How an OT School is Elevating OTR^® Exam Prep by Leveraging TrueLearn

The School of Occupational Therapy at the Arkansas Colleges of Health Education (ACHE) shares the great results and benefits they gained from partnering with us.

Seeing the positive outcomes that the College of Osteopathic Medicine at our institution—the Arkansas Colleges of Health Education (ACHE)—achieved after they began using TrueLearn, we decided to explore the platform for the School of Occupational Therapy. We quickly realized that it would enable us to expand the scope of our preparatory offerings, providing our students with a more robust and focused learning environment—aligned with our goal of ensuring students are thoroughly prepared for their certification exams and can make the most of their educational experience.

Convinced that TrueLearn could significantly improve our students’ NBCOT^® OTR^® exam readiness by providing faculty access to board-style questions, quizzing tools, and real-time, actionable performance metrics, we integrated TrueLearn into our Occupational Therapy program. The platform offers unique opportunities to refine our exam preparation processes, ensuring that our students not only feel prepared but also maximize their time in school.

Seamless integration into the curriculum

TrueLearn’s application within our curriculum is multifaceted, enhancing both independent study and classroom learning. It allows our students to explore various questions and categories on their own, fostering independence in their studies and exam preparation throughout their education.

In classroom settings, TrueLearn’s questions can be procured easily to correlate with the topics being taught, serving as engaging tools for warming up, transitioning, or wrapping up lectures. Questions are assigned to students as quizzes ahead of class or taken together as a group using the Tutor Mode (preview feature), allowing faculty to expound upon the content to collectively improve clinical knowledge and clinical reasoning skills while also focusing on good test-taking strategies. Moreover, the robust explanations and supplemental materials—external references and Picmonic audio-visual mnemonic videos—help expand upon particular topics and direct students to further learning aids.

Another significant benefit is the flexibility for faculty to create custom quizzes tailored to individual learning needs and any areas of relative weakness for each student. We can examine detailed performance data on the TrueLearn platform, class work, or practice exams that have been taken, and create quizzes within TrueLearn that target each student’s particular needs. The ability to scale the difficulty of questions and sort based on domain or topic makes this incredibly easy and efficient.

Faculty thoughts on the utility of TrueLearn

TrueLearn has been an invaluable resource in my teaching. The NBCOT exam is something that is always in the back of your mind as a faculty member in an OT program. No matter what the learning environment is like or what innovative and forward-thinking teaching you achieve, ultimately your students must pass the exam at the conclusion of the program. At times this felt quite frustrating because I never want to teach to an exam, but I also do not want to do a disservice to my students by not preparing them adequately for something that they ultimately have to pass. TrueLearn has eliminated that anxiety and frustration. The platform is very intuitive and easy to use, and it has provided me the assurance that I am preparing my students without exam prep being too much of a focus in the classroom. My students feel more confident, and I feel more confident. It allows me to teach better and ultimately that is most important.

About ACHE

The Arkansas Colleges of Health Education (ACHE) is a private, not-for-profit institution located in Fort Smith, Arkansas founded on the mission to educate highly skilled and compassionate OT professionals and prepare them to advocate for those with limited opportunities for occupational engagement. The School of Occupational Therapy offers an entry-level occupational therapy doctoral degree program.

About the Author

Noah Hansen, MS is an Instructor and Occupational Therapy Content Expert at ACHE School of Occupational Therapy. He holds a masters degree in occupational therapy from the University of Central Arkansas (2011) and is currently working toward a PhD. During his twelve years as an occupational therapist, he has focused his practice within pediatrics and mental health. Mr. Hansen has served in a variety of interdisciplinary leadership positions including: leading inpatient psychiatric teams, OT team leader, developmental preschool director, and supervising a group of developmental preschool directors.