The Kaplan Way

Our Learning Philosophy

Kaplan’s commitment to excellence in education and helping students achieve their career goals set the foundation for what we call the Kaplan Way. The Kaplan Way is a comprehensive learning strategy that combines a scientific, evidence-based design philosophy with a straightforward educational approach to learning. Learning science is grounded in research that provides evidence on how people learn, and we utilize this learning science directly in the instructional design of our courses. The system is designed to help you, the student, achieve desired program outcomes efficiently and effectively by employing a three-phase learning strategy: Prepare • Practice • Perform^®. All of these phases are aligned toward accomplishing specific objectives.

Prepare

The prepare phase of the Kaplan Way sets the foundation for the learning experience and is where you are first introduced to new knowledge through information and examples related to the lesson objective. The information includes vocabulary, facts, concepts, and principles related to the objective. Whether presented through readings, live lectures, or video classes, prepare activities will provide you with the necessary tools to begin acquiring new knowledge. This phase will provide students with just what they need in order to begin the practice phase.

Practice

The second phase, practice, will provide you with an opportunity to apply what you have learned through additional activities, simulations, or questions. Learning science has shown that reinforcing knowledge with practice is critical to mastery. This second phase allows you to practice solving problems utilizing the information you have already received in the prepare phase. Practice will allow you to directly interact with new knowledge and skills, identify gaps in your performance, and build expertise. In the practice phase, you will receive feedback on your answers and can compare your answers to how experts would have addressed a similar challenge. The work (and rework) during the practice phase is essential to cementing developing practices and the earlier information for long-term retention.

Perform

Now that you have prepared and practiced, you are ready to perform and put your newly acquired knowledge to the test. In this final phase, you demonstrate your mastery of the objective by answering questions and solving problems. These problems are similar in difficulty to those seen during the examples in the prepare phase and the problems you actually worked on during the practice phase. The only difference is that you no longer receive guidance and feedback when solving the problems. Perform activities are designed to assess your level of mastery for your intended program outcomes and will identify what you have achieved.

The Kaplan Way simplifies the learning process, allowing you to focus on what you need to learn versus how you need to learn it. Both the design and delivery of the content is based on sound, industry-recognized cognitive learning principles and evidence-based research. The perfect alignment of the Prepare • Practice • Perform^® phases with the lesson objectives, the strong foundations of information and examples received in the prepare phase, and the immersion in practice problems with expert feedback, allows you to excel in the perform phase and ultimately achieve and demonstrate mastery of your objective.