Six Advantages TrueLearn Brings to Speech-Language Pathology Educators

The challenges faced by Speech-Language Pathology (SLP) educators are manifold. Educators need to effectively guide SLP students to build foundational knowledge, strengthen their knowledge application in clinical practice, and hone their clinical judgment and decision-making skills – all of which are instrumental in driving optimal course, program, and Praxis^® exam outcomes. To reach these goals, educators need an active learning and data-led tool to augment teaching, track student progress, identify at-risk students early enough to tailor remediation, and course-correct education plans to meet curricular goals. 

Here are six advantages of integrating TrueLearn into the SLP curriculum to drive more efficient concept mastery and knowledge application in coursework and throughout the program and ensure Praxis^®-preparedness.

1. Sharpens Classroom Instruction

TrueLearn is an effective teaching tool that integrates seamlessly into the curriculum to support active, engaged learning in the classroom. The platform’s board-style quizzes cover the content tested on the Praxis^® exam, allowing educators to incorporate them into lectures to engage students and assess their ability to apply knowledge while providing real-time feedback to faculty so misunderstandings can be corrected quickly and mastered concepts won’t be repeated. These quizzes can also be assigned pre-lecture to help students come to class prepared, which enables educators to accelerate them through more complex learning. Augmenting teaching with TrueLearn identifies weak content areas and topics for the group of students in the class and by cohort, generating actionable data to help faculty sharpen classroom instruction, leading to improved course and program outcomes.

2. Pinpoints Weak Subject Areas

TrueLearn’s SLP SmartBank is aligned with the Praxis^® exam content outline. The performance data generated from integrating TrueLearn into the curriculum helps surface learning gaps of individual students and cohorts to guide remediation and drive optimal program and exam outcomes. To address these and help expedite memory retention and recall, TrueLearn allows faculty to create and assign quizzes from over 950 board-style questions. TrueLearn then aggregates data to provide the longitudinal tracking necessary to support the identification of curricular gaps or redundancies, program evaluation, and tracking progress toward meeting curricular goals.

3.  Predicts Praxis^® Exam Outcomes

The greatest predictor of actual exam outcomes is to assess students by leveraging a combination of several things: high-quality questions that mirror the question stems on the actual exam, are aligned to the Praxis^®exam content outline and cover the topics tested by the exam while also taken in a simulated timed and online environment. TrueLearn offers pre-created and custom quizzes, both yielding national comparative analytics to predict future outcomes from the beginning of the program. Content is written by high-performing SLP authors and undergoes a rigorous peer review process to ensure questions reflect the current exam style. These practice questions also come with rich answer explanations that are helpful for learning and bottom lines that focus on key takeaways.

4. Empowers Students with Self-Assessment

The demand for technology as part of students’ learning experience is a great place to start, but more focus needs to be placed on performance feedback and comparative analytics. With TrueLearn, students gain insights into their overall performance, category weaknesses and strengths, topic performance, progress over time, and even confidence range for content areas. Such visibility helps students understand where to focus their studies, so they come to class more prepared, get more out of their courses and training, and ultimately pass the Praxis^® exam the first time.

5. Averts the Need for Remediation

Educators need an effective methodology to help students pivot away from rote memorization, which has a frustratingly short-lived efficacy. Implementing active learning strategies alongside the curriculum that supports the development of all students can help lessen individual remediation needs and improve overall performance and outcomes. TrueLearn utilizes active learning strategies to help with recall, and spaced repetition to fight the “Forgetting Curve”. Faculty can test and cement students’ knowledge comprehension by assigning pre-created quizzes on TrueLearn, then guiding students to review their low-performing content areas with customized quizzes. When students learn more effectively through these proven strategies that combat the “Forgetting Curve” and help with concept mastery and application of knowledge, then less remediation will be needed.

6. Improves Efficiency of Academic Hours

With TrueLearn, educators can optimize academic hours by saving time on lesson planning while effectively guiding students to sharpen their clinical skills. The learning and assessment platform uses memory retention algorithms to improve students’ mastery of course material at the appropriate time. Students can strengthen their concept mastery and knowledge application with the support of TrueLearn’s detailed rationales and improve their Praxis^®-preparedness by selecting the Timed mode, which simulates the test-day experience. This comprehensive exam prep solution will enrich students’ learning and allow faculty to cover more content across the curriculum because students have truly mastered previously taught material.

A multi-prong approach to exam preparation based on cognitive research and learning science like TrueLearn has been proven to enhance learning and exam outcomes. Integrated into the curriculum, TrueLearn can help sharpen an educator’s toolkit with data-led resources while fostering a collaborative and active learning environment where SLP students can thrive. Other Speech-Language Pathology programs partner with TrueLearn to reap the benefits of academic excellence and optimum exam outcomes.