NURS 8542 Week 7 Curriculum Removal Post Example

Week 7 Discussion: Initial Post

Addition Needs No Permission: Naming a Legacy Seminar to Retire, and the Evidence Standard It Has to Meet

Every revision our composite program has made in the last decade added something. A pharmacology case study, a social determinants module, a disaster preparedness week. Nothing was ever taken out. I do not think that pattern reflects anyone's judgment about what matters. It reflects how governance works: a proposal to add content needs only a sponsor and a vote, while nothing in the process asks whose hours the addition consumes. Ironside (2004) called this the additive curriculum, in which each new expectation is layered over the old ones until teaching becomes a race to cover material. Giddens and Brady (2007) described the same pressure as content saturation and argued that programs relieve it only by choosing what to leave out.

So I will name a candidate. Our sophomore seminar, Professional Nursing Concepts, is a two-credit course on nursing history, theory and professional issues that has been in the catalog, largely unchanged, for fifteen years. I propose retiring it, and I want to hold the removal to the same standard this term has applied to every addition.

Its outcome is met elsewhere. The seminar maps to the professionalism outcome, which our curriculum map showed is demonstrated in the senior practicum through graded evaluation items, and reinforced in Mental Health and Community. The seminar introduces that outcome, but so do two other courses.

Its assessment evidence is thin. The graded work is a weekly reflective journal scored complete or incomplete. Over the last four terms, 98% of students received full credit. A task nearly everyone passes regardless of what they write cannot show that anyone learned anything in particular.

Its hours are needed. Management of care is the outcome our data show we cannot demonstrate, with transfer students' benchmark results falling from 60% to 38% over six terms. Two credits is roughly enough for a graded multi-patient simulation sequence.

I grant the cost. The seminar is the one place students meet nursing's history and theory as subjects in their own right, and the faculty member who built it is respected and still teaches it. Retiring it touches her expertise, and I would want her on the group that redistributes its best content into other courses.

What would change my mind: evidence that students who completed the seminar perform better on the professionalism items than transfer students who did not take it, which our records could show. Does anyone's program have a course that survives mainly because no one has asked what it demonstrates?

Reply to Priya

Priya, you argued that removing a theory course sends graduates into practice without a professional identity, and that identity formation is exactly what reflective journaling supports. I take the point about identity more seriously than my post did. Benner et al. (2010) made formation one of the central aims of nursing education, not an extra. Where I still disagree is on whether this seminar delivers it. A journal graded complete or incomplete does not show formation; it shows submission. If identity formation is the outcome we care about, the stronger move might be to keep the reflective writing but move it into the clinical courses, where students have practice experiences to reflect on, and grade it against a rubric that distinguishes thoughtful reflection from compliance. That would cost fewer hours than a stand-alone course and produce evidence we currently lack.

Would your program accept a graded reflection in clinical courses as a replacement, or do you think the separate course itself signals something to students?

Reply to Darnell

Darnell, your challenge was practical: our state board reviews major curriculum changes, and a program that drops a professional issues course may look as though it is cutting ethics and law. That is a fair warning about how the change will be read, and it shapes how I would present it. The board's concern is whether required content is taught and evaluated, not where it sits. So the proposal would need a crosswalk showing where ethics, legal scope and professional accountability are taught and graded after the change, which our earlier crosswalk already does for professionalism. I would also want the seminar's legal content moved into Leadership and Senior Practicum rather than dispersed, so a reviewer can find it in one place.

I am less sure about history and theory. If the board asks where nursing theory is taught, what would you point to in your own program?

References

Benner, P., Sutphen, M., Leonard, V., & Day, L. (2010). Educating nurses: A call for radical transformation. Jossey-Bass.

Giddens, J. F., & Brady, D. P. (2007). Rescuing nursing education from content saturation: The case for a concept-based curriculum. Journal of Nursing Education, 46(2), 65-69. https://doi.org/10.3928/01484834-20070201-05

Ironside, P. M. (2004). "Covering content" and teaching thinking: Deconstructing the additive curriculum. Journal of Nursing Education, 43(1), 5-12. https://doi.org/10.3928/01484834-20040101-02