| Course | NURS 619 Nurse Educator III: Curriculum Development (NURS619) |
|---|---|
| Module/Week | 5 |
| Assignment | Curriculum Plan Part III: Curriculum Design |
| Paper type | Curriculum plan part (curriculum design) |
| Length | about 750 words, 3 double-spaced pages plus title page and references. Course guide: the third section of the curriculum plan, presenting the curriculum design for the identified school, with recent peer-reviewed support |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| Points | 100 |
| School | Liberty University Online |
| Program | MSN |
| Where it sits | Module/Week 5 in Liberty's published NURS 619 course guide; current sections can differ |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for NURS 619 Week 5
Curriculum Plan Part III: A Concept-Based, Scaffolded Design for the Cedar Hill BSN, Semester by Semester
[Student Name]
School of Nursing, Liberty University
NURS 619: Nurse Educator III: Curriculum Development
Curriculum Plan: Part III
[Instructor Name]
[Date]
Cedar Hill Christian College is a composite school continued from Parts I and II; design the curriculum for the school your course asks you to identify.
Curriculum Plan Part III: A Concept-Based, Scaffolded Design for the Cedar Hill BSN, Semester by Semester
Organizing Framework
The framework follows directly from the philosophy in Part I, which describes learners as builders of understanding and persons as unities of body, mind and spirit. Concepts are grouped into three categories. Health and illness concepts include perfusion, gas exchange, glucose regulation, fluid and electrolytes, infection, cognition, mobility and comfort. Professional nursing concepts include clinical judgment, safety, communication, collaboration, informatics and leadership. Person and community concepts include dignity, caring, spirituality, culture, health equity and rural health. The third category carries the mission's commitments to faith integration and rural communities into the curriculum itself.
Billings and Halstead (2016) explain that an organizing framework gives a curriculum coherence by determining how content is selected and arranged. A concept-based framework was chosen because it allows students to learn transferable patterns rather than isolated facts, which matches the philosophy's commitment to guided construction of understanding.
Course Sequence
| Semester | Courses (credit hours) | Emphasized concepts |
|---|---|---|
| 3 | Foundations of Nursing Practice (4), Health Assessment (3), Pathophysiology and Pharmacology I (3) | Safety, communication, comfort, dignity |
| 4 | Concepts of Adult Health I (6), Pathophysiology and Pharmacology II (3), Nursing Research and Evidence (3) | Perfusion, gas exchange, fluid balance, clinical judgment |
| 5 | Concepts of Adult Health II (6), Mental Health Nursing (4), Spiritual Care and Ethics (2) | Glucose regulation, infection, cognition, spirituality |
| 6 | Family and Women's Health (4), Child and Adolescent Health (4), Population and Rural Health (4) | Development, culture, health equity, rural health |
| 7 | Complex Care Across Settings (6), Leadership and Quality (3), Informatics in Practice (2) | Leadership, safety, collaboration, informatics |
| 8 | Capstone Practicum in Rural Health (6), Transition to Professional Practice (3) | All concepts at mastery level |
The nursing courses total 75 credit hours across the six semesters, following two semesters of general education and science prerequisites. Every concept appears at least three times across the sequence, first introduced, then applied in a new context, and finally integrated in complex care, so that no concept is taught once and forgotten.
Leveling of Program Outcomes
| Program outcome | Introduced (semesters 3 and 4) | Developing (semesters 5 and 6) | Mastery (semesters 7 and 8) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Clinical judgment and safe care | One stable patient with guidance | Two or three patients with changing conditions | A full assignment with minimal guidance |
| 2. Rural population health | Community health assessment concepts | County community assessment | Partnership intervention in the capstone |
| 3. Quality and safety | Safety principles in skills lab | Root cause analysis of a unit event | Quality improvement project |
| 4. Collaboration and informatics | SBAR in simulation | Interprofessional rounds participation | Coordinating care across settings |
| 5. Professional and spiritual practice | Dignity and spiritual assessment | Ethics case analyses | Reflective practice portfolio |
Sequencing Logic and Scaffolding
The sequence moves from simple to complex and from predictable to unpredictable situations. The learning pathways Reekie et al. (2023) built for a Canadian BSN program offer a working model: for each key concept, faculty charted the courses where it first appears, where it deepens and where students are expected to command it. Cedar Hill will build a pathway for each concept, showing in which course it is introduced, reinforced and mastered, and which exemplars are used at each stage. For perfusion, the exemplars progress from hypertension in Adult Health I to heart failure and shock in Complex Care.
Clinical and Simulation Experiences
Clinical experiences begin in semester three with long-term care and progress to acute care, mental health, maternal-child and community settings. Each clinical course includes simulation for situations students may not encounter, such as pediatric deterioration. The final semester places every student in a rural capstone at one of the region's critical access hospitals or clinics, fulfilling the mission's commitment to rural communities and the vision of graduates who stay.
Addressing the Known Weaknesses of Concept-Based Design
The design acknowledges that concept-based curricula are not yet strongly supported by evidence. Buckner et al. (2024) reviewed outcomes of concept-based curricula, including clinical judgment, licensure pass rates, graduation and satisfaction, and concluded that the evidence is not robust. The program will therefore track these outcomes from its first cohort. Faculty preparation is also critical. Yasin et al. (2025) found that nurse educators implementing a concept-based curriculum faced limited training, a difficult transition and resistance, which eased with leadership and collaboration as educators saw students' thinking improve. Cedar Hill will provide a semester of faculty development before the first nursing course begins and hold monthly meetings in which classroom and clinical faculty review the concept pathways together.
Allocating Credit and Time
The 75 nursing credit hours are distributed so that clinical courses carry more weight as the program advances. Didactic and clinical hours are combined within concept courses, with a ratio of one credit hour to three clinical hours, so that students in Adult Health I spend about 135 hours in clinical settings and about 225 hours by Complex Care. Simulation replaces no more than a quarter of clinical hours in any course, keeping students in real care settings for most of their practice. The spiritual care and ethics course is deliberately given its own credit rather than folded into other courses, because the mission names faith integration as a defining feature and a dedicated course guarantees that it is taught and assessed, while the concept pathways ensure that dignity and spirituality also appear in clinical courses.
How the Design Will Be Evaluated
The design will be judged by its outcomes. From the first cohort, the program will track performance on each competency checkpoint, licensure pass rates, graduation rates, students' and employers' satisfaction, and the proportion of graduates working in rural settings one year after graduation. Faculty will review the concept pathways each year to find concepts that are introduced but not revisited, and the curriculum committee will revise courses where checkpoint results show students are not reaching the expected level. This plan for evaluation prepares the program for the curriculum evaluation completed later in this course.
A Closing Note
Isaiah 28:10 describes teaching that builds "precept upon precept, line upon line" (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016). A scaffolded curriculum follows that pattern, building each concept on the last until students can integrate them in the complex care their communities need.
References
Billings, D. M., & Halstead, J. A. (2016). Teaching in nursing: A guide for faculty (5th ed.). Elsevier.
Buckner, M., Camp, S., & Murabito, S. (2024). Outcomes of concept-based curricula: An integrative review. The Journal of Nursing Education, 63(11), 725-729. https://doi.org/10.3928/01484834-20240711-02
English Standard Version Bible. (2016). Crossway. (Original work published 2001)
Reekie, M., de Bosch Kemper, N., Epp, S., Denison, J., Willson, M., & Moralejo, L. (2023). Learning pathways: Levelling, scaffolding & mapping curriculum. Journal of Professional Nursing, 46, 163-167. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.profnurs.2023.03.006
Yasin, Y. M., Al-Hamad, A., Safi, I., & Salman, A. (2025). Nurse educators' experience in implementing concept-based curriculum: A phenomenology study. International Journal of Nursing Education Scholarship, 22(1). https://doi.org/10.1515/ijnes-2024-0074
What the NURS 619 Week 5 instructions ask
Part III asks students to create the curriculum design for the school of nursing identified in Parts I and II. It is due in Module/Week 5, a week whose materials are a presentation and two assigned articles rather than textbook chapters. A curriculum design shows the organizing framework, the courses and their sequence, credit allocation, where clinical experiences occur and how the program outcomes are developed across the program. Because Part IV will develop one course from this design into a full syllabus, the design should be detailed enough that each course has a clear purpose and place in the sequence, and that a faculty member reading it could explain why the course comes when it does.
How this NURS 619 Week 5 example is built
The part begins with the organizing framework, a set of concepts grouped into three categories that flow from the philosophy. A table lays out the six nursing semesters with course titles, credit hours and the concepts each course emphasizes. A second short table shows how the five program outcomes are leveled from introductory to mastery across the years. Sections explain the sequencing logic, the placement of clinical and simulation hours including the rural placement promised in the mission, and how the design addresses known weaknesses of concept-based curricula. Each major decision is supported by recent evidence.
NURS 619 Week 5 grading rubric: where the points go
Part III is usually graded on a coherent organizing framework that follows from the philosophy, a logical sequence of courses with appropriate credit allocation, clear placement of clinical experiences, visible development of program outcomes across levels, consistency with Parts I and II, evidence behind the model, and APA style. A strong design lets a reader see why each course sits where it does and how earlier courses prepare for later ones. Explaining how the design will avoid common problems, such as concepts that are introduced but never revisited, shows mature curricular thinking. Graders also notice when a design plans its own evaluation, because a curriculum that cannot be judged cannot be improved.
NURS 619 Week 5 help: mistakes that cost points
Students often lose points on Part III by listing courses without any organizing framework behind them, by presenting a framework that does not match the philosophy in Part I, or by omitting how program outcomes develop across the curriculum. Credit totals that do not add up, missing clinical hours and courses that appear out of logical order are also common. Some designs adopt a concept-based model without acknowledging its implementation challenges. Start from the framework, lay out the sequence in a table, check the arithmetic, show leveling of outcomes, explain where clinical learning occurs, and cite recent evidence on the model you choose. Put the prose explanation beside each table; tables alone rarely persuade a reviewer.
Related NURS 619 sample papers
Other NURS 619 weeks
- NURS 619 Week 1: Reflection Paper 1
- NURS 619 Week 2: Reflection Paper 2
- NURS 619 Week 3: Curriculum Plan Part I
- NURS 619 Week 4: Curriculum Plan Part II
- NURS 619 Week 6: Curriculum Plan Part IV
- NURS 619 Week 7: Reflection Paper 3
- NURS 619 Week 8: Curriculum Plan Evaluation
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NURS 619 Week 5 questions, answered
What is NURS 619 Curriculum Plan Part III?
This 100-point section, submitted in Module/Week 5, is the design section of the plan, where students set out the organizing framework, the order of courses and how outcomes are leveled for the school they chose.
Where can I find a free NURS 619 Week 5 sample paper?
The NURS 619 Week 5 Part III with a concept-based, semester-by-semester BSN design, its tables and references, appears on this page and can be read freely.
What is an organizing framework in nursing curriculum?
The structure of concepts or themes that determines how content is selected, grouped and sequenced across a curriculum, derived from the program's philosophy.
How are program outcomes leveled across a nursing curriculum?
Each outcome is written at progressively higher levels, often introductory, developing and mastery, so courses at each stage know what performance to expect and build toward.
What are common problems with concept-based curricula?
Concepts introduced but not revisited, uneven attention to exemplars, inconsistent teaching between classroom and clinical faculty, and students who struggle to shift from memorizing to reasoning.
Use it as a model, or ask for your own
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