Making maths and English learning easy for apprentice dental nurses

Posted on 28th April 2023

Posted by CENTURY

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

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Dentrain Professionals Ltd is an independent training provider (ITP) offering apprenticeships for aspiring dental nurses and CPD for those already qualified. Dentrain prides itself on delivering the highest standard of tutoring and support to learners across all accredited qualifications. Kristina Thistlethwaite, Functional Skills Tutor told us how her team uses CENTURY to support flexible learning for their apprentices.

Why CENTURY?

We chose CENTURY because we found it to be the most easy to access and user friendly. The resources are brilliant with the option of the video and the slides. It is very easy also for tutors to keep track of how their students are doing. It's brilliant. 

My students really engage well. Some need more pushing than others, but they do what they're asked and they like the platform. They have all said that it's easy to use, especially given that they can access it on their phones. The platform that we used previously couldn't do that. It's working really well and we're really happy with it. If anybody asks, I would always recommend it.

Most of the learners switch between their laptops and their phones. Often when they tell me that they have done their nuggets (micro-lessons) for this week, they have caught up on their phones, but a lot of my students get time out of surgery to access the platform and catch up on the computer. I’ve used it on my phone. It’s great and very easy to access.

How do you encourage student engagement with CENTURY?

I set everybody a target: they have to complete a minimum of six nuggets per week. This is quite reasonable because each one doesn’t take too long. I have a spreadsheet mainly focused on nuggets completed, which is useful to help me keep up with where each student is. 

It’s so simple to go on to CENTURY and see how many nuggets they have done and how much they have improved. For example, if we are going to work on frequency tables I’ll run the session with the students, then I’ll allocate the assignment, and then I can look and compare. It’s good to see how much they have improved from the previous time, and whether they’ve actually gained more knowledge. CENTURY is really useful because you can see the percentages before and after. They tend to go up.

I also give the learners an introduction to CENTURY. This takes place on a video meeting, where I log into a student account, share my screen and introduce them to the platform. I show them where everything is and how they can access their courses. If they want a particular nugget that is not on their main page I show them where to find it. I also show them the help page as that is very useful for them to solve problems independently.

Find out more about how you can use CENTURY at your training provider here. Book a demo here.