NURS 765 Week 8 Discussion Board Forum 3 Example

Discussion Board Forum 3: Stakeholders in Program Evaluation

NURS 765 Curriculum Development and Program Evaluation for Nurse Educators, Discussion Board Forum 3

Thread by [Student Name]

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

Finishing our group's evaluation plan last week, I noticed something uncomfortable: nearly every measure we chose is reported by the faculty or drawn from records the faculty control. Keating (2015) describes program evaluation as a systematic process for judging a program's worth and making decisions about it, and she presents it as something many parties have a stake in. A plan that mostly asks the faculty is likely to tell the faculty what they already believe.

Sanjmyatav et al. (2025) show why this matters. They evaluated an undergraduate occupational therapy program with the CIPP model, surveying 34 students, 19 alumni, 24 faculty and five program managers. All groups were satisfied with context, process and product, but on input, the program's resources and design, faculty and managers gave satisfactory ratings while students and alumni were, on average, neutral, and first-year students rated input differently from third- and fourth-year students. The same program looked better resourced from the faculty office than from the student's chair.

For our rural practice doctorate, I would make two changes. First, every input and process measure would be reported separately for faculty and for students, so that disagreements show up instead of being averaged away. Second, we would add a fourth voice to students, faculty and partners: a short annual conversation with a community group in at least one county where a graduate's project took place, asking whether anything changed for them. Rural communities are the reason the program exists, and they are rarely asked. Keating's own account of evaluation begins with whether a program meets the needs it was created for, and the people best placed to answer that question for a rural program are the people living with those needs. Asking them is slower and messier than sending a survey, but it is the only way to learn whether a graduate's improvement project mattered outside the organization where it took place.

Proverbs warns that "the one who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him" (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, Proverbs 18:17). An evaluation that hears only the faculty's case will always seem right, which is exactly why it cannot be trusted.

Reply to Brittany

Brittany, you suggested that first-time licensure pass rates are the clearest single measure of a BSN program's quality. They matter, but they measure only one product. Hensel et al. (2024) used the CIPP model to evaluate a statewide project that prepared faculty to teach clinical judgment for the Next Generation exam and looked at participation, use of resources and faculty learning, not only scores. A residency evaluation at a Veterans Affairs system went further still, following residents' competence and confidence and then whether those hired were still employed a year later (Croke et al., 2026). A program with high pass rates could still lose half its graduates in the first year. Pass rates also tell the faculty little about why a cohort did well or poorly, which is the information they need to improve. Would your school consider adding a one-year retention measure alongside pass rates?

Reply to Tyler

Tyler, you asked how to evaluate your school's online RN-to-BSN courses fairly when faculty and students seem to disagree about their quality. Gerayllo et al. (2025) built a CIPP questionnaire to compare the views of 522 students and 38 faculty members across six faculties on virtual learning, which gives you a ready structure for asking both groups the same questions. Rogers et al. (2026) add a way to look beyond opinion, showing how nurse educators used simulation performance data to judge whether students achieved program outcomes and to guide curriculum decisions. Pairing a survey of perceptions with performance data might settle which group's view the evidence supports. Online courses also deserve a measure of process, such as how often faculty respond in discussions and how quickly they return feedback, because students' ratings often reflect those habits more than the content itself. Which course would you pilot first?

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)

Gerayllo, S., Vakili, M., Jouybari, L., Moghadam, Z., Jafari, A., & Heidari, A. (2025). Using the CIPP model to elicit perceptions of health professions faculty and students about virtual learning. BMC Medical Education, 25(1), 166. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-025-06747-1

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.

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

Sanjmyatav, B., Myagmar, E., Liu, K. P. Y., Lee, J. L. C., Bayartai, M. E., Oidov, B., Bandi, S., & Badamdorj, O. (2025). A satisfaction-focused CIPP evaluation of Mongolia's undergraduate occupational therapy program: A cross-sectional study. Korean Journal of Medical Education, 37(4), 391-400. https://doi.org/10.3946/kjme.2025.352