AdventHealth University Uses HESI's Personalized Learning Plan to Deliver AI-Powered Remediation

"Remediation is so critical, and I don't think everybody understands the value in it. When students go back and review and remediate themselves, that's really the true learning part of it."

For Stacey Hawes, Director of Academic and Student Success at AdventHealth University, that conviction sits at the heart of everything the nursing program does. A critical care nurse by training and a unit-based educator before moving into academia, Hawes brings a practitioner's eye to the question of how students learn and identifying the barriers that can prevent learning from taking place.

A mission rooted in partnership

AdventHealth University is a private institution with a distinctive advantage: a direct connection with AdventHealth hospitals. That relationship shapes everything from curriculum to culture.

"We are privileged to be affiliated with AdventHealth hospitals," Hawes says. "We prepare students to bring compassion and caring that meets the mission and vision not only of the university, but also of our clinical partner."

The university serves close to 300 students in its baccalaureate program and more than 200 in its associate program, with graduate programs rounding out the full complement of nursing education.

The problem with "Choose your own adventure" remediation

Before Elsevier's HESI Personalized Learning Plan (PLP), an AI-powered remediation tool that tailors content to each student's individual performance on HESI assessments, students at AdventHealth University were largely self-managed after a HESI exam.

Hawes describes the old approach as something like "choose your own adventure." Students were expected to review their results, identify their weak areas, and self-direct their remediation using packets provided by HESI.

In practice, it rarely worked as intended. Because early-trimester students were unfamiliar with HESI assessment results, they frequently struggled to fully engage in the remediation process.

"With all their other responsibilities and coursework, remediation probably wasn't their highest priority," Hawes says.

AdventHealth University was among Elsevier's pilot schools for PLP, giving Hawes and her colleagues an early look at the product as it was developed. Faculty set remediation requirements based on HESI scores.

"We use Elsevier's recommendation for what those requirements are," Hawes says. "We actively set the requirements as part of scheduling the exam, but we go by Elsevier’s recommendation."

Students notice the difference

Student response to PLP has been consistently positive, even in the absence of formal outcome data this early in the rollout. The feedback Hawes hears most often comes down to ease and relevance.

"They favored it very positively," she says. "Less hunting for things. Before, they had to create their own adventure. Now it's a prescribed adventure."

The content mix has also landed well. Case studies, in particular, resonate with students because of their real-world feel.

"That's probably more relatable for them," Hawes says. "The Osmosis videos are good for a content refresher, and the excerpts provide key points rather than a whole chapter. That's really beneficial and hopefully more engaging.”

What it has changed for faculty

The operational shift for instructors has been equally significant. Where grading remediation once meant sorting through dozens of individually submitted packets, PLP consolidates everything into a single view.

"I literally have one screen as opposed to 50 or 60 screens to look at," Hawes says. "From a faculty side, grading is really convenient."

Beyond efficiency, the platform creates a more meaningful accountability loop for students and faculty alike.

"Before, if a student got 40% correct on their questions, it wasn't really meaningful to them," she says. "Now there's a benchmark: you need to get 80% correct on your questions and your case studies. I believe there's more effort and energy going into it, because there's more meaning."

By giving faculty more time for targeted intervention and student engagement, PLP has created new space for the conversations that matter most. "It frees up faculty time so I can meet individually with more students," Hawes says. "I can sit down with a student and say, 'You're being assigned this case study on this disease process because it was a challenge for you on this HESI. Do you feel more comfortable with it? Do we need more resources?"

The platform becomes a starting point for targeted advising rather than just an assignment. "It closes that loop," she says.

Looking ahead

It is still early, and Hawes is careful not to claim outcome data she does not yet have. But she sees PLP as a meaningful part of AdventHealth University's NCLEX readiness strategy, particularly in the senior-level course built around HESI Exit Exams.

"I think there's true value in it," she says. "We want students to understand that just because you graduate doesn't mean the work is done. There's still the hurdle of the licensing exam. We want to start preparing them before graduation, not after."

She expects the research will eventually catch up to what she is already observing in her students. "I would hope to see it in NCLEX scores over time. Elsevier has the data and the white papers tying HESI performance to NCLEX success. I think as the product keeps improving, it will serve a huge purpose."

The case for remediation done right

For other nursing programs evaluating their own remediation approach, Hawes offers a straightforward framework.

"I would assess what they currently have and whether it's meeting their needs and then look forward to what they're trying to accomplish," she says. “If their school is focused on remediation and wants to improve outcomes, HESI’s Personalized Learning Plan (PLP) is an avenue of potential opportunity."