NUR 645 Module 9 Final Project Example

Final Project: A Curriculum Revision Proposal for a Competency-Based Baccalaureate Nursing Program

[Student Name]

Southern New Hampshire University

NUR 645: Curriculum Design in Nursing

Module Nine Final Project

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

Final Project: A Curriculum Revision Proposal for a Competency-Based Baccalaureate Nursing Program

Curriculum revision asks a faculty to change what it teaches, how it teaches and how it judges students, all while continuing to teach the current curriculum. A proposal must therefore do more than describe a better design. It must show why change is needed, how the parts fit together, what it will cost, how students already enrolled will be protected and how the faculty will know whether the change worked. This final project presents such a proposal for Cedar Valley's composite baccalaureate program, which admits 80 students a year. It brings together the work of the preceding modules and argues that a revision grounded in evidence of need, coherent from philosophy to course, phased realistically and evaluated over several years can improve graduates' clinical judgment and population health practice without overloading faculty or students.

Evidence of Need

Thomas et al. (2016) place problem identification and needs assessment first among six steps of curriculum development because every later decision depends on them. The needs assessment found that first-time licensure pass rates fell from 91% to 84% over five years, with management of care the weakest area; employers described graduates as skilled but slow to recognize and escalate deterioration; 41% of graduates felt unprepared to plan care after discharge; and diabetes was taught at the same level in five courses while population health appeared in only one. Frame factors narrowed the options: no new faculty positions for two years, only two faculty with community expertise, an underused simulation center and two clinical partners offering community placements. Four needs were prioritized: clinical judgment, integrated population health, reduced repetition and faculty development.

The Design

The revised philosophy consists of five belief statements, each paired with a curricular consequence, such as the belief that health is shaped by where people live, which requires social and structural factors in every clinical course. The organizing framework has three threads leveled across three stages: clinical judgment based on Tanner's model, safety and quality based on QSEN and population health. Eight program outcomes trace to the domains of the 2021 Essentials, which define competencies for entry-level professional nursing (American Association of Colleges of Nursing, 2021), and to the framework threads. A curriculum map tags every outcome, course by course, with I, R or A for introduction, reinforcement and summative assessment; its first version revealed an informatics outcome never assessed and population health confined to one course, both now corrected.

Two course-level changes carry most of the revision. The adult health sequence becomes concept-based, with fourteen concepts selected by benchmark and each studied through a stable exemplar in Adult Health I and an acute one in Adult Health II. Giddens and Brady (2007) argued that this approach responds to content saturation by favoring depth and transfer over coverage, and the revision adds a rule that any new topic must replace an existing exemplar. The community course is redesigned backward from a signature community assessment and intervention proposal developed with rural partner agencies. Across all courses, the equity audit's changes to content, cases and images are incorporated.

Assessment and Progression

The revision moves toward competency-based assessment in a hybrid form suited to a semester system. Four entrustable activities, including recognizing and escalating deterioration, are rated on a five-level scale by instructors and preceptors and recorded in an electronic portfolio. Each semester a small committee reviews each student's portfolio and makes progression decisions based on the whole body of evidence. Students who have not reached the expected level complete additional supervised experiences during intersession rather than repeating a full course. Population health activities join the portfolio in the second year, after faculty development.

Implementation Timeline

The revision launches with one entering cohort and advances a level each year, as Table 1 shows, so that students already enrolled finish the curriculum they started. This teach-out approach means both curricula run side by side for three years, which increases scheduling complexity; a teach-out coordinator will track every current student's remaining requirements, and any student who must repeat a course after the old version ends will receive an individual plan that maps the old requirement to its new equivalent.

Table 1. Phased Implementation Timeline

Note. Launching with a single entering cohort protects current students and lets faculty revise each course once before the next level begins.

Approvals, Resources and Risks

The proposal requires a faculty vote, approval from the university curriculum committee and notification to the state board of nursing and the accreditor according to their procedures for substantive change. It requires no new faculty positions. Costs include faculty development workshops, estimated at 60 hours of faculty time, a portfolio module within the existing learning management system, new skin-tone-inclusive images and simulation materials and release time for a teach-out coordinator. Partner agencies have agreed to host community placements in exchange for the assessments and proposals students produce.

Three risks are most serious. First, licensure pass rates could dip during the transition as students and faculty adjust to concept-based learning; pass rates will be monitored each year and additional clinical judgment practice added if needed. Second, faculty fatigue could undermine the change, since teaching two curricula at once is demanding; level leads will share preparation, and the committee will limit other initiatives during the first two years. Third, partner capacity could change; agreements will be reviewed annually and a reserve list of partners maintained.

Evaluation

The sixth step of the approach is evaluation and feedback (Thomas et al., 2016), and it is planned from the start. Over four years, the program will track first-time licensure pass rates, entrustment levels on the four activities at each stage, performance on clinical judgment items and on transfer questions about untaught conditions, graduate and employer ratings of preparation for discharge planning and deterioration, student workload in focus groups and faculty time. Interim results will be reviewed each semester by the curriculum committee, which may make adjustments, and a full evaluation will follow the first graduating cohort. Because many factors affect pass rates and employer ratings, results will be set beside those of the final three cohorts who graduated under the previous plan and read with caution.

Conclusion

This proposal asks the Cedar Valley faculty to change a great deal, and it is honest about the cost. In return, it offers a curriculum grounded in evidence of need, coherent from philosophy to course, aligned with the 2021 Essentials, lighter in repetition and richer in judgment and population health, launched in phases that protect current students and evaluated over four years. It gives the faculty what a curriculum decision requires: a clear reason, a coherent design, a realistic plan and the means to judge the result.

References

American Association of Colleges of Nursing. (2021). The essentials: Core competencies for professional nursing education. https://www.aacnnursing.org/essentials

Giddens, J. F., & Brady, D. P. (2007). Rescuing nursing education from content saturation: The case for a concept-based curriculum. Journal of Nursing Education, 46(2), 65-69. https://doi.org/10.3928/01484834-20070201-05

Thomas, P. A., Kern, D. E., Hughes, M. T., & Chen, B. Y. (Eds.). (2016). Curriculum development for medical education: A six-step approach (3rd ed.). Johns Hopkins University Press.