Kim's Legacy with CELBAN Preparation
Did you know that Kim Kara M.Ed. began preparing Internationally Educated Nurses for the CELBAN exam online way back in 2009?
It's true!
Over the years, CELBANPrep evolved into a comprehensive English Language Mastery Program designed specifically for health professionals.
The story began even earlier.
2005: Graduation and Career Launch
Kim graduated with a Master in Education and began guiding internationally educated nurses, pharmacists, veterinarians, and physiotherapists.
Her background in education, web design, graphic design, instructional design, curriculum development, and coaching would eventually become part of the educational environment she created.
2009: Launch of CELBANPrep
CELBANPrep began with a focus on supporting Internationally Educated Nurses preparing for the Canadian English Language Benchmark Assessment (CELBAN) and developing discipline-specific English communication for healthcare.
This was the beginning of a journey to support Internationally Educated Health Professionals in mastering English within a healthcare context.
2011: First eBooks Published
The first CELBANPrep eBooks were published.
Priced affordably through the Compassionate Pricing Policy, they gave IENs access to resources for self-directed learning.
That same year, Dear Kim began as a place where Kim responded to questions and concerns from learners.
Two different forms of support were beginning to emerge:
resources for learning
and
responses to the human questions behind learning.
2012: Building a Coaching Team
CELBANPrep graduates were hired and trained as writing coaches and speaking mentors.
This expanded support beyond self-study and provided personalized guidance to a growing community of learners.
It also created another kind of learning opportunity: graduates could apply what they had learned, develop their own communication and coaching skills, and support others.
2014: CELBAN Exam Disruption
The CELBAN exam was unavailable for approximately six months because of administrative changes.
CELBANPrep continued providing support and training so that health professionals could maintain momentum.
The disruption demonstrated something that would become increasingly important:
the purpose of the work was becoming larger than the examination itself.
2014: Creation of NNAS
The National Nursing Assessment Service (NNAS) was established to streamline the documentation process for nursing licensure across Canada.
This was an external change, but it affected the environment in which Internationally Educated Nurses were trying to understand their pathways toward licensure.
2020: CELBAN Goes Online
The COVID-19 pandemic changed examination delivery.
The CELBAN Centre began offering a computer-based version of the examination, expanding access internationally and allowing candidates more than three attempts.
The changing environment also created new concerns.
As access expanded and assessment pathways changed, Kim became increasingly concerned that IENs could spend significant amounts of time, money, energy, and motivation on preparation resources that did not actually address their learning needs.
The need was becoming clearer:
IENs needed information as well as preparation.
They needed to understand the CLB-based nature of CELBAN, evaluate preparation resources carefully, and develop the skills underlying assessment performance.
2020: The First App Development Attempt
Kim spent approximately six months working with two app companies to transform CELBANPrep's educational material into the 3 Centered app-based virtual campus.
The campus was developed to the point of being submitted to iTunes. It was not accepted because the proposed educational model did not fit the app company's business model, which depended on continued use of the application.
A fundamental difference between the commercial app model and our educational model emerged:
CELBANPrep had a different purpose.
Students are expected to learn, graduate, and go on their way.
The app company needed students to keep using the app, which is completely inconsistent with CELBANPrep desire for IEHPs to learn, grow, become and move on.
Our intended outcome is not continued app consumption.
It is completion and independence.
That difference becomes an important distinction when it comes to the developmental history of CELBANPrep University and the CELBAN Help Centre at CELBAN.info.
2021: Launch of CELBANPrep University
After three attempts with two app companies, years of courses, books, coaching, mentoring, learner questions, and educational development came together when Kim designed an app-based virtual campus called CELBANPrep University.
Some ideas emerged from the first two attempts.
The University was designed around three connected environments:
Information Centre
for understanding CELBAN, the CLB, assessment pathways, and related decisions.
Resource Centre
for accessing relevant intensive learning materials and preparation resources for IENs who had taken the CELBAN and sought to integrate the feedback so they could increase their skills for their next attempt.
Learning Centre
for structured courses, lessons, and skill development for IENs choosing the CELBAN for their path forward.
The goal was not to create another online course.
It was to create a virtual campus where information, resources, and structured learning could exist together.
2024 and beyond: Expanding the Work
The work continues to expand beyond Internationally Educated Nurses preparing specifically for CELBAN.
Kim's experience with nurses, pharmacists, veterinarians, physiotherapists, and other Internationally Educated Health Professionals reinforced an important understanding:
Healthcare communication skills are transferable.
For example:
And her ever-important Practical and Social Intuition, which can be applied in all domains in our Future with AI reality.
This work, therefore, continues expanding toward Internationally Educated Health Professionals beyond nursing while also continuing to build on the CLB-based healthcare communication and language-development foundations from which CELBANPrep began.
This expansion includes resources such as the Medical Collocation Dictionaries and Medical Grammar Compilation, as well as courses and learning environments designed around transferable healthcare communication competencies.
