simple. That's what we like about it. It's a simple resource. Everything's in one place. And we at the college believe that if you give a student too much, then they don't know where to go. And so we gave them Level Up, and it's one place. Everything's in one place. It's simple, and I've said it before, it's real life. You have a real live person that you can relate to, and it's in small doses. So it's a couple minutes. And they can play it over and over and over. So that's what we love about it. I think so.

Kelley Larson: Thank you, Heather, for sharing that. I really appreciate what you've said because dosage calculation is a tricky subject, no matter what type of program you're in, does create so much math anxiety for everyone. So appreciate you sharing your guys' experiences. I wanted to open it up to the group to see if there are any questions. All right. Well, thank you so much, Heather. Appreciate that. Next, I wanted to be able to introduce Miss Jennifer Smith from Harper College in Illinois. So go ahead, Miss Jen. Go ahead.

Jen Smith: Thank you. Thank you, Kelley. Thank you for having me participate in this webinar. I'm really excited about working with Level Up. Just a quick background, I'm from Harper College outside of Chicago. And I was in the director of position for a little while, but realized that my passion is teaching. So when I went back to the classroom, I decided to jump in and embrace the uncomfortable and take pharmacology on as a course to teach, which was definitely not my comfort area initially. But in reviewing the resources, I knew I wanted to shake it up a little bit because we were transitioning from online to in person as we were coming back from more in-person class-- or coming back to more in-person classes. So in reviewing the possible resources to use, I talked to nursing students. And what I liked about Level Up is that this resource really came from the students in terms of recommendations for me to use. I compared it to other resources that I had seen from publishers, and I felt that the flashcards from the publishers were a little heavy in content.

Jen Smith: And what I liked about the Level Up flashcards and Flashables was that they got to the point quickly for the students and helped them to prioritize information. So if you can bear with me for just a moment while I share my screen. So in reflecting on my own experience in teaching and also in learning, for the certification exams, I felt that flashcards were an effective use to-- an effective method for me to prepare for those exams. And so I know that pharmacology is not a course that students love, and they often are challenged with it. And there is a lot of memorization that has to occur. So I looked at the literature. I thought about my own experience. I also looked at the literature, and there is support for repetitive exposure to the content. So I felt that comfortable in adopting the Flashables cards as our PowerPoint, essentially, for the course. So I included an example of the screen that I put up on the overheads. And I know if your students are like our students at Harper, students have-- I don't want to say an addiction. I'd say a dependence on PowerPoint sides.

Jen Smith: And that's been my experience. A lot of times, they will use PowerPoint slides that we put together instead of the book. And so I felt like creating PowerPoint slides would be a duplicative effort. And we're all looking to be efficient in all the time that we spend in teaching. So I chose to use the PowerPoint-- I'm sorry, the Flashables as my PowerPoint. I've come to learn after a few semesters now, too, I need to make that analogy for students on the first day because they are so tied to PowerPoint. And so I tell them the Flashables are the PowerPoint, and it's like an electronic health record. When there's an update, it's a live system, so things can be updated immediately. So that is also another way to reinforce the digital access that they have to the Flashables on a regular basis. So I give them a prescription. Each day, they are to memorize three to five flashcards as a weekly assignment. Then I tell them often that they're snowballs rolling down a hill and accumulating knowledge. And so my hope is that they build-- and that recommendation came from students who were successful in my course.

Jen Smith: The students who achieved A's in the first few exams, I asked them what they did, and that was essentially how they tackled it. They memorized three to five flashcards a day, and then they would go back and revisit those three the next day and then memorize three more. So that is what I tell them is a prescription for success. I also liked how Flashables narrow in on the nursing considerations and patient teaching. As I remind the students, we're not here to be pharmacists. We are nurses. And so what we need to think about is what assessments are needed prior to and after giving a medication, what teaching is important, also information related to side effects and compliance with our patients. So we use the Flashables in about the first 20 to 30 minutes going through in class each hour. We'll use that going through the new content, and then we'll do an activity applying that knowledge in the next 20 or 30 minutes. So I find that it's been a very effective way to help students narrow down a lot of the noise that they may get in textbooks. I will say, too, because I have a need to prove everything in evidence, we are an ATI school.

Jen Smith: So in the first time that I ran the course, I used ATI Pharmacology Made Easy, in addition to the Flashables, and then the next time I ran it, I did just the Flashables because the students had said that there was just too much content, and they were having a hard time narrowing things down. With that, I compared results and found that the test scores were consistent, if not improved, with using simply the Flashables and abandoning the ATI piece. And so if anybody's loving ATI, I'm not knocking ATI, but I felt that narrowing their student focus really helped, much like what Heather said. And that if they have too much information, they have a hard time navigating what is important. So Flashables help them narrow that focus. I've also since brought in more dosage calculation into the course. As somebody who teaches on Mondays and Tuesdays, I lose a day of class each semester due to holidays or other reasons. And so the students have expectations that they will do dosage calculation online. While we might not meet in person, they'll still be responsible for that content. And that's self-directed, mostly because in my classroom for pharmacology, I have both practical nursing students and registered nursing students.

Jen Smith: And all of the students come to us at different levels of experience and different levels of comfort related to dosage calculation, different exposures to what components are part of a prescription, etc. So I give them modules that I expect them to complete, but then I also encourage them to do some background if they feel like there's a gap in knowledge or experience that they have so that they will use more of the content within the dosage calculation online course so that they can get up to speed and be at the same place, essentially, with their peers as we continue on throughout the rest of the semester. I will say too, the videos that Cathy has prepared, I put them in-- we use Blackboard as our learning management system, and I have put links to the videos, the Level Up RN videos, underneath each content area. And I was told last semester by some of my stronger students that they would listen to the videos while they were driving. So I find that, again, the repetitive exposure is what I encourage students to use, and they are finding additional ways to use the products through Level Up. And I have been very happy with their success. And also, it's increased my comfort level, quite frankly, in teaching a topic that I originally was a little nervous about, but I've now come to love.

Donna Meyer: Thank you so much, Jen. And Heather, both of you. That was great. I don't really see any particular questions in the chat right now to Jen or Heather, but certainly willing-- if somebody wants to raise their hand, ask questions, or put something else in the chat, whatever, we're here to help you out if you have any questions at this point. I'll give it a few minutes while we're-- okay. So there was a question, "Can we share these resources with our students?" So first of all, I want to emphasize the link that is available, this particular link, you, all faculty at your school, any educator can use these resources complementary, okay? And if you want your entire student body to get involved in it, then we would need to have a discussion about that and how we can use this. But right now, Level Up RN's commitment is to nurse educators.

Donna Meyer: And so you can use that link, and you can get access, and you can use them, and that type of thing. When students are engaged with the program, we have some additional resources that can help the students in the school. And I know Angelina put in a email educators at Level Up. I put mine in there. I oversee somewhat working with the faculty and the schools about getting them set up in what Heather mentioned was the Unified program. But again, that link that is in the resource page, you can give it to your faculty member if you like, other faculty that-- and you can start using all of these resources tomorrow. There's a question. Cathy, did you want to mention that? There's one about community health as far as the resources. Yeah. You just answered in the chat. Okay.

Cathy Parkes: Yeah. No, there was a couple questions. I think there was one question for Heather. Someone was asking if Heather's program saw an improvement in pass rates or scores for their dosage calculation exams after implementing Level Up RN.

Heather Breaux: So the answer is yes. That's why we were like, "Oh, we have to make this to all of our programs that have math." It's because we did see an improvement in their first-time pass rates. Not only do we use it for dosage calculations, we use the entire program. And so we use the Flashables across our program. And so what we do is we use a HESI exam. And what we saw was there was an improvement in them when they took the fundamentals based off when they took the exit. So we use it for everything. But yes, to answer your question, we did see a first-time pass rate of our-- we have a goal for level one, which is the first semester, for them to make a-- they have to make a 90%. And so the number of students who had to repeat went down. So then over the three semesters, the last semester, they had to make 100% in order-- and we had 100% pass rate for that. So it does work.

Cathy Parkes: Awesome. There was a question from Laurie here too, and she was wondering if you have any resources for faculty, teaching, population, or community health. We're trying to move away from ATI and finding additional resources for learning. So yes, we cover community health topics as part of our Fundamentals of Nursing deck. So our Fundamentals of Nursing deck has several sections, and community health nursing is one of the sections. And we go over the core information needed for that topic. And then for Jen, there's a question. How do you get the students engaged with the flashcards and studying the three cards a week? Is there a grade/assignment? We use ATI, and it is so much information and time for the students on Pharm Made Easy.

Jen Smith: Yes. So it's actually three to five a day. And I do write it in the Blackboard site as a prescription. Like, "Take three to five cards per day, daily, and then repeat as necessary," just so that they're also familiar with how prescriptions are written. We just did cardiovascular, and that's about 42 cards. So that would be something that they would do daily. And that, again, is that repetitive exposure. I will highlight which cards are most popular, like for instance, beta-blockers, for instance. And I'll highlight which cards they would want to start with and perhaps maybe some of the other cards that wouldn't be seen as frequently in clinical settings. But I do encourage them to do the three to five cards per day. And I'm not prescriptive about buying the hard-copy cards.

Jen Smith: Because of limited resources, sometimes students choose to make their own cards, and I respect that. But I do find that many of the students will buy the hard-copy cards and they bring them to class. And then when we do activities like carousels in the classroom or other things like that, they will carry the cards around them so they can answer the questions at the different stations or in small group settings. So that reinforces a little bit more, again, the exposure to the cards. And I see them write. They take notes on the cards as well. So they find ways to pull the cards into their daily life. And also, I tell them, "If you have children, if you're waiting for a soccer pickup, take 10 cards with you and just rifle through those. Or if you're going to the grocery store, put five in your car, in your bag, and while you're waiting in line, just go through those." I just try to give them ways that they can incorporate pharmacology into every day.

Cathy Parkes: Right. And those little pockets of time, those 5 minutes while you're waiting at the pickup line or going here, they add up, or those 10 minutes between classes. And research shows that if you study for smaller blocks of time over multiple days, that's way more effective than huge marathon studying sessions. So flashcards are kind of like purpose-built to help people learn in the most effective way possible.

Jen Smith: I completely agree.

Heather Breaux: I will say one way that we got-- and I know everyone's like, "Well, is it expensive?" We got a grant. We put it in a grant. And that was a way that-- one simple way to say, "Hey, this is a retention method," because retention is a big thing. So what we did was, "Hey, let's see where we can put this in a grant and get something that's going to retain our students."

Jen Smith: I also like the dosage-- just to build on what Heather was saying, I like how dosage allows students to come into the program where they are. Some of them are comfortable and can do it quite quickly. Others takes a little longer, and they need to put a little more effort into it. Ooh, I'm so sorry. I timed myself so I would pace myself, and it keeps going off. But I really like how Dosage Calc can help-- it meets the student where they are so that they don't feel like-- it can be student-centered, and they don't feel like they have to invest a lot of time in things that they already have mastered and move on to other kinds of--

Donna Meyer: I know there's been some questions and comments in the chat, just so those of you that might not be familiar about mapping the resources. And so what that means, if you are part of the Unified program, we actually, like Heather and Jen, send their syllabus, their course content, whatever you all call it at your school. And Level Up RN's team actually maps the resources to your course content. And that's where we say it saves faculty time. Faculty love this because they map whether it be the Flashables and also the videos to it. So everything gets mapped to your specific school. And if you're in the Unified program, the school, as Kelley kind of showed earlier, you have your logos there and their syllabi there with what they're supposed to be looking at, and they just click on it. And Kelley, I don't know. Were you going to show an example, I think, maybe?

Kelley Larson: Yeah. Let me go ahead and pull that up just to show what that would look like. I'll just move you guys over here. So for the schools that have their syllabi mapped, remember here at the top, we've got our buttons. So there's a way to go there via My School, or we could just click into the course, and it will be labeled with the correct logo, the name of your school, all of that information. And as Donna mentioned, behind the scenes, what the team does is they actually will take the syllabus and align it to the content that is within the Flashables platform so that that piece of looking for the information, it's all laid out. So for this course, they're covering the Advanced Pharmacology units with the specific information then broken down by the weeks. So if we go into week three or four, you'll see here the resources and the cards are available right there. So if I want to jump into that first card-- so it's that quick to get to the content, and it's really clearly laid out for both the students and the faculty to make that user experience really easy.

Level Up RN Production: Kelley, your production person had a problem and wasn't showing the screen there for a second. Could you go back to the beginning and go over that once again? Yeah.

Kelley Larson: Sure. No problem. Hang tight.

Donna Meyer: Yeah, I could see it. So I didn't realize or I would have said something.

Kelley Larson: No worries. Let me just pull this up again. All right. Is everybody seeing my screen okay?

Donna Meyer: I am.

Cathy Parkes: Yes.

Kelley Larson: Okay. Perfect. So from that dashboard page, you'll see there's the My School button up here in the right-hand corner, or there'll be a label or a tab here to be able to click into. And then as I click into it, you'll see there are three different courses that are listed. So I'm going to focus on this Advanced Pharmacology course to begin with. And you'll see week by week, the content is then mapped out very specifically. So to have my students go to that week one content, I would click on Week One. I've got the resources here, and we can go directly into the cards to get started. So it really directs the students to those resources specific to the content that you're covering within the course.

Donna Meyer: And we're happy to have a one-on-one call with you. A lot of times, what myself or Angelina and I do, well, if you want us to talk to all the faculty or just a couple people initially, and we can explain more and show you more and show you how the syllabus looks, what you have to send us, what we need to get you started. Obviously, I know people are always wanting to know about costs. So we can definitely have a one-on-one and talk to you about it to really individualize it. I think one of the things-- remember, too, I'm an advisor for them. And one of the things that when they said they could do this, I just said, "This would be amazing." Because as a nurse educator, I remember every time we wanted to change something and do some type of new vendor, everybody would just kind of cringe because it was like, "Oh my gosh, there's so much work to do to redo everything." And so what's wonderful about this is Level Up does it for you. And obviously, you still need to look at it, but it does save a lot of time.

Donna Meyer: And it's just so beneficial, not only, obviously, for the faculty, but for the students. So we are more than happy to work with you. I also want to mention, this does not have to be used throughout the entire program. We had two good examples here. Heather said how they're using it throughout the program, where Jen is using just in pharmacology. So just know that it can be individualized. Maybe there's only three courses you want to use it in, Dosage Calc and Pharm and Fundamentals. It can always be individualized for your program. And I think that's another thing. It doesn't have to be. I also wanted to mention when Heather was talking about her data that she's done, we have had other schools that have collected data and compared things.

Donna Meyer: And I can tell you that one school really saw a significance in their ATI scores. Those of you familiar with ATI know that three is the highest predictor that they want to see. And what they saw is that they were able to have more students in level three getting ready for their NCLEX exam. So we definitely are collecting information. We do have a couple of case studies. One's from Heather's school. One's from another program. So we do have some data there that we could also share with you if you wanted something. But again, we're happy to have conversations.

Jen Smith: Can I just jump into, Donna? While my course is the only course that requires Flashables, I have noticed and I've shown the students myself as well how their access to Flashables can help in other classes that they're taking. And so anecdotally, I do want to just share that the students have-- they branch out into other resources that are available through their membership with Level Up RN, and it's helped them in other classes as well.

Donna Meyer: All right. So I'm looking to see. I think we've addressed everything in the chat that's been coming through. I know a couple-- yeah. Anybody have anything else before we somewhat wrap up?

Kelley Larson: I just wanted to say I really appreciate for both Heather and Jen to share their experience. And I can just share from my experience with using Level Up with students and educators that we're in kind of unprecedented times in terms of helping people get educated and learn a really difficult skill. And time is truly one of the most valuable commodities our students have. So giving them really streamlined ways to be effective and also successful in studying, I think, is one thing that I've seen kind of globally across the board of helping our students truly engage in the material and learn the material in a meaningful way. So just wanted to share that.

Donna Meyer: Thank you, Kelley. All right. I don't see anything else, and we are getting close to time. First of all, I want to obviously extend our thanks to our panelists today, Jen and Heather, who have just been real champions. I've worked with them a lot, and they are always willing to-- in fact, any of you that might have been at the OADN Convention, they were actually at the Level Up RN booth telling about their experiences. So we really appreciate all that they have done. And also, we're so pleased that they're having such success with it. It's just proven that. And I also want to thank Cathy Parkes: for being here today and telling her story. I know I love her story, so I always wanted to tell her. And I'm excited to let that we already have the next webinar scheduled just so-- we will be sending something out. But just so you could mark your calendar for the next Elevate series on February 19th at 3:00 PM Eastern, Noon Pacific. And you're going to hear from two amazing Student Outcome specialists.

Donna Meyer: And I know that at least one of them is on the call today from College of the Desert. And they're going to share how they've been helping their students with remediation and also retention of their students through the use of Level Up RN resources. So it's just going to be another way for people to see how you can use the Level Up RN resources to help students be successful, which is what it's really all about. Because we do know, as Cathy said, this is a very challenging program that we all entered in our lives. And things have changed for students, and especially-- they're so busy. And I know a lot of you are from PN programs, and that's maybe a year of content that they really have to get done. Our associate degree programs, of course, again, kind of CRAM content, and baccalaureate programs. This is for all. So we just really want to thank all of you for coming. And feel free to contact us. And again, we want to help you, and we're willing to sit down and have a Zoom meeting with you and explain more to your faculty or whoever, your other colleagues. And so have a really great day. And thanks for joining us because I know this is the beginning of a semester, and it's a busy time. So really appreciate your time today. Well, see ya. Thank you.

Cathy Parkes: Thank you, everyone.