NURS 765 Week 4 Discussion Board Forum 2 Example

Discussion Board Forum 2: Choosing and Protecting an Organizing Framework

NURS 765 Curriculum Development and Program Evaluation for Nurse Educators, Discussion Board Forum 2

Thread by [Student Name]

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

Our task force has settled on three threads for the organizing framework of the post-master's DNP we are planning: rural populations, systems leadership and practice scholarship. Keating (2015) describes the organizing framework as the structure that gives a curriculum its coherence, connecting the mission and philosophy to the program outcomes and determining how courses build on one another. Without one, a curriculum is a list of courses that happen to share a degree.

I have come to think of the framework as a promise the faculty make to students: if you take these courses in this order, you will reach these outcomes. A promise like that has to be checked. Pittman et al. (2026) describe a step-wise gap analysis for mapping baccalaureate and graduate curricula to the 2021 AACN Essentials, which contain ten domains, eight concepts and 45 competencies. Faculty reviewed the literature, identified evidence-informed practices, mapped selected courses and completed a validated gap analysis, using backward design and participatory action research so that the faculty owned the result. We plan to borrow that method: each of our three threads will be mapped to the advanced-level competencies, so that we can show, course by course, where rural population health or systems leadership is introduced, practiced and assessed.

The harder problem comes after approval. Van de Mortel et al. (2023) describe curriculum drift, in which innovations are whittled away over time by incremental changes to individual courses until the accredited curriculum is no longer the one being taught. They propose a program quality framework in which teaching teams monitor delivery across the life of the curriculum and build staff capacity at the same time. For a small DNP faculty with several adjunct instructors, this is a real risk; a course on health policy could easily lose its rural focus after a change of instructor. Our plan is to attach the framework threads to each course's signature assignment and review those assignments every year.

Paul describes the same problem from the builder's side: "According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it" (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, 1 Corinthians 3:10). Every adjunct, every new course lead and every revision committee builds on a foundation someone else laid. A framework protects a curriculum only if each later builder is shown the foundation and asked to take care how they build on it.

Reply to Rachel

Rachel, your school is weighing a concept-based framework for its BSN program, and you asked whether concepts can be mapped as cleanly as domains. Campbell et al. (2026) crosswalked eight competencies from the Age-Friendly 4Ms framework (what matters, medication, mentation and mobility) with entry-level and advanced competencies in the Essentials and found strong overlap, especially in collaboration and person-centered care, which produced four tailored competency sets for different learners. Their work suggests concepts and domains can be mapped together if faculty are explicit. Rogers et al. (2026) add a way to test whether the map holds, using simulation performance data to judge whether students actually reach program outcomes. Could your simulation scenarios be tagged by concept, so that weak concepts show up in the data?

Reply to Derek

Derek, you asked how a framework survives when most online sections are taught by adjunct faculty who did not help design it. Hardin et al. (2022) describe faculty in a DNP program who built a team-based case study assignment to help distance learners in advanced practice and nurse administrator tracks reach program competencies when in-person practicum experiences were disrupted. A shared assignment like that carries the framework into every section regardless of who teaches it. McRae et al. (2026) paired junior faculty with experienced mentors to prepare an accreditation self-study, which built understanding of the standards across the whole faculty. Pairing each adjunct with a framework mentor for the first term might give your program the same benefit. Which course would you start with?

References

Campbell, K., Kitt-Lewis, E., Schlenk, E., & Degenholtz, H. (2026). Crosswalking the AACN Essentials competencies with the 4Ms competencies for age-friendly nursing home care. Nurse Educator. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1097/NNE.0000000000002292

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

Hardin, L. M., Gurley, L. E., & Cortes, C. (2022). Innovative team approach for achieving DNP program competencies for distance learners during the COVID-19 pandemic. Nursing Education Perspectives, 43(5), 318-320. https://doi.org/10.1097/01.NEP.0000000000001007

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

McRae, M., Hart, L., & Wolf, L. (2026). Accreditation as opportunity: Preparing future nursing leaders through faculty collaboration and succession planning. Journal of Professional Nursing, 65, 137-141. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.profnurs.2026.04.007

Pittman, J., Anderson, J., Bentley, E., Clanton, C., Hammonds, L. S., McCoy, K. T., Otts, J. A., Riley, B. H., & Sturm, T. A. (2026). Gap analysis methodology for mapping baccalaureate and graduate nursing curricula to the AACN Essentials: A step-wise approach. Journal of Professional Nursing, 63, 26-32. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.profnurs.2025.12.009

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

van de Mortel, T., Mitchell, C., Shuker, M. A., Needham, J., Kain, V., Sanger, G., & Pierce, B. (2023). A program quality framework: A collaborative teaching team approach to quality assurance, quality enhancement and staff capacity building. Frontiers in Medicine, 10, 1242408. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmed.2023.1242408