Take My Liberty NURS 619 Class

The catalog describes NURS 619 as the knowledge and skills needed to design, develop, implement and evaluate nursing curricula, with current trends in nursing education and accreditation, and the place of philosophies, conceptual frameworks and learning goals and objectives in a curriculum. Practicum hours continue from the earlier educator courses.

In the published course guide, Module/Week 1 brings Forum 1, worth 50 points, and Reflection Paper 1, worth 100. Reflection Paper 2, also 100, follows in Module/Week 2.

The curriculum plan then runs through four consecutive weeks: Part I in Module/Week 3, Part II in Module/Week 4, Part III in Module/Week 5 and Part IV in Module/Week 6, each worth 100 points, with your first and second practicum logs in Module/Weeks 4 and 6.

Module/Week 7 carries Forum 2 and Reflection Paper 3, and Module/Week 8 the Curriculum Plan Evaluation, worth 50, with your last log and the self, preceptor and site evaluations.

The coordinator starts with the program your curriculum will serve. Many students design a curriculum for the kind of program their practicum is in, a prelicensure course sequence, an RN to BSN course, a hospital residency or a continuing education series, and the plan is shaped around that choice.

The four curriculum parts build one document. Typically the first sets out the context, the needs assessment and the program's mission and philosophy; the second the conceptual or organizing framework; the third the program outcomes, level objectives and course design; and the fourth the sequencing, teaching strategies and evaluation plan, aligned with accreditation standards such as those of ACEN or CCNE and the AACN Essentials. Your prompt sets the exact division, and the drafts follow it.

Each part is drafted a week ahead and revised in light of the comments on the part before. The Curriculum Plan Evaluation then assesses the plan against an evaluation model.

The three reflections draw on your practicum notes, and the forums on the week's chapters.

Each part names the standards and readings it draws on, which makes your own check quick.

NURS 619 goes to a doctorally prepared nurse educator who has sat on curriculum committees, written program outcomes and leveled objectives, and helped a nursing program through an accreditation self-study. Curriculum design has its own logic, from mission to outcomes to courses to evaluation, and a writer who has built one keeps the logic intact across four parts.

The writer knows Billings and Halstead's chapters on curriculum, the competencies Halstead describes for curriculum work and the accreditation standards programs must meet.

A single writer carries the design from Part I to the evaluation.

Another nurse educator reviews every part before delivery, tracing each outcome back to the philosophy.

Where you handed over NURS 617 and NURS 618, the writer already knows your practicum setting and teaching philosophy, which shortens the start and keeps the curriculum consistent with your earlier work.

The first difficulty is scale. Most students have planned a session or a course, but a curriculum asks for program-level thinking: mission, philosophy, framework, outcomes and how every course fits.

The second is the four-week run of curriculum parts. A weak framework in Part II makes the outcomes in Part III hard to justify, and the parts come one after another with no gap.

The third is alignment. Program outcomes that do not trace to the philosophy, or course objectives that do not trace to the outcomes, are the commonest losses.

The fourth is accreditation. Plans that ignore the standards a program must meet look unrealistic to instructors who have been through review.

The last is the closing week, when the evaluation and the practicum paperwork fall together.

The reflections are a further pressure point, because three of them fall in a course already full of design work and practicum hours, and each needs specific experiences.

NURS 619's quote covers the written work: three reflections, two forums, the four curriculum parts and the evaluation. The practicum logs and evaluations are never part of it.

Forum 1 and the first reflection are drafted in the opening days, the second reflection early in the second week, and each curriculum part a week before it is due, so the four-week run arrives in order. The evaluation is drafted during the seventh week.

Students who handed over NURS 617 and NURS 618 often keep the same writer, which lets the curriculum build on the teaching philosophy and plans already written.

Tell the coordinator what kind of program your curriculum should serve, and the design starts from that.

Comments on Part I usually show how strictly your instructor reads alignment, and the later parts are written to that standard.