NUR 654 Module 9 Final Project Example

Final Project: A Proposal for an Online RN to BSN Program Grounded in Curriculum Foundations

[Student Name]

Southern New Hampshire University

NUR 654: Curriculum Foundations in Nursing Education

Module Nine Final Project

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

Final Project: A Proposal for an Online RN to BSN Program Grounded in Curriculum Foundations

A proposal for a new nursing program must persuade several audiences at once. Faculty want to know that the curriculum is sound, administrators that it is financially viable, accreditors that it meets standards, partners that it serves their nurses and students that it fits their lives. Pine Ridge College, a composite regional college, proposes an online baccalaureate completion program for the region's associate degree nurses, most of whom work full time for Summit Health, a partner that requires newly hired associate degree nurses to earn a baccalaureate within five years. This final project presents the complete proposal. It argues that a program whose purposes are set deliberately, whose external requirements are mapped and owned, whose courses and online design rest on evidence, whose partnership is formal and whose evaluation starts before launch can serve all of these audiences.

Why This Program

Nursing has argued for a century that education should prepare nurses for judgment, leadership and community health, not only bedside tasks, and that such preparation belongs in colleges. That argument now has outcome evidence and employer demand behind it: hospitals increasingly require baccalaureate preparation, and research has linked higher proportions of baccalaureate nurses to better surgical outcomes. In Pine Ridge's region, about 1,100 associate degree nurses work for partner organizations, and a survey of 180 of them found that 72% intended to pursue a baccalaureate within three years if a program fit their work schedules. The nearest existing online programs are at private institutions with tuition roughly double Pine Ridge's.

Purposes and Outcomes

The program's purposes were set using the approach Tyler (1949) proposed: drawing on studies of the learners, the demands of contemporary practice and the views of specialists, then filtering these through the college's philosophy and knowledge of how adults learn. The learner survey showed strong clinical skills but limited experience in population health, research appraisal and leadership. Interviews with nurse leaders emphasized quality improvement, care across settings and precepting. The 2021 Essentials supplied the specialist frame, defining competencies across ten domains for entry-level professional nursing (American Association of Colleges of Nursing, 2021). The resulting eight program outcomes emphasize clinical reasoning across settings, population health, evidence-based practice, quality and safety, interprofessional collaboration, informatics, leadership and professional development, including the ability to coach less experienced nurses. Each outcome is mapped to the Essentials domains and to at least two assessments.

External Requirements

The program will seek national nursing accreditation, which expects curricula to incorporate the Essentials and to track outcome data, and the college will notify its institutional accreditor of the new online degree. Because students may live in neighboring states, the college will meet distance education authorization requirements through its reciprocity membership, publish state-by-state licensure disclosures and maintain an inventory of state rules for practice experiences. Every student must hold an active registered nurse license in the state where practice experiences occur, verified at admission and each term. A requirements table assigns each item to an owner, from the program director to the compliance officer.

Curriculum and Online Design

The program comprises ten eight-week courses, completed part time over about twenty months. Evidence appraisal comes first and is used in every later course. Population health, informatics, quality and safety, leadership and a course on caring for patients across transitions follow, with two interprofessional modules shared with the college's social work, public health and health administration programs and a capstone completed at the student's workplace. A precepting strand in the leadership course and a capstone option teach students to coach the clinical reasoning of new graduates, responding to evidence that many new nurses are not yet ready for independent practice.

Online courses follow the Community of Inquiry framework: short videos with low-stakes retrieval questions replace long lectures, stable small groups work on problems from members' own counties and workplaces and instructors provide weekly summaries, active facilitation and live sessions at two times of day. Deadlines, video length and assignments are designed around twelve-hour shifts, and every course meets accessibility standards.

Partnership, Faculty and Students

A formal partnership with Summit Health, governed by a council that includes a student, provides tuition support, scheduling flexibility and practice mentors drawn from Summit's population health, quality and leadership staff. Faculty coach mentors, and academic and employment records are kept separate. The program will begin with three full-time faculty and four adjunct faculty, all completing online teaching training before launch. Students receive an online orientation, an assigned adviser who contacts them within the first week, access to library and writing support in the evenings and an early warning system that flags missed work for outreach within three days.

Evaluation and Budget

Evaluation follows the CIPP model, which Stufflebeam and Zhang (2017) describe as serving decisions about context, inputs, process and products. Context evaluation revisits needs before each new cohort; input evaluation includes an external review of the curriculum before launch; process evaluation tracks engagement, course feedback and mentor reports each term; and product evaluation measures completion, graduation, competence, employer ratings and unintended effects. An evaluation committee with a student and a partner representative reviews results each term.

Projected enrollment is 30 students in year one, 45 in year two and 60 in year three. At Pine Ridge's reduced partner tuition, revenue is projected to cover faculty, instructional design, technology and support costs by the second year, with start-up costs of about $240,000 for course development and faculty training in the year before launch. A conservative scenario with 20 students a year delays break-even to the third year.

Conclusion

Pine Ridge's online RN to BSN program answers a century-old argument about what nurses need, a present demand from employers and a clear interest among working nurses. Its purposes are set deliberately, its external requirements are mapped and owned, its courses and online design rest on evidence, its partnership is formal and fair to students and its evaluation begins before the first student enrolls. The proposal asks faculty and administrators to approve a program that has answered, in advance, the questions each of them will ask.

References

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

Stufflebeam, D. L., & Zhang, G. (2017). The CIPP evaluation model: How to evaluate for improvement and accountability. Guilford Press.

Tyler, R. W. (1949). Basic principles of curriculum and instruction. University of Chicago Press.