Touchpoints and Timelines: A Proposal for Gathering Stakeholder Feedback Before and During a Practical Nursing Curriculum Revision
[Student Name]
University of Phoenix
NSG/532: Innovative Curriculum Design
Week 2 Assignment
[Instructor Name]
[Date]
The college, the program and its stakeholders are a composite written for a model paper.
In Week 1, a review of our practical nursing program found that its mission and courses no longer fit where graduates work, since most now work with older adults outside hospitals, yet most clinical hours are in acute care, gerontology is taught in a single four-week unit and clinical judgment is not practiced across the program. A revision is needed. This paper proposes how stakeholders will shape it.
Why Stakeholder Feedback Comes First
A curriculum revision designed by faculty alone risks repeating the original problem: a program built on assumptions about practice rather than on the knowledge of the people who practice and hire. Keating and DeBoor (2018) describe curriculum development as a process that must account for the external frame factors of the community, the health care system and regulation as well as the internal frame factors of the institution, and stakeholders are how those factors enter the process. Stakeholders asked after the decisions are made are an audience; stakeholders asked before are partners.
The Stakeholders
Students and recent graduates know what the curriculum felt like and where it left gaps. Faculty will teach the revised curriculum and know its constraints. Long-term care, home health and clinic employers know what new practical nurses need on the first day. Clinical partners control the placements the revision depends on. The college's curriculum committee and administration approve changes and budgets. The state board of nursing approves substantive changes to prelicensure programs. The program's advisory board, which by college policy includes employers, graduates and community members, is the formal channel for several of these voices.
The Nurse Educator's Role
As curriculum coordinator, my role is to design the process, invite stakeholders at the right moments, ask questions that produce usable answers, record what is said, weigh conflicting input openly and report back what was done with it. The role also requires protecting students' voices, since students may hesitate to criticize a program they are still enrolled in, and balancing employers' wishes against the program's broader educational purpose and the state board's rules.
Touchpoints and Timeline
Phase 1, discovery, months 1 to 4.
Touchpoint 1: graduate survey, month 1. An online survey of the last three cohorts asking where they work, which parts of the program prepared them well and which did not, with open questions.
Touchpoint 2: employer interviews, months 1 and 2. Thirty-minute structured interviews with directors of nursing at eight long-term care and home health employers who hire our graduates, asking what new practical nurses do well and poorly in the first six months.
Touchpoint 3: student focus groups, month 2. Two focus groups of current students, led by a faculty member from another program so students can speak freely, about workload, clinical experiences and preparation for licensure.
Touchpoint 4: faculty retreat, month 3. A one-day meeting where all faculty review the Week 1 curriculum map and the first three touchpoints' results.
Touchpoint 5: advisory board, month 4. A meeting to present the findings and proposed direction and ask members to confirm or challenge them.
Phase 2, design, months 5 to 10.
Touchpoint 6: clinical partner meetings, months 5 and 6. Meetings with long-term care and home health sites about expanding clinical placements, supervision models and scheduling.
Touchpoint 7: draft review, month 8. Faculty, two employers, two graduates and two students review the draft course outlines and curriculum map and comment in writing.
Touchpoint 8: state board consultation, month 9. An informal consultation with the board's education consultant before the formal submission, to learn whether the changes will require approval and what documentation is needed.
Phase 3, approval and launch, months 11 to 18.
Touchpoint 9: curriculum committee, month 11, for college approval.
Touchpoint 10: state board submission, month 12.
Touchpoint 11: advisory board, month 14, to review the final curriculum and launch plans.
Touchpoint 12: first-term feedback, month 18. A survey and focus group with the first cohort under the revised curriculum.
Questions That Produce Usable Answers
The quality of feedback depends on the questions. General questions such as "What should we change?" produce general answers. The proposal uses specific questions tied to the program's outcomes, which are adapted from the league's published competencies for graduates of practical nursing programs (National League for Nursing, 2010). Employers will be asked, for example, "In the first six months, how well do our graduates recognize a change in a resident's condition and report it?" and "What task do new graduates most often hand back to you?" Graduates will be asked to rate their preparation for specific situations, such as supervising nursing assistants or managing a behavioral crisis in a resident with dementia, rather than to rate the program overall. Specific questions make it possible to compare answers across groups and over time.
Reaching Voices That Are Often Missed
Some stakeholders are easy to reach and others are not. Directors of nursing respond to invitations; nursing assistants who work beside our graduates, and residents and families in long-term care, rarely do. The proposal adds two brief touchpoints: a short paper survey left at two partner facilities for nursing assistants, and a conversation with one facility's resident and family council. Their perspective on what makes a practical nurse helpful is one the program has never collected.
Handling Conflicting Feedback
Stakeholders will disagree. Employers may ask for more long-term care clinical hours while hospitals that still provide some placements may resist losing them, and students may ask for less content while employers ask for more. Conflicts will be handled with three rules: every piece of feedback is recorded, decisions are tested against the program's outcomes and the state board's requirements, and the reasoning for each decision is written down and shared. Where evidence exists, such as licensure item analysis or employment data, it will weigh more than preference.
Protecting Participants
Feedback carries some risk for the people who give it. Student focus group notes will record themes without names, and the facilitator will not share who said what. Employer interview notes will be summarized by theme so that one employer's comments about a particular graduate cannot be traced. Survey data will be stored on the college's secure drive. These steps make honest feedback more likely.
Closing the Loop
After each phase, stakeholders will receive a short summary of what they said and what changed as a result, and what did not change and why. Graduates and students will receive it by email, employers at the advisory board, faculty at meetings. Closing the loop builds trust for future revisions and is how the program shows that feedback matters (Iwasiw et al., 2020).
Conclusion
Twelve touchpoints over eighteen months will bring graduates, students, faculty, employers, clinical partners, the college and the state board into the revision at points where their input can still change it. The educator's role is to design that process, weigh conflicting views openly and report back what was done. Week 3 will look closely at using student and faculty feedback to improve the curriculum.
References
Iwasiw, C. L., Andrusyszyn, M.-A., & Goldenberg, D. (2020). Curriculum development in nursing education (4th ed.). Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Keating, S. B., & DeBoor, S. S. (Eds.). (2018). Curriculum development and evaluation in nursing education (5th ed.). Springer Publishing.
National League for Nursing. (2010). Outcomes and competencies for graduates of practical/vocational, diploma, associate degree, baccalaureate, master's, practice doctorate, and research doctorate programs in nursing.
How this NSG 532 Week 2 example is structured
Public descriptions of NSG/532 Week 2 describe a proposal, with touchpoints and timelines, for including stakeholder feedback in curriculum development, along with the nurse educator's role in soliciting it. This paper names the stakeholders, gives each a method and a schedule tied to the revision's phases, explains how conflicting feedback will be handled and closes with how stakeholders will learn what changed because of their input. Students search this week as NSG 532 Week 2, NSG532 Wk 2 or NSG/532 Wk 2; all three are the same assignment.
NSG/532 Week 2 questions, answered
What does NSG/532 Week 2 usually ask for?
Public descriptions show a proposal, including touchpoints and timelines, for how and when stakeholder feedback will be included in curriculum development, and an analysis of the nurse educator's role in soliciting it.
Who are the stakeholders in a nursing curriculum?
Students, graduates, faculty, clinical partners and employers, the college's administration and curriculum committee, the state board of nursing and, in many programs, members of the community served.
What is a touchpoint?
A planned moment at which a stakeholder group is consulted, such as an advisory board meeting, a survey or a focus group, placed where its input can still change a decision.
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