NURS 619 Week 8 Curriculum Plan Evaluation Using the NLN Hallmarks of Excellence Example

Curriculum Plan Evaluation: Scoring a Hospital-Affiliated BSN Curriculum on the NLN Hallmarks of Excellence Report Card

The Curriculum and the Method

The curriculum evaluated is the four-year BSN curriculum of a composite hospital-affiliated school of nursing where I completed my practicum, which admits about 80 students a year and is midway through a redesign toward competency-based education. Billings and Halstead (2016) describe curriculum evaluation as a systematic process of judging a curriculum against defined standards to guide improvement. For this report, I used the NLN report card for the Hallmarks of Excellence in nursing education, focusing on the hallmarks that address curriculum. Evidence came from the program's curriculum map, the syllabi of six courses, two years of program outcome data and conversations with two faculty members on the redesign committee. Each hallmark was rated as met, partially met or not met.

Report Card Ratings

Two of six hallmarks met fully is not a failing grade for a program in the middle of redesign; it is a map of where the redesign should go next.

Strengths

The program's clearest strength is its attention to professional formation. Every year includes a seminar in which students build a reflective portfolio on their development as nurses, which directly supports the hallmark on values and socialization to the role. The program is also flexible, with distinct pathways for traditional, transfer and second-degree students and an advising structure that adapts course sequences to students' circumstances. During my practicum, I met a second-degree student who had previously worked as a respiratory therapist and whose sequence had been adjusted to allow an earlier critical care elective, an example of the flexibility the hallmark describes. Faculty told me that this kind of adjustment is routine rather than exceptional, which suggests the strength is built into the program's culture rather than dependent on one advisor.

The redesign process itself is a strength. Faculty began with end-of-program outcomes and worked backward to courses, a method that Weltin and Crawford (2026) found faculty strongly supported when they used it to rebuild a college's graduate practice programs, producing new plans of study, progression indicators and dozens of revised courses. Starting from outcomes makes it more likely that every course will have a clear purpose.

Areas for Improvement

The most important gap is the lack of a program-wide map showing how concepts progress. New courses level their concepts internally, but no document shows where perfusion, for example, is introduced, reinforced and mastered across all four years. Reekie et al. (2023) showed how learning pathways, maps of how each key concept is leveled and scaffolded across a BSN program, can serve as planning tools that protect curriculum integrity, and such maps would directly address the hallmark on cumulative and progressive learning.

The second gap is interprofessional practice. The curriculum includes only one interprofessional simulation, in the final year, despite partnerships with the hospital's pharmacy, respiratory therapy and medical residency programs that could support more. The third concern is evidence. The program is moving toward a concept-based structure, but Buckner et al. (2024), reviewing outcomes of concept-based curricula, could not find strong enough evidence to say such curricula outperform traditional ones on judgment, licensure, graduation or satisfaction, and called for valid measures of clinical judgment. The program should plan now to collect outcome data on its new model rather than assume it will perform better.

Limitations of This Evaluation

This evaluation has limits that the program should weigh. It drew on documents and two faculty conversations rather than a full program review, so some evidence, such as how consistently clinical faculty apply the new competencies, could not be examined. The redesign is incomplete, so several ratings describe a curriculum in transition and may change within a year. I also evaluated a program where I was a guest, which may have made me more generous in some ratings and more critical in others than a member of the faculty would be. A complete evaluation would add student and employer surveys, licensure data for at least three cohorts and observation of teaching in several courses.

Using the Report Card Over Time

The report card is most useful when it is repeated. If the curriculum committee completed it each spring, using the same evidence sources, the program could track whether partially met hallmarks move to met as the redesign matures. Billings and Halstead (2016) describe curriculum evaluation as continuous rather than a single event before an accreditation visit, and an annual report card would make that continuity practical. The ratings in this report could serve as the first year's baseline.

Recommendations

In order of priority, I recommend that the program: first, build a concept map for the whole curriculum before the next cohort begins, assigning each faculty member responsibility for one concept pathway; second, add an interprofessional simulation in each of the third and fourth years using existing hospital partnerships; third, select a validated clinical judgment measure and collect baseline data from the current cohort so the new curriculum's outcomes can be compared; and fourth, add a rural or community health clinical experience to strengthen the program's response to regional needs.

Reflection

Evaluating a real curriculum taught me that my own curriculum plan would benefit from the same scrutiny. The concept map and outcome measures I recommend here are exactly what my plan for Cedar Hill needs to be credible, and I intend to add both before I consider that plan finished. Through the prophet Haggai, the Lord told the people to "consider your ways" (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, Haggai 1:5), and regular, honest curriculum evaluation is how nurse educators consider the ways of the programs entrusted to them.

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

Weltin, A., & Crawford, D. J. (2026). Using backward design to create a new graduate nursing curriculum. Journal of Professional Nursing, 66, 104-107. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.profnurs.2026.06.003