NR 524 Week 4 Curriculum Map With Empty Cells Example

Curriculum Map: Six Program Outcomes Across Eight Nursing Courses, the Level at Which Each Course Touches Each Outcome, and the Empty Cells That Show What No Course Has Agreed to Carry

Student Name

College of Nursing, Chamberlain University

NR 524: Curriculum Development

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

Curriculum Map: Six Program Outcomes Across Eight Nursing Courses, the Level at Which Each Course Touches Each Outcome, and the Empty Cells That Show What No Course Has Agreed to Carry

What the Map Records

This map sets the six new end-of-program outcomes for our associate degree nursing program down one side and the eight nursing courses across the top. Each cell records the level at which a course addresses an outcome, as the course is currently taught: I for introduced, D for developed, M for brought to mastery, and a blank where the course does not address the outcome in any assessed way. The levels were assigned by reading each course's syllabus, assignments and clinical evaluation tool, not by asking faculty what they intend, because a map built from intentions tends to show every cell filled. Harden (2001) presents a map as the tool that lets a faculty see, in one place, what is taught, when and how, so that duplication and omission stand out; this map applies that idea to one question: does every outcome have courses that carry it?

The Map

Table 1 is the map as the curriculum stands now.

Table 1

Curriculum Map, Current State

Note. I = introduced; D = developed; M = mastered; blank = not addressed in any assessed way. Levels assigned from syllabi, assignments and clinical evaluation tools.

How the Map Was Checked

Because levels were assigned by one reader, two steps were taken to check them. First, each course lead received the row for their own course with the evidence behind each cell and was asked to correct anything wrong; four cells changed, three of them upward when a lead pointed to an assessed assignment the syllabus did not describe well. Second, a colleague from the practical nursing program, who does not teach in these courses, independently mapped outcome 3 from the same documents. Her row matched the one shown in Table 1 exactly. The map is therefore a fair picture of what the courses assess, though it may understate what some faculty teach informally.

Reading the Rows

Outcomes 1, 2 and 4 follow the pattern a well-built curriculum should show: introduced in the first semester, developed through the middle and brought to mastery in the final courses. These are the outcomes the program has always emphasized, and the map confirms it carries them.

Outcome 5, professionalism and ethics, has two blanks in the middle, in Maternal-Child and Complex Care. Both courses discuss ethical issues informally, but neither assesses them. The row still reaches mastery in the transition course, so the gap is one of continuity rather than absence.

Outcome 6, care in rural settings, starts late, in the third semester. That may be defensible, since students need foundational skills before learning to coordinate across settings, but the faculty should decide it deliberately rather than inherit it.

Outcome 3, person- and family-centered care including end of life, is the row that matters most. It is introduced three times, in Foundations, Mental Health and Maternal-Child, but it is never developed and never brought to mastery. In Foundations the entry is a single class period on dying; the Mental Health entry is a week on grief; the Maternal-Child entry is perinatal loss. The Complex Care course offers an optional hospice clinical day, which is why its cell is blank: optional and unassessed does not count.

What the Empty Cells Show

An outcome introduced three times and never developed is a promise the program repeats but does not keep. Students meet end-of-life content in fragments, across three semesters, in three different contexts, and are never asked to bring those fragments together or to show they can use them. This matches what a multisite study of prelicensure programs found: palliative content taught across several courses, mainly by lecture, without a clear home (Lippe, 2019).

The map also shows where the outcome could be carried. Adult Health I and II are the natural places to develop it, because medical-surgical patients with serious chronic illness are where new graduates will most often meet patients near the end of life. Complex Care is the natural place for mastery, because its clinical rotations include intensive care and hospice. Those three blank cells are where the revision should act.

The Standard the Blank Cells Fall Short Of

The blank cells are not only an internal inconsistency; they fall short of a national benchmark. The national undergraduate palliative care competency statement lists what all undergraduate nursing students should be able to do by graduation, from communicating about serious illness to supporting families after a death (Ferrell et al., 2016). A program that introduces this content three times and assesses it nowhere cannot show that its graduates meet those competencies. When the map is presented to the curriculum committee, the CARES list will sit beside it, so members can see both what the program promises and what the profession expects.

What the Map Cannot Show

The map records whether an outcome is addressed and at what level, not how well it is taught. A D in a cell may mean a single well-designed assignment or a scattered set of weak ones. It also does not show hours; Foundations' introduction to end-of-life care is one hour, while its introduction to safety runs across the whole course. A later gap analysis will read the course documents behind the cells in more detail. For now, the map has done its job: it has shown, in a form the curriculum committee can read in a minute, that one program outcome has no course carrying it beyond an introduction, and it has pointed to the three courses where that could change.

The map will be reissued each year, and the first version after the revision should show D and M in the three cells that are blank today.

References

Ferrell, B., Malloy, P., Mazanec, P., & Virani, R. (2016). CARES: AACN's new competencies and recommendations for educating undergraduate nursing students to improve palliative care. Journal of Professional Nursing, 32(5), 327-333. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.profnurs.2016.07.002

Harden, R. M. (2001). AMEE Guide No. 21: Curriculum mapping: A tool for transparent and authentic teaching and learning. Medical Teacher, 23(2), 123-137. https://doi.org/10.1080/01421590120036547

Lippe, M. (2019). Assessment of primary palliative care content within prelicensure nursing education: A multisite feasibility study. Journal of Hospice & Palliative Nursing, 21(5), 373-381. https://doi.org/10.1097/NJH.0000000000000535