NURS 765 Week 2 Curriculum Development Workshop Example

Curriculum Development Workshop: Needs Assessment, Governance, Backward Design and the Approval Path for a Post-Master's DNP in Rural Health Systems Leadership

The Program and the Purpose of the Workshop

The task force I serve on is developing a post-master's Doctor of Nursing Practice in rural health systems leadership at a private, faith-based university in southwest Virginia. The program would admit nurses who already hold a master's degree, many of them nurse practitioners and nurse managers working in small hospitals, clinics and health departments across the region, and prepare them to lead improvement in rural systems of care. This paper works through the curriculum development process for that program, following the order Keating (2015) recommends: assess the need, establish who will do the work, define what graduates must achieve, design the curriculum to achieve it and secure the approvals and resources to deliver it.

Topic 1: Needs Assessment Organized by Frame Factors

Keating (2015) organizes the needs assessment for a curriculum around frame factors, the external and internal conditions that make a program necessary and possible. External factors include the community and its population, the health care system and the health needs of the people it serves, the political climate, the nursing profession, financial support and the requirements of regulators and accreditors. Internal factors include the parent institution's mission, structure, finances and resources, along with the likely characteristics of faculty and students.

For our program, the needs assessment will ask three questions. Is there a regional need for doctorally prepared nurse leaders? Will qualified nurses enroll and finish? Can the university deliver the program well? The first question will be answered with regional health data and interviews with leaders at partner organizations. Evidence from elsewhere suggests the investment can pay off in rural areas. Martinez et al. (2026) evaluated a regional delivery model for rural students in a DNP program and found that 95% of rural graduates remained in their rural communities to provide care, with in-person intensives and strong faculty support by videoconference cited as strengths. The second question requires a survey of master's-prepared nurses in the region about interest, schedules and barriers. The third is addressed in the resources section below.

The needs assessment must also clarify what employers expect of DNP-prepared nurses, since our graduates will mostly stay with their current employers. Beeber et al. (2019) interviewed employers in nonacademic settings and found the role of DNP-prepared nurses still unevenly understood, and Minnick et al. (2019) surveyed 1,308 DNP graduates, and more than seven in ten said the degree had substantially strengthened their abilities to lead, to apply evidence and to improve quality. Our employer interviews will therefore ask partners what problems they would want a DNP-prepared leader to solve, which will feed directly into program outcomes.

Topic 2: Who Governs the Work

Keating (2015) places curriculum responsibility with the faculty, supported by administration. Our task force has six members: four nursing faculty with doctoral preparation, including two with DNP degrees and experience leading rural quality projects, the graduate program director and a faculty member from the university's public health program. Two advisory groups support the task force: a partner council of five leaders from rural hospitals, a federally qualified health center and the regional health department, and a student and alumni panel drawn from the university's master's programs. Decisions about outcomes, courses and assessment belong to the faculty task force and then the full nursing faculty; partners advise but do not vote. The dean manages resources and the approval process.

Topic 3: Backward Design from Outcomes to Courses

The curriculum will be designed backward: program outcomes first, then the evidence that will show graduates achieved them, then courses and learning activities. The 2021 AACN Essentials make this approach almost unavoidable, because they define advanced-level competencies across ten domains that programs must show graduates have achieved. Majumdar et al. (2026) describe a DNP redesign in which a multidisciplinary task force linked each of eleven core courses to specific Essentials domains and competencies at the advanced level, recast course objectives as outcomes that could be observed in practice and finished with a competency map and rubrics tied to milestones. Chitwood et al. (2026) propose arranging competency assessments in tiers for nurse practitioner students in a DNP program, each tier building toward the outcomes expected at graduation. We will adapt both: program outcomes written first and approved by the full faculty, a competency map showing where each advanced-level competency is introduced, developed and demonstrated, and a set of milestone assessments placed across the program.

Admission and Student Support

Backward design applies to admission too: if the program exists to keep leaders in rural communities, it should admit the nurses most likely to stay and lead there, not only those with the highest grades. Hinds and Sanner-Stiehr (2025) reviewed ten quality improvement projects on holistic admission in pre-licensure nursing programs in the United States and found that schools considered experiences, attributes and potential contributions to nursing alongside academic metrics, though long-term outcomes, student support strategies and attrition data were usually missing. Our admission review will therefore weigh rural practice experience, a statement describing a problem the applicant wants to address in a home organization and a supervisor's letter committing to support a project, alongside the master's grade point average. Because the review found outcome data missing, we will track admitted students' completion and retention in rural practice from the first cohort, so the admission model can be judged by results. The review's programs admitted pre-licensure students, not experienced nurses seeking a doctorate, so borrowing its components is a reasoned extension rather than settled practice. That is one more reason to collect our own data. The admission committee will include one partner council member as a nonvoting reader, so that rural employers see how candidates are chosen and can tell the faculty which kinds of applicants have stayed and led in their organizations before.

Students admitted this way will need support that fits working adults who live far from campus. The plan includes an orientation intensive on campus before the first course, a faculty advisor assigned at admission who stays with the student through the project, a writing support service experienced with doctoral projects and a cohort model in which students move through courses together, which Martinez et al. (2026) found strengthened peer connection in their rural program.

Topic 4: The DNP Project as the Spine of the Curriculum

For a post-master's DNP, the scholarly project is the single largest demonstration of competence, and it should organize the sequence of courses rather than sit at the end. Thiele and Armstrong (2025) describe a school that used SQUIRE 2.0, the reporting standard for quality improvement, as the framework guiding course content and the DNP project courses across six specialties, which increased the precision and consistency of projects. Bradley et al. (2026) describe rubrics for each section of the project manuscript, a scientific review committee, an oral defense and a repository of finished projects, after which fewer revisions were needed and over 60% of projects passed review on the first submission. Our sequence will therefore introduce the project problem in the first semester, teach quality improvement methods and evaluation in the courses that precede implementation and use a review committee and defense modeled on these examples.

Topic 5: The Approval Path and Timeline

A new graduate program at our university must pass through several bodies, and the timeline must allow for each.

The timeline is deliberately conservative. Keating (2015) notes that approval processes vary among institutions and states, and each step can return a proposal for revision. Building six months of overlap into the schedule allows course development to begin while later approvals are pending, on the understanding that nothing is advertised until the board has approved the program.

Topic 6: Resources and Faculty Development

The program will require two additional doctorally prepared faculty lines by the second cohort, an instructional designer for online courses, funding for two on-campus intensives a year and agreements with practice partners who will host projects. Faculty development is a resource too. Zellefrow et al. (2023) found persistent uncertainty among DNP faculty about how evidence-based practice and quality improvement differ from research, and a help desk staffed by experts raised faculty and student confidence while easing advisors' workload. Our budget will include a summer workshop for all DNP faculty on quality improvement methods and SQUIRE 2.0 before the first cohort begins.

Risks to the Plan

Three risks could delay or weaken the program. Enrollment could fall short if regional nurses cannot afford tuition or time away from work; the enrollment survey will test this before the proposal goes forward, and the partner council will be asked about tuition support. Faculty capacity could be stretched if the first cohort is larger than planned, since DNP project advising is labor-intensive; the proposal caps the first cohort at sixteen. Finally, practice sites could withdraw if a partner organization is sold or closes services, a real possibility in rural health care; each student will identify a second possible project site before the project begins. Naming these risks in the proposal shows the approving committees that the faculty have planned for them.

A Biblical Perspective

When Jesus saw the crowds, "he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd" (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, Matthew 9:36). He saw the need before he acted. A needs assessment is a disciplined form of that seeing. For a faith-based university in a rural region, the question is not only whether a program will attract tuition but whether it answers the needs of communities that have watched clinics and hospital services close. A curriculum built backward from the needs of real communities is one way a nursing faculty can practice compassion at the scale of a region.

Conclusion

Developing a new DNP is a two-year faculty project, and the length is a feature rather than a delay. Every stage yields a written product the following stage relies on, and each approving body tests the proposal against a different question: whether the need is real, whether the outcomes are sound, whether the budget holds and whether the university can deliver what it promises. A task force that skips steps to reach the first cohort sooner usually returns to them later under more pressure. This plan begins with evidence of need and ends with the first cohort. The workshop topics fit together: the needs assessment defines what graduates must do, governance ensures faculty make those decisions with partners' advice, backward design and a competency map translate outcomes into courses, the DNP project organizes the sequence and the approval timeline and resource plan make the program possible. The next assignment, a frame factor assessment, will take the first of these steps in full.

References

Beeber, A. S., Palmer, C., Waldrop, J., Lynn, M. R., & Jones, C. B. (2019). The role of Doctor of Nursing Practice-prepared nurses in practice settings. Nursing Outlook, 67(4), 354-364. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.outlook.2019.02.006

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

Chitwood, H. R., Hampton, D., Falls, C., Ewen, J. Z., Scott, L., Tovar, E., Stith, H., Makowski, A., Grubbs, A. B., Clemmons, J. M., & Melander, S. D. (2026). Model for structuring competency-based education assessments for nurse practitioner students in a Doctor of Nursing Practice program. Journal of the American Association of Nurse Practitioners. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1097/JXX.0000000000001342

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

Hinds, A., & Sanner-Stiehr, E. (2025). Key components of holistic admission in schools of nursing: A scoping literature review. Journal of Professional Nursing, 59, 33-39. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.profnurs.2025.03.002

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

Martinez, R. M., Perry, C. K., Izumi, S., Chipman, T. C., & Franklin, H. (2026). A regional delivery model for rural graduate nurse practitioner education: A mixed-methods evaluation. Journal of Nursing Education. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.3928/01484834-20260827-02

Minnick, A. F., Kleinpell, R., & Allison, T. L. (2019). DNPs' labor participation, activities, and reports of degree contributions. Nursing Outlook, 67(1), 89-100. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.outlook.2018.10.008

Thiele, D. K., & Armstrong, G. (2025). Implementing SQUIRE guidelines to improve standardization and rigor of DNP projects. Journal of Professional Nursing, 56, 85-93. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.profnurs.2024.12.004

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