Vision Workforce Skills, a subsidiary of West Nottinghamshire College, provides education and training to individuals and businesses across the UK. The Vision programme is centered on placing individuals in IT Apprenticeships to give them hands on workforce training. Professional certification is fundamental in all of Vision’s IT training programmes and their training centres are Microsoft IT Academies and CompTIA partners.
In order to help students better perfect their IT skills and improve certification exam pass rates, Vision has worked with Prodigy Learning to use MeasureUp practice tests for many years.
Vision integrates MeasureUp practice tests into their delivery of all Microsoft and CompTIA courses and certifications. At the beginning of each course, students use MeasureUp in “study mode” to engage with the course objectives and develop good exam techniques. Vision Training Centre Managers use the “reports” feature to track student progress and see details such as actual scores, number of questions answered and even the elapsed time for each test.
“MeasureUp is an excellent fit for our program – study mode teaches students to manage their time and answer questions in a variety of formats,” said Michael Lafferty (Curriculum Manager, Vision Workforce Skills). “We customize the practice tests to ensure our students are taking questions on the objective domain they are studying at the moment.”
Once the course is complete, Vision uses MeasureUp to help students get ready to take their certification exam. The students take MeasureUp tests in “certification mode” and in realistic exam conditions in a classroom. “Taking a MeasureUp test in certification mode shows the student and their tutor which areas they may not fully understand yet and need to study further” said Lafferty. “We expect two pass marks of at least 90 percent on the MeasureUp practice exams before allowing a student to take a live certification test.”
Michael Carrick (Technical Trainer, Vision Workforce Skills) says MeasureUp allows learners to target areas they can improve and students find great success from using MeasureUp. “The explanations for answers is the key highlight of the MeasureUp system for me. They are clear and concise and provide further information for students to research. I have personally found MeasureUp to be an excellent tool and it has helped me to consistently gain achievement rates of more than 95 percent over the past few years.”
