Donna Meyer: So good to see all of you as you join our Elevate series today. We're just going to wait for a few moments because it is just the time for starting, but feel free to introduce yourselves in the chat. It's always fun to see all the individuals from across this country and which nursing program you're with, even what your role is. If you want to introduce yourselves on chat for right now, feel free to as we allow people to start joining our series for this afternoon. And so, the chats are starting, and that is great. I hope some of you are in an area where it's not super hot, because it's been crazy hot this year, so. Oh boy, all over: California, Texas, Indiana, whew, they're coming in fast. New Jersey, Sarasota, Des Moines. I can't [laughter] even keep up with all of them coming in so quick. But this is great. It just makes it much more fun and interactive to see where everyone's coming in. So we're just going to give it one more minute, probably. We'll start about a couple of minutes after the top of the hour. For most of you, it should be afternoon time, even though it's noon Pacific, so it still should be afternoon for almost everyone. So, yeah. So this is great. And I see some names I recognize, so that's always fun too. All right. So we have a large group today and more joining, but I think in the interest of everyone's time, because as nurse educators, I know you're very, very busy, and this is still somewhat the beginning of the semester for many of you. So I would like to welcome you to the Elevate 9 series.
Donna Meyer: We're so excited about the Elevate series that Level Up RN has been putting together, and this time we're going to be talking about NCLEX Success Starts Here: Faculty Strategies That Make a Difference. I'm Donna Meyer, and I am a nursing education advisor for Level Up RN. And with me from Level Up RN today is Kelley Larson, who is the Vice President of Nursing Solutions, and Angelina Guzman, who is the Senior Manager of Learning Success. And all of us work together to help all of you, and we always want to emphasize that if you have questions, feel free. We'll be putting our emails in, but always feel free to reach out to us. We're just really excited to have all of you here. The Elevate series actually started in January, and that's why it is number 9. And we started with this purpose of just trying to create a collaborative space for all of you to learn and discuss things. And one of the things that we've been doing throughout the series is nurse educators who are practicing in programs are our presenters, and so that even makes it much more impactful. I just want to remind everyone of a couple of Zoom housekeeping tips. You can always use the chat for questions, comments, and sharing ideas. So as we're talking about things and our presenters say something, feel free to put a comment in the chat or ask a question. And we do really want to encourage that interaction with all of you, because it really makes it so much fun. So I think we'll go ahead now and move on to the next slide that really talks about our Elevate series, and I will turn this over to Kelley, who's going to talk a little bit about that as well as our agenda for this afternoon. Kelley?
Kelley Larson: Sure. Thank you, Ms. Donna. Welcome, everyone. It's really exciting to see all of you. We are super excited today to present some information we've been, as Donna mentioned, hosting a monthly webinar series really focused on some of the opportunities in nursing education and giving everybody really a chance to learn from each other. So we thank you guys for being here today. In terms of our agenda, we've got a great agenda for today. We're going to be focusing on talking about NCLEX readiness across the curriculum. We'll touch a bit on integrating some learning and retrieval practice specific to how do we really help our students develop clinical judgment.
Kelley Larson: We'll also talk about identifying early at-risk students and strategies that help to support those students who are at risk. And then really talking about how do we create that bridge between graduation and NCLEX success. And then a bit later, we will do a little bit of a demonstration of our clinical judgment builder, something we'll be releasing this fall. So with no further ado, we do want to get you guys involved, and so we're going to go ahead and launch our first poll question.
Donna Meyer: You should be able to see it up on the screen. If you could improve one area of NCLEX preparation in your program, what would it be? And the choices are right there: clinical judgment, knowledge retention, faculty consistency, student remediation, curriculum integration. So if you want to go ahead and click on your answer, it's always fun to see what we come up with with these poll questions to start everybody off. Is everyone able to see the poll?
Kelley Larson: I can see it, Donna. So I [can see?] some answers come in.
Donna Meyer: Okay. Okay.
Kelley Larson: Looks like we've got about 82 % of the folks on the call that have answered, so feel free to get your response in. Perfect. And then I think we can go ahead-- oh, we've got some more responses. We'll give folks [inaudible] time. Sorry. All right. Let's take a look at our results.
Donna Meyer: Kelley, you'll have to do it. I can't see the results, okay?
Kelley Larson: Yeah. No worries.
Donna Meyer: Oh, there they go. Okay. Perfect.
Angelina Guzman: I got you, Donna.
Donna Meyer: Thank you. All right. So clinical judgment, obviously, is pretty much the big winner, and we're going to be talking about that later today again, but 53%. So that is an area that we hear consistently across the board; that students really struggle with that clinical judgment piece. So not surprising. Knowledge retention also, faculty consistency, but really overall you can see by far clinical judgment is definitely the biggest one. So not surprising. Okay. We can move on. Okay. So before I introduce the panelists, I just want to answer one question for all of you that was in the chat.
Donna Meyer: And yes, there will be a recording of this sent to everyone who registered for the webinar. It takes usually a few days because we do have to make sure everybody's the sound is good and all of that. But yes, you will be able to listen to a recording of this webinar. So I just wanted to address that right away. So I am so pleased to introduce our panelists for today. Actually, they have presented before, and they are just amazing individuals. I'll start with Diana Simmons, who is a student outcome specialist, and she is also the concurrent enrollment program coordinator at the College of the Desert in California. As you can see, she has a lot of different types of background: critical care nursing and primary education. She's very passionate about developing confident, resilient, self-directed learners, and obviously is also very interested in clinical judgment. And our second panelist, who is also [a?] colleague of Diana, is Amber Rose McCartney, who's also a student outcome specialist, assistant professor of nursing remediation, also from the College of the Desert in California.
Donna Meyer: She also has a extensive teaching experience in the US and also internationally. I can tell you-- I know, from speaking with Amber, she's traveled quite a bit around this world. She has a background in education, translation, and nursing, again, focusing on remediation and academic success. And she's, again, a very passionate individual. So I want to welcome our panelists today, and we are very happy to have them with us. So thank you so much, from the start, Diana and Amber. Okay. We're going to go ahead, and what we're going to be doing today is asking some questions for the panelists. So if the questions can come up, that would be great. The first question. And the first question, I'm going to start with Amber, and Diana will add as she wants. So your program definitely has been one that has focused on supporting student success throughout the curriculum. What changes have made the greatest difference? And again, this is for Amber's to start with.
Amber McCartney: Okay. Well, thank you, Donna, for the wonderful introduction. Thank you, everyone, for being here. It's always great to be at these webinars, so we're happy to be back. And I love this question because this is what everyone wants to know, right? What are we doing, and is it working? So since we're talking about NCLEX today, I'm going to focus specifically on how we've tackled that area. So I'll talk about the strategy we used to approach the topic of the NCLEX preparation, and then a specific intervention that's made a huge impact for us recently. In our program, we know that our curriculum is good, our facilities are great, our instructors are amazing, and so we really had to zoom out and look at the big picture of our program and say, "Okay. What are we missing? What else can we do to better prepare our students for the NCLEX?" We did a lot of research. We looked at the literature, and we were able to identify a gap between graduation and NCLEX for our students.
Amber McCartney: So based on the literature, we put together some recommendations and launched our NCLEX success initiative, which we've talked about in a previous webinar. So if anyone's interested, I really encourage you to go back and watch that video. But essentially, the core of this initiative was a Canvas shell. That's our LMS Canvas. So a Canvas course with premade NCLEX study plans for students and other NCLEX resources that they could access after graduation, up until they take their exam. So that's the intervention in a nutshell. What are the results? Well, so far, we've seen our resource utilization go up by 30%. What does that mean? We're talking about the NCLEX prep resources that students have access to through the program that we provide them with our vendor for the NCLEX prep package. So that's gone up 30% with our NCLEX pass rate, I know it's reported quarterly and annually and everything, but from one cohort to the next, our pass rate has gone up 7% so far. We're still waiting on a few students to test. We do a lot of initiatives. We put a lot of things in place, but as far as these specific results that we've seen, especially with the resource utilization increase, we can only attribute that to this NCLEX Success Protocol that we've put in place. There's not really anything else we've done that would explain why our students are using these resources so much more than before, and we're correlating that to the increased NCLEX pass rate. So why does that matter? Obviously, the students who use more of those prep resources have a higher likelihood of passing the NCLEX, right? That makes sense. But to have this embedded in our program in a structural way, it's now required for all fourth-semester students to enroll in this Canvas shell, to choose their study plan, and follow that structured roadmap to NCLEX's success. So that of all the things that we've done, that's the thing that's made the biggest difference within the past year for us.
Donna Meyer: Thanks, Amber. Diana, did you want to add a c anything, a comment about that? Because I know you've been doing this together.
Diana Simmons: No. I think Amber has really just said it all and covered it so beautifully.
Donna Meyer: Okay. Great. All right. We'll move on to the second question, and I'm also, on the second question, going to start with Amber. How do you identify students who may struggle with NCLEX before they reach the final semester, getting them ready?
Amber McCartney: Right. Yeah. So that's a big question that we've been focusing on over the last year or two as well. We have done our own in-house analysis of our admissions data. I do a lot of data stuff, by the way. If people don't know that about me yet, I have graphs and spreadsheets and everything, so I'm a data person. We've looked at admissions data and then our students' academic performance to see how can we objectively identify which students are at risk. Because we always have that feeling that a student maybe is falling behind or having trouble, but we want to know objectively how can we measure that and identify. So what we found is that if a student in our program, if a student fails more than one exam in their third or fourth semester, they are at a much increased risk of not passing the NCLEX on their first attempt. So we have a protocol in place that students are referred for support and remediation on their first exam failure so that we can hopefully course correct. Our all the unit exams are modeled after the NCLEX test plan and blueprint. We have NCLEX-style questions, so it makes sense that if a student is struggling on those exams, they might also have trouble on the NCLEX. That's how we identify them. Diana's going to talk about the remediation a little later on. But I want to mention that the question we're looking at now is for those students who are still at risk at the end of their fourth semester. So let's say they've failed multiple exams. How can we still make sure that we're giving them the best shot of passing the NCLEX at that point? So, again, bridging that gap between graduation and NCLEX so that our support doesn't stop when they finish the program. Our initial data analysis from the intervention I mentioned previously is showing that for students who have already been identified at risk, the more they utilize the NCLEX prep resources, the greater the likelihood that is that they'll pass on the first attempt.
Amber McCartney: Again, it's a no-brainer, but we can quantify that data and share it with the students to tell them, "Look, the people who passed on their first attempt, on average, this is how many practice tests and questions they did. And the graduates who were not successful on their first attempt, this is what they did ." I see a question popping up. Our vendor is Kaplan, so that's what we use, and it comes with practice tests, QBank questions, readiness exams, CAT exams, all the normal stuff you get with your vendor. But we can tell the students and show them-- so from the most recent analysis I did, the students who pass on their first attempt are doing twice as many prep questions as the students who don't pass. And that's also for the students at risk. And the more questions they do, the more likely they are to pass. And I think it's useful for students to know that. So we're not just identifying them. We're trying to also help them. Even if it's at the very last minute, we still want to make sure we can offer them some type of plan or steps they can take to try to be successful.
Donna Meyer: So, Amber, another question, because I know you mentioned you use Kaplan, but I also know you have this entire NCLEX Success Initiative.
Amber McCartney: Yes.
Donna Meyer: So the one question was-- just to clarify for the individuals listening. It said, "Is the--" this is from Elizabeth, "Is the NCLEX Success Initiative in addition to a prep program, such as Kaplan, or in place of?" [If?] you can clarify.
Amber McCartney: It integrates the Kaplan resources, because that's what we have specifically for our NCLEX prep package, but the study plans that we made include the other resources that students have access to throughout the program. So that includes the regular textbooks that they have. We also have Level Up RN resources for them and then the different videos and content mastery types of things that they've already had access to throughout the program, but it's mapped out for them so they don't have to go back searching for, "Oh, what was that chapter we did in second semester about ABGs?" or something. We already have it mapped out. So it includes all the resources, including especially the NCLEX prep, so that they're making sure they complete all of those items as well.
Donna Meyer: You somewhat addressed it, but there's another question from Terry that said, "Have you seen a predictor in likeliness to pass the NCLEX?" I think you somewhat brought that up a little bit, but maybe if you want to expand on that.
Amber McCartney: Right. So a lot of the vendors have their own predictor kind of system that's there, whether it's you take a benchmark, and you get some type of score, or you take an NCLEX predictor. And those are useful, definitely, but what we've found is that our own predictors that we're developing are a bit more accurate because there's more at stake when a student is taking their actual exams for their classes and getting a grade. Sometimes when they're doing the predictors, they're treating it just kind of like a practice test, and so they're maybe not doing it in a controlled environment, not really worrying about the timing, and all of that. So we've found that their performance during the program is a more accurate predictor. But we are working with our college's institutional research department on a larger research project to identify various success factors and predictors starting as early on in the program as possible because we're really focused, with this, on the tail end. We've kind of had to work backwards, if that makes sense, so.
Donna Meyer: I think Terry also wanted to know about a PN predictor. Do you have a PN program?
Amber McCartney: We do. And I love that question because all this that we've got in place for RN, our next milestone is to do the same thing for our LVN. So we actually have a Zoom call next week with our vendor to talk about their dashboard and the data that we have on there and how we can ensure that students are utilizing those resources and then integrating that into study plans as well. So we're trying to copy and paste for our LVNs.
Donna Meyer: Okay. And I see one of the other questions was about your previous webinar. There is the answer in the chat. Yes, all of these webinars have been recorded, and they're on the Level Up RN resources with the educator resources. So again, if you can't find it, Patrick put some information in there, but you can go back and listen to Amber and Diana and the amazing job they did on this NCLEX Initiative. All right. Let's see. Diana, do you have anything to add to what Amber was talking about? Because I know you get the next question.
Diana Simmons: Yeah. Yeah. [laughter]
Donna Meyer: There was one more comment in the chat, and I'd like to answer these. They also wanted to know about any entrance criteria, if you found any correlation with course performance, not passing one or two or more exams.
Amber McCartney: So that's a great question. That's the next step because, as I said, we sort of had to work backwards because we're trying to catch the students who are going to take the NCLEX first. So we're trying to see, "Okay, what's putting them at risk right here," and then working backwards from there. And the identifying predictors in admissions criteria is-- that's the project. We're in the middle of that with our institutional research department. So they've identified predictors of on-time completion and attrition. And the next thing they're going to do is look at that with NCLEX. And then maybe the next thing after that is they'll correlate with the academic performance. So it's a huge thing. We're working through that. But yes, I would like to see the predictors for everything.
Donna Meyer: And one more question. Do you use an entrance exam? And if so, which one?
Amber McCartney: We use the TEAS.
Donna Meyer: Okay. Perfect. Well, I'm going to go on to Diana because she has a burning question that I'm going to ask her. [laughter] And she's our remediation person, [that's?] so passionate about this. So what role does a remediation plan in your overall student success strategy?
Diana Simmons: Great question. I don't know if you guys can see that. I'm almost jumping out of my chair [laughter] waiting for this question because I'm just so passionate about this. So we see remediation as more of a proactive, supportive process instead of a last-ditch effort to help our students. A lot of people hear the term remediation, and they're like, "Oh, no, I'm in trouble. I'm doomed." Kind of a scary term. But part of our role is we want to identify these concerns early on and really understand why a student is struggling. So we look beyond the exam grades. We look for specific content gaps, maybe the types of questions they're struggling with, whether it's bow-tie questions or maybe analyzing cues. We also look at their level of thinking within Bloom's Taxonomy when-- and we just look at their overall study habits and even time management. From there, remediation is very individualized for each student. You have one student who might be struggling to really master the content, and maybe another student who might need some help on prioritization. And then maybe another student that really knows the content, but they're having trouble applying it. So, ultimately, to kind of tie it all up, it's not all just about content either. We use remediation to also help students reflect on how they're learning. So we want to talk to them about what's working, what isn't, and what they need to change. And we use this to guide them to take ownership of their learning, develop metacognition - big fancy word - and really, ultimately, to help them learn how to learn. But at the end of the day, we want students to see remediation as an opportunity for growth, and it's not a punishment. Every student benefits from remediation, but sometimes the barriers to success are more than just academics. So that's why it's very important to look at the student as a whole coming at it from a more holistic approach because what might be impacting their success could be an outside factor, right? We have many students that are working parents or just many, many different factors, and we have to consider more than just the academics.
Donna Meyer: Great. And there was a question. It was answered by Amber, so I'll just go ahead. Donna wanted to know do you accept an average score, not thresholds in each category? And Amber responded, "Yes, over just the overall score. We don't look at individual categories." So just in case you missed that in the chat. All right. I'm going to go back to Amber with the next question. Question four. What does a culture of NCLEX readiness look like in your program?
Amber McCartney: Okay. So I had to-- I had to think about this one to come up with [inaudible], but I think I've got it. So this is a this is a two-parter. For a culture of NCLEX readiness, we want to make sure we're sending the right message to students and sharing the right information. So sending the right message, it really starts on day one, letting students know, "Yes, the NCLEX is a difficult exam, but you have all the resources and everything you need at your fingertips to be successful. Every unit exam you take, every benchmark, every quiz, all of these are like a mini NCLEX that's preparing you. It's a practice version of the real thing you're going to have to do." We also reinforce that with our study tips and remediation and everything that we-- how we communicate with students. As Diana mentioned, that's embedded in there, letting them know the importance of self-assessment, self-testing, self-remediation, identifying their gaps, and how to navigate that process as an independent learner. Because after they graduate, yes, we provide them with these study plans, but they're having to do the work on their own. We're facilitating and guiding them, but it's up to them. They don't they're not coming to class and having homework anymore, obviously. So that's sending the right message. And then as far as sharing the right information, as I mentioned, we do a lot of research, and we do our own in-house data analysis. We share all of that with faculty and students. So it's not a secret why we're designing the study plans the way we're designing them. We are using this as an evidence-based practice and telling students the steps they need to take to be successful. So that's why we design these things the way they do, and we tell them that we're trying to get you to that magic number of prep questions that you need to do that, based on the analysis, is showing is helping students to be successful. So I think that's how I would answer the culture of NCLEX readiness, at least from my role and what Diana and I do.
Donna Meyer: And you do have a big program, 400 students. And I know that was one of the questions, Diane, that obviously, all faculty can be engaged in the remediation, but both Diana and Amber are the main student learning outcomes specialists who work and really can dive into where the students might be struggling.
Amber McCartney: Yeah.
Donna Meyer: So there was another question Amanda just asked. What do you mean by sharing the data with your students?
Amber McCartney: So I mean literally sharing it with them. I visit the class and put it up on the projector screen and show them a graph with this and other information. We show them how after students remediate, their exam scores improve or the pass/fail rate of a particular exam will change after the students get support. So I put my graphs on the screen. We also do this at new student orientation, and we show them various things. So yeah, I think it helps them to see it concretely so that we're not just telling them what to do. We're showing them the data and the evidence. And the good bar on the graph is always green, and the bad one is red, and so they can see green is good, red is bad. Do the green thing, right? But yeah, I think they've been receptive to that. It helps to hammer it home a little bit more so they understand the why behind these things that we're doing.
Donna Meyer: Great. Thank you. I don't know if Diana or Amber possibly can respond. They were just wondering-- there was another question from Terry about-- she has LPNs or LPN students, and getting them ready for fourth semester, which is about NCLEX readiness, she's using PN predictors to drive remediation, but they're complaining about the amount of work that they have to do. Not, probably, an unusual situation with students at times, but I don't know. Anything that you have in mind. Either of you.
Amber McCartney: Well, I can speak to this a little bit as far as what we-- so I mentioned zooming out and looking at this whole timeline, the big picture of the program, and how we can prepare students as soon as possible. We also do a lot of work upfront before students even get into the program. We have a pre-nursing course, Success in Nursing, where we kind of plant the seeds for all of this stuff. We have info sessions for them, admitted students before orientation, and one of the things we really talk about a lot is more of the character element of what it means to be in nursing school. And we talk about discipline and responsibility and being consistent and taking accountability for your own learning. So it's totally fine to feel like there's a lot of work and complain, but discipline is doing what needs to be done regardless of how you feel about it. And so we tell students that it's okay to feel like it's too much or whatever. You still need to do it. So sorry, but that's the way it is.
Donna Meyer: That's nursing school, right?
Amber McCartney: You can't get something for nothing. If you want to get a good result, you have to put in the work for that. It's just the way that it is, so.
Diana Simmons: And I think being just transparent right from beginning and planting that seed. Right from the beginning, students are expecting now to remediate and that they're not perfect, and we're putting these ideas into their head that it's going to be hard work, but it's worth it. And so when they have that mentality, they're thinking, "Oh, the remediation." I'm expecting remediation every single time, rather than this giant remediation at the end when we're getting ready for NCLEX .
Donna Meyer: Right. All right. Thank you so much, and thanks for all the dialogue too from all the participants. It's great. So moving on to question number five, and this is going to be for Diana. You frequently discuss how students learn. That's one of your passions, I think, also. How does learning science influence the way you prepare students for the NCLEX?
Diana Simmons: Okay. My favorite question. Learning science was completely new to me. I didn't even know there is a whole subfield related to learning science until I stepped into this role. But when we talk about learning science, what we're really talking about is using the evidence-based research to help students move towards deeper, more meaningful learning. And one of the biggest shifts for students is really thinking about what they actually do with the information when they're learning. We want them to engage with the material instead of just reading their notes over and over and over again, highlighting everything. I mean, it sounds like many of our students do that, but we want them to be more active with it. We want them to retrieve it, to explain it, to apply it, and that's the idea behind the science of active learning Learning science isn't just about how they study, but also when they study. So that's where spaced practice comes in. So we encourage students to spread their studying out over a period of time and revisit the material very regularly instead of locking themselves in a room for eight hours straight with a energy drink in or a giant pot of coffee. Long gone are those days. They don't work. This gives them the opportunity to practice and reinforce what they've learned. Now, when they come back to the material, we want them to think about how they're practicing. So instead of studying a topic in one lump sum like one giant block and then moving on to the next, we encourage students to mix it all up, so mixing different but related topics together. And that's called interleaving. This allows students to recognize the patterns within those topics. Another idea we have to [crosstalk]--
Participant: I'm sorry. What was the term you called it? Because I'm doing research on why students don't read. So what was the term you called? Inter?
Diana Simmons: Interleaving.
Participant: Interleaving.
Diana Simmons: Yes. And I'll spell it out in the chat for those of you who are interested. Yes. And someone also mentioned Pomodoro method. So that is all about spaced practice, spaced repetition. Yes, yes, yes, it's all about breaking it all up. You guys have lit a fire in me.
Donna Meyer: I guess so.
Diana Simmons: Yeah. I am more than happy to talk a lot about this learning science with anybody. Feel free to reach out. I can go on and on and on about this stuff. But back to the agenda. The other part we want to consider is the cognitive load for our students. We know that they can only process so much information at once. So we got to help them break it down into smaller, manageable chunks so they're not feeling so overwhelmed, and they don't get into this doom spiral of, "I have 50,000 pages to read. I have so many practice questions to do." And then now they're just stressing out about how much they have to do. Last but not least, many of you guys are already familiar with the term metacognition. We want students to be aware of how they learn. We want them to recognize their strengths and their gaps. We want them to evaluate what's working, what's not, and adjust their learning strategies as they need to. But ultimately, remediation plays a huge role in student success because it's more than just fixing what a student got wrong on their exam. It's getting them to be more engaged, intentional learners. It's about guiding them to figure out what works for them and then building their confidence and skills to apply what they know.
Donna Meyer: Wonderful. And you can tell I just love how Diana gets so excited. And Regina had brought up the book Make It Stick. And both Diana and Amber love that book. And so if you haven't, any of you nurse educators, and there it is, right there, you can maybe look into reading it and getting some more information about these concepts. So that's a great, great suggestion. So thank you so much, Regina, for bringing that up. And people would love to pick your brain, Diana and Amber.
Diana Simmons: Yes. I could have a whole day about all this learning science.
Donna Meyer: Well, maybe that'll be in the future here. Maybe. We're taking notes on that, so stay tuned. Amanda did want to ask, how do you adjust for ELL and students with disabilities?
Diana Simmons: Yeah. So we have resources here available on campus, student learning disability. We work closely with them and even their faculty to figure out what works for the student. So it's a collaborative effort.
Donna Meyer: Okay. We're going to move on to question six, and that also is going to start with Diana. And that is, what learning activities have you found most effective for strengthening long - term knowledge retention?
Diana Simmons: Yes. Great question. So the most effective activities revolve around our learning cycle that we like to refer to as the three R's of learning. So it's going to be retain, retrieve, and reflect. So the first part is retaining the information. And many of you guys have heard the term concept maps. We use one-page concept maps or cheat sheets. And these are great visual tools because they help students simplify and organize all of their readings, all their textbooks, their lecture notes, videos, flashcards, all their resources onto one page. And in this phase, we really heavily emphasize on spaced practice so that they're revisiting this material over time and reinforcing that knowledge.
Diana Simmons: The second part to this is called retrieval. We want our students to retrieve the information in many different ways, whether that's recreating the concept maps from memory practicing NCLEX-style questions, explaining concepts out loud to their dog or even working through case studies. This is where we incorporate interleaving. They this is where they're mixing topics. So we suggest like CHF concepts, pulmonary edema, and MI. And when they're mixing all of this up, they're starting to recognize patterns like, "Hey, these have similar signs and symptoms, but this is a sign that's sticking out ." And then the third one is about reflection. And this is where metacognition plays a big role.
Diana Simmons: We don't just ask the students "Did I get it right?" And just move on. We guide students to recognize their own patterns and get themselves to ask the questions, "Why was this answer right and the others wrong? What clue did I miss? Did I misread the question?" And we really talk about dissecting the question itself. And sometimes it's just helping the students realize that they have a habit of changing their answers, they're self-doubting themselves. And sometimes it could be as simple as realizing that their study habits are just not working.
Diana Simmons: And because this learning cycle-- learning is a continuous process, this learning cycle loops back to the very beginning to revisit and retain all the material rather than just letting it disappear after one study session.
Donna Meyer: Wonderful. And there was a question, and Amber answered it with the three R's. So it's retain, retrieve, reflect. And also another question, do you supply the students with a concept map template? And that was answered. And Amber said, "Yes, we have several printable templates for them to use." So great. Wonderful. All right. So our last question is going to go to Amber. What misconceptions do students have about preparing for the NCLEX exam?
Amber McCartney: There are too many to list, so I will just narrow it down to the to the ones we see most often and that we've tried to address in our program. So for sure, it's students think that they need to buy expensive third-party prep packages, thinking that that's what they need. They do not need that. We already have everything that they need provided by the program. They also have misconceptions about just the logistics of testing day, what it's like to show up, go through the check-in process, the security TSA check, basically, and then the stamina that it takes to potentially sit through all 150 questions.
Amber McCartney: I think students really underestimate the psychological aspect of that, which is one of the reasons why we host a mock NCLEX on campus to let them go through all of those motions and have that experience and make those mistakes before the real one. And we discussed that in a previous webinar too. But I think the biggest misconception that students have about NCLEX prep is that it's what you do after graduation, as opposed to what you've been doing the entire time in nursing school. Yeah.
Donna Meyer: Oh, and Diana just had a comment. As the student outcome specialist, we can't make them do it. We don't grade, but we usually end our meetings with, "Hey, show me your concept maps next week. I'd love to look-- I'd love to see what you've done." Yeah. Okay. Wonderful. Really great discussion. Really appreciate all of this. And I know so did everybody participating today. I want to also bring up a couple of things. In the resource section that is under More, there's an area with-- well, actually, under the resources, you can see some documents that we've put together. One is called Building a Culture of NCLEX Success. And this is something that you can use if you want. It's just we like to provide some other resources. And this is really like a self-assessment that can help nursing programs evaluate how effective the NCLEX readiness is in their program by using an integrated student learning experience. So that's one. And then the faculty action plan, NCLEX readiness. And those, again, they're under the resources. And it's really just kind of a faculty action plan that you can come up with to help with preparing for the NCLEX. So again, just some additional resources that you can have available to you.
Donna Meyer: And also under the resources, there is some information about-- let's see. It's under Angelina. I just was going to show them the links. It's also under resources, right, for getting access if they don't have access to the Level Up information.
Angelina Guzman: Yeah. I'll add another link in there as well.
Donna Meyer: You'll show that again. Okay. All right. So the next thing-- so thank you both. But before the next thing we are going to do, we're going to have-- there we go. There's the example. Okay. Before we go to the clinical judgment builder, I think we might do that last-- do you want to do the last poll question now before we go to the clinical judgment builder?
Kelley Larson: Sure.
Donna Meyer: Okay. Which idea are you most likely to implement after today's session? There are your choices. Early NCLEX prep, more integration, better remediation, clinical judgment, patient prior. So just you all want to take a minute and answer that. It's always fun to see. We'll give you a few minutes to answer that.
[silence]
Donna Meyer: How are we doing on responses, Angelina?
Kelley Larson: We've got about 66% of folks that have answered. So we'll give everybody about another 15 minutes or so.
Donna Meyer: Yeah. Sure. Yeah.
Angelina Guzman: I try to let the clock run for like at least a minute. So we're just coming up on that right now.
Donna Meyer: Okay. That's fine. But nobody's saying anything. A minute seems a long time.
Angelina Guzman: I know. I know.
Amber McCartney: I'll say something. In case people didn't see it, I put Diana's email and mine in the chat. Please reach out to us anytime. We love talking about this stuff. There's never enough time in the webinar, obviously, to say everything, but we regularly connect with faculty from other programs and share ideas and best practices. And our email door is always open. So please reach out. Don't hesitate. We are here.
Angelina Guzman: Okay. I'm going to actually end the poll because it looks like we kind of slowed down on the answering questions. But you got a 74% participation rate, so I'll show it right now. There we go.
Donna Meyer: All right. Oh, this is pretty interesting because some are kind of close, but the first one went away, but I saw - oh, there it is - better remediation process at 33%. And then more integration of NCLEX prep throughout the curriculum, 25. And then clinical judgment activities. So great responses, and hopefully some of those resources can be helpful to you. We'll talk a little bit about where to find those resources again. But right now, what I'd like to do is turn it over to Kelley. And because we've been talking about clinical judgment, she's going to give you a sneak preview of a new product that Level Up is going to come up with. And I think you all will be very pleased with this because it really helps with the clinical judgment.
Kelley Larson: Thank you.
