NURS 765 Week 7 Group Project Part 3: Projected Program Evaluation Example

A Projected Program Evaluation for the RHSL Practice Doctorate: Context, Input, Process and Product Measures, Benchmarks and a Five-Year Timeline

Purposes of the Evaluation

The rural health systems leadership (RHSL) DNP will be evaluated for three purposes: to show whether graduates achieve the seven program outcomes written in Part 1, to give the faculty timely information for improving courses and the project sequence and to supply the evidence the nursing accreditor and the university require. Keating (2015) argues that program evaluation should be systematic and planned with the curriculum, so that evaluation questions shape what data are collected from the first cohort rather than being asked after the fact.

The Evaluation Model

The group chose Stufflebeam's context, input, process and product (CIPP) model. CIPP suits a new program because it asks whether the program is needed and well resourced as well as whether it works, and because it produces information for decisions at each stage. Hensel et al. (2024) used CIPP to evaluate a statewide nursing project in which 20 faculty champions from 13 schools wrote case studies and other items for an open test bank that was used more than 60,000 times in its first year, drawing data from participation rates, use counts and surveys. That study shows the model working with the kinds of data a nursing program already collects. The group considered two alternatives. An outcomes-only approach, measuring graduates' results and little else, would be simpler but would leave the faculty unable to explain a poor result. An accreditation checklist would satisfy the accreditor but would not ask whether the region still needs the program. CIPP covers both concerns in one structure. The four sections below apply each component to the RHSL DNP.

Context Evaluation

Context evaluation asks whether the needs that justified the program still exist and whether the program still answers them. When the program was proposed, the frame factor work documented lost hospital services, unmet preventive and chronic care and too few nurses ready to lead change. Every three years, the program director and the partner council will review regional health and workforce data and interview partner leaders using the questions from the original needs assessment. The benchmark is qualitative: the council must confirm that the program's focus still matches regional priorities, or the faculty must revise the framework threads. The context review will also ask a harder question: whether another program, such as a new online offering from a larger university, has begun meeting the same need. If it has, the faculty will consider whether the program should narrow its focus, partner with the other program or change its admission priorities.

Input Evaluation

Input evaluation asks whether the program has what it needs: faculty, budget, technology, practice partners and student support. Measures include the ratio of students to project advisors (benchmark: no more than six project students per advisor), the number of signed partner agreements for project sites (benchmark: one for every admitted student, plus a backup site), the adequacy of the online platform and library holdings in annual student and faculty surveys (benchmark: 80% rating adequate or better) and the share of DNP faculty completing the annual development workshop on quality improvement methods (benchmark: 100%). The dean is responsible for this report each spring, before the budget is set, so that a shortfall in advisors or partner sites can be funded before the next cohort is admitted rather than discovered after. Input data also protect students: if advisor loads rise above the benchmark, the program will cap the next cohort instead of stretching faculty further.

Process Evaluation

Process evaluation asks whether the program is delivered as designed. Measures include end-of-course evaluations, the timing of project milestones and the results of an annual review of signature assignments. Van de Mortel et al. (2023) warn that a curriculum approved by an accreditor can stop being the curriculum students receive, as one instructor trims a project here and another swaps a reading there, and they place responsibility for preventing this with collaborative teaching teams that review delivery for as long as the curriculum runs. Each June, the curriculum committee will compare every course's current syllabus and signature assignment with the version approved in the curriculum proposal, using the outcome table from Part 2 as the standard. Any course whose assignments no longer measure their linked outcomes returns to its lead faculty member for revision before the next offering.

Project milestones are a second process measure. The benchmark is that at least 85% of students have an approved project proposal by the end of RHSL 892 in the second fall; a lower rate signals a problem in the first-year sequence that must be studied before the next cohort reaches that point.

Product Evaluation

Product evaluation asks whether the program achieves its outcomes. The table links each program outcome to its measures, benchmarks and timing.

For Outcome 6, the program will use the scale that Volkert et al. (2026) adapted for graduate nursing education, which showed strong content validity across four subscales and an overall validity index of 0.92. Rural retention is the program's most important product measure, and it is also the slowest to arrive, since the mission is to keep doctoral leaders in rural communities. Croke et al. (2026) evaluated a nurse practitioner residency by following competence, confidence, employment and retention across four cohorts and reported that five of six hired graduates (83%) remained a year later; our alumni survey will follow graduates in the same way, at one and three years.

Data Collection and Responsibility

An evaluation plan fails most often not in its design but in the ordinary work of collecting data. The program will keep one evaluation calendar, maintained by the program director, listing every survey, rubric report and review with its due date and the person responsible. Rubric scores for the signature assignments will be entered by course faculty into a shared spreadsheet at the end of each term, which avoids asking faculty to recall results months later. The alumni and employer surveys will be sent by the program office with two reminders, and the response rate will itself be reported, since a survey answered by a third of graduates says little about the rest.

Small numbers are a real limitation. A first cohort of sixteen means that one student's withdrawal moves the completion rate by six points, so the faculty will read early results as signals rather than verdicts and will judge most benchmarks on a rolling three-cohort average once enough cohorts have finished. Qualitative data will carry more weight in the first years: exit interviews with every graduating student, notes from the partner council and the comments in course evaluations will be read by two faculty members and summarized each summer.

Students' privacy will be protected throughout. Results will be reported for the cohort, never for an individual student, and the political competence scale and alumni survey will be collected without names attached to responses in the reports that go to the partner council.

Evaluation for Accreditation

Accreditation turns the evaluation into a shared faculty task rather than one person's report. McRae et al. (2026) describe a school that prepared for nursing accreditation by pairing junior faculty with experienced mentors to analyze the standards, using standardized minutes, committee reports and stoplight tracking tools as evidence of continuous improvement, with full faculty participation and no compliance concerns reported. Our program will keep a stoplight table of every benchmark above, updated each term: green when met, yellow when within five points of the benchmark and red when missed. Each faculty member will be paired with a mentor for one accreditation standard, so that the knowledge needed for the self-study is spread across the faculty from the first year.

Five-Year Timeline

Using the Results

Every red benchmark will lead to a written action plan with an owner and a date, reviewed at the next faculty meeting. A yellow benchmark will be watched for one more cycle before action is required, which keeps the faculty from reacting to the small swings that a small program will always show. Changes that affect program outcomes or the degree plan will go through the same faculty and university committees that approved the original curriculum, so that the evaluation cannot be used to bypass governance. Changes within a course, such as a revised assignment or reading, will be approved by the curriculum committee and recorded so the next drift review compares against the current approved version. Results will go to the partner council each year, because partners are both sources of data and users of the program. The faculty will also publish what they learn, including the retention data, so that other rural programs can benefit. An evaluation earns its cost only when a missed benchmark changes something in the program.

Limitations of the Plan

The plan has limits the faculty should state openly. The rural retention measure cannot show that the program caused graduates to stay; most were rooted in their communities before admission, and the program selected them partly for that reason. The evaluation will therefore compare retention with that of the university's master's graduates from the same region, which is an imperfect comparison but better than none. Employer surveys may be colored by loyalty, since most employers sponsored the students, so their ratings will be read alongside project outcome data rather than alone. Finally, the benchmarks are the group's projections for a program that does not yet exist. After the first two cohorts, the faculty will review whether each benchmark is set at a meaningful level, raising those that are met easily and studying, rather than lowering, those that are missed.

A Biblical Perspective

"Let us test and examine our ways, and return to the Lord" (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, Lamentations 3:40). Examination in Scripture is not an end in itself but leads to turning back toward what is right. Program evaluation is a faculty's way of testing its own work honestly, admitting where the program falls short and returning to the mission it set out to serve.

Conclusion

This projected evaluation uses the CIPP model to check that the RHSL DNP remains needed, has the resources it needs, is delivered as designed and produces graduates who lead improvement and stay in rural communities. Each of the seven program outcomes has a measure, a benchmark and a time, and the stoplight table and mentor pairs prepare the faculty for accreditation from the first year. Together with Parts 1 and 2, the plan completes a curriculum whose purposes, design and evidence fit together.

References

Croke, B. A., Nwosu, C. C., Underwood, P. C., Tepper, K., Colman, A., & Shea, E. (2026). Evaluation of the Veterans Affairs Boston Healthcare System primary care nurse practitioner residency program. Nursing Education Perspectives. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1097/01.NEP.0000000000001599

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

Hensel, D., Billings, D. M., & Wiseman, R. (2024). Evaluation of the Maryland Next Gen Test Bank Project: Implications and recommendations. Nursing Education Perspectives, 45(4), 225-229. https://doi.org/10.1097/01.NEP.0000000000001239

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

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

Volkert, D., McKinley Yoder, C., Robinson, L., Johnston, H., & Goar, A. (2026). Content validation of a political competence scale in graduate nursing education. Nursing Education Perspectives. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1097/01.NEP.0000000000001603