Paper
Friday, 21 July 2006
This presentation is part of : Nursing Education: How Students Study and Learn
Evidence for Benchmarking of “Learning” Curriculum Strand
Karolyn Kells, PhD, RN and Sally Schmidt, MSN, RN. Department of Nursing, Fort Hays State University, Hays, KS, USA
Learning Objective #1: describe how one U.S. undergraduate nursing baccalaureate program benchmarked a curriculum strand.
Learning Objective #2: evaluate data needed for curriculum continous quality improvement regarding the learning strand.
            Curriculum evaluation is a continuous quality improvement (CQI) process.  Trending and evaluating student performance on curriculum educational strands, such as learning, is critical for both curriculum benchmarking and CQI, as well as, providing evidence of quality education for accrediting bodies. Research has shown that each United States nursing curriculum is individualized enough that every program must evaluate their curriculum outcomes.

This research project used the theoretical definition of learning as developed by the departmental faculty following a literature review and curriculum revision.  This definition was operationalized as the student group scores from the Nurse Entrance Test (NET), ARNETT NCLEX RN CAT, grade point average (GPA), and ARNETT Critical Thinking Tests (CTT).  The research questions were:  Is there a significant relationship between student NET scores and NCLEX-RN results?; Is there a significant relationship between students overall GPA and CTT scores?;  and Is there significant relationship between CTT and NCLEX-RN results?   These data were used to track/trend students’ curriculum outcomes.  In addition these outcome data were used to guide faculty in curriculum revision/improvement, to develop benchmarks for future students and to provide data for external collegial comparison.

See more of Nursing Education: How Students Study and Learn
See more of The 17th International Nursing Research Congress Focusing on Evidence-Based Practice (19-22 July 2006)