NURS 765 Week 1 Discussion Board Forum 1 Example

Discussion Board Forum 1: The Role of Faculty in Curriculum Development

NURS 765 Curriculum Development and Program Evaluation for Nurse Educators, Discussion Board Forum 1

Thread by [Student Name]

The university, program and classmates are composites; the textbook, Scripture and journal articles cited are real.

This term I joined a faculty task force charged with planning a post-master's DNP in rural health systems leadership. At our first meeting, a colleague asked a question that fits this forum well: whose curriculum will this be? The dean wants the program, the provost's office will approve it and a consultant has offered a template. Keating (2015) is clear that, whatever the influences, curriculum development, implementation and evaluation are the responsibility of the faculty, who hold the expertise in the discipline and answer for the program's quality. Administrators support and approve; faculty design.

Majumdar et al. (2026) show what that responsibility looks like when it is exercised well. Their school redesigned its DNP curriculum to meet the competency-based expectations of the 2021 AACN Essentials. A multidisciplinary task force conducted a needs assessment, mapped eleven core DNP courses to the Essentials domains and advanced-level competencies, rewrote objectives toward measurable practice-based outcomes and removed redundant coursework. The scholarly project was rebuilt into proposal, implementation and dissemination phases with milestone rubrics. None of that could have been delegated to a consultant, because it required judgment about what the school's own students and partners needed.

Collective ownership raises a harder question: are the faculty ready? Zellefrow et al. (2023) describe persistent confusion among DNP students and faculty about where research ends and evidence-based practice or quality improvement begins, along with low faculty confidence in mentoring evidence-based practice and growing advising loads as enrollments rise. Their school responded with a DNP help desk staffed by experts in evidence-based practice, which raised student and faculty confidence and eased the demand on project advisors. For our task force, the lesson is that a DNP curriculum cannot be stronger than the faculty's own grasp of practice scholarship, so faculty development belongs in the curriculum plan itself.

I am proposing three commitments to the task force: every faculty member will review the Essentials' advanced-level competencies before any course is drafted; we will build a needs assessment with our rural health partners before writing outcomes; and we will budget for faculty development in quality improvement methods. Scripture describes the wisdom of shared counsel: "Where there is no guidance, a people falls, but in an abundance of counselors there is safety" (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, Proverbs 11:14). A curriculum written by one person is fragile; one built by many prepared counselors is safe in the sense the proverb means.

Reply to Jasmine

Jasmine, you described faculty resistance to your school's move to a concept-based BSN curriculum, especially from senior faculty who built the current courses. Keating (2015) treats faculty buy-in as part of the development process rather than an obstacle to it, and one practical route is evidence the faculty already trust. Rogers et al. (2026) reviewed six studies in which nurse educators used simulation performance data to evaluate curricula, identifying learner deficits, testing whether program outcomes were achieved and guiding changes to clinical experiences. If your school has years of simulation data, showing where current graduates struggle may persuade colleagues more than any argument for concepts. Which outcome do your simulation records show students missing most often, and has anyone on the committee looked at those records with this question in mind?

Reply to Marcus

Marcus, your plan to add two clinical partners to your graduate curriculum committee is a good one, and I would add a way to keep them involved after the first meetings. Gettis et al. (2026) describe a partnership in which a clinical nurse scientist mentor, employed by a pediatric health system, connected DNP students with projects that mattered to the organization, which improved the relevance and sustainability of the projects. Bradley et al. (2026) found that a scientific review committee raised DNP project quality, with over 60% of projects approved on first submission, though committee workload was a limitation. Giving your partners a defined role, such as reviewing project proposals each term, might hold their interest better than a standing seat. What would your partners most want from the program?

References

Bradley, C., Barrere, C., Boyd, C. A., Casbarro, N., & Violano, P. (2026). Strategies to advance DNP scholarly project rigor. Journal of Professional Nursing, 65, 1-5. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.profnurs.2026.03.011

English Standard Version Bible. (2016). Crossway. (Original work published 2001)

Gettis, M. A., Winter, K., & Calamaro, C. J. (2026). Academic partnerships with clinical nurse scientist mentors improve the Doctor of Nursing Practice student experience. Journal of the American Association of Nurse Practitioners, 38(9), 705-709. https://doi.org/10.1097/JXX.0000000000001367

Keating, S. B. (Ed.). (2015). Curriculum development and evaluation in nursing (3rd ed.). Springer Publishing Company.

Majumdar, J. R., Yermal, S. J., Jolade, E., & Clark-Cutaia, M. (2026). Putting practice first in Doctor of Nursing Practice: A competency-based curriculum redesign. Journal of Nursing Education, 65(9), 557-560. https://doi.org/10.3928/01484834-20260227-01

Rogers, B. A., Roberts, S., & Bertiz, R. (2026). Leveraging simulation data for system-level curriculum evaluation: An integrative review. Nursing Education Perspectives, 47(1), 5-11. https://doi.org/10.1097/01.NEP.0000000000001469

Zellefrow, C., Casler, K., Masciola, R., & Tucker, S. (2023). The Doctor of Nursing Practice help desk: An innovative approach to developing evidence-based practice competency and providing DNP project support. Worldviews on Evidence-Based Nursing, 20(1), 37-43. https://doi.org/10.1111/wvn.12610