Grant: Applied Research and Development Grants - Level 1

The Achieve Group of Companies (PharmAchieve /NurseAchieve) are among Canada's largest health care training companieswith 5 full time employees and some 250 contractors hired annually cross Canada. PharmAchieve have demonstrated product andtechnology leadership in standardized exam preparation for pharmacy students across Canada. The NCLEX-RN, althoughdeveloped in the US, is an end of training examination that every Canadian nurse must pass to begin practice as an entry-levelregistered nurse (RN). PharmAchieve is extrapolating the technology and knowledge acquired through their development ofpharmacy exam materials to work with a team of experienced nurses to develop Canadian nursing preparatory materials related toNCLEX-RN content with the goal of improving Canadian nursing students success rates in the exam. Their preparatory program,called NurseAchieve, includes reviewing and evaluating students performance, practice test questions, as well as Computeradaptive testing (CAT) that tailors both the difficulty and number of items to an examinee. Video lectures will complement thispreparatory material. The goal of the present research is to test, validate and enhance the NurseAchieve product. This program ofresearch will provide PharmAchieve with the independent user-testing evaluation of their completed preparatory material. Theusability and validation phases of this project will set the stage for potential follow-on research also on predictive analysis. Thesesequential phases will ultimately enable the Achieve Group of Companies to demonstrate if engagement in NurseAchievepreparatory materials relate to NCLEX-RN students success, to improve the product, and provide a validated basis for marketingtheir product to nursing graduates.