National award for innovative teaching project

ARU wins prize for mobile app to assist student nurses on placements

An app that has been instrumental in helping more student nurses complete their course has won a national award.

The Myprogress app was developed by Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) and partners MyKnowledgeMap to make it easier to keep up to date with the progress of student nurses while they are away from university on their clinical placements with NHS trusts.

The offline app was created to digitise placement documents used by students and doctors, to help track their progress, ARU’s research shows it has had helped reduced dropout rates on nursing programmes and has had a sustained impact for several cohorts of students. 

After a three-year trial, it was rolled out across ARU’s campuses in Cambridgeshire and Essex last year. The app is now used by more than 2,000 ARU students who are undergoing clinical placements.

This week, ARU and MyKnowledgeMap won Gold in the category of Best Learning Technologies Project (Public and Non-profit Sector) at the International Learning Technologies Awards.

Judges highlighted the accessibility of the app, the ability to use it offline, and how student feedback was taken into account.

Dr Louise Jenkins, Acting Head of School for Nursing and Midwifery (Essex) at ARU, said:

“We’re thrilled to have been recognised for the innovation of the Myprogress app. This is a terrific example of how technology can have a very real benefit to students, tutors and indeed the public as a whole as our students play a very active role in their trusts while they are on placement.

“It is imperative that we can know exactly how our students are doing while they are with trusts, and the fewer nurses that leave the profession, the better for everyone. The app helps us identify any issues early, address them and ensure students and trust staff are happy, resulting in a lower dropout rate among student nurses.”