NR 537 Week 3 Test Blueprint Example

Course	NR 537 Assessment and Evaluation in Education
Week	3
Paper type	Test blueprint
Length	About 1,130 words, 3 pages
Format	APA 7 student paper
School	Chamberlain University
Program	MSN, Nurse Educator
Updated	September 2026

Free sample paper for NR 537 Week 3

Test Blueprint: A Sixty-Item Maternal-Newborn Final Examination Laid Out as a Grid of Six Content Areas and Three Cognitive Levels, With Every Cell Count Traced to Objectives and Class Hours Rather Than to What the Instructor Enjoys Teaching

Student Name

College of Nursing, Chamberlain University

NR 537: Assessment and Evaluation in Education

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

What this page is doingThe title explains that the grid replaces memory and preference with stated weights, which is the whole purpose of a blueprint. Student APA 7 title page.

Why a Blueprint

I have taught the third-year maternal-newborn course for six years and have written its final examination each spring from memory. When I compared last year's examination with the course schedule, I found that 17 of 60 items, 28%, concerned labor and birth, a topic that took 19% of class time and that I particularly enjoy teaching. Newborn care, which took a similar share of time, had only 8 items. Nobody had decided that labor should count for more. It happened because I wrote the items I found easiest to write.

A test blueprint takes that decision out of memory. It is a grid that sets, before any item is written, how many items each content area receives and at what cognitive level, based on stated weights. Evaluation texts for nurse educators describe the blueprint as the main tool for making sure that an examination samples the course's objectives in proportion to their importance (Oermann & Gaberson, 2019). This blueprint is for the 60-item final examination of this year's course.

Setting the Weights

Each content area's share of items was set from two sources, averaged. The first is its share of class hours, which reflects how much teaching it received. The second is its share of the course's 18 objectives, shown in the table as a count, which reflects what the course committed students to learn. Where the two differed, I used their average rather than either alone, since class hours reflect scheduling constraints and objectives can be broad or narrow. The resulting weights were then rounded to whole items and checked so that the total is 60.

The cognitive levels follow the revised taxonomy of educational objectives, grouped into three columns: remembering and understanding, applying and analyzing, with the last including prioritizing and recognizing patterns (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001). About half of the items are at the applying level, because most course objectives ask students to apply knowledge to patient care, and about a third are at the analyzing level, because the licensing examination now emphasizes clinical judgment. In practice, this means that many items in the analyzing column will present a short scenario with several findings, some relevant and some not, and ask students to identify which findings matter most or which problem to address first. Items of this kind take longer to write and to answer, which is one reason the remember-and-understand column is kept small: every recall item saved gives time back to students for the harder items. Dickison and colleagues' account of the licensing examination's judgment model lists steps such as recognizing cues, analyzing them and prioritizing hypotheses (Dickison et al., 2019), and the analyzing column targets those steps.

The Blueprint

Table 1 sets out the grid.

Table 1

Final Examination Blueprint, 60 Items

Content area	Share of class hours	Objectives	Weight used	Remember and understand	Apply	Analyze	Total items
Antepartum care	17%	3 of 18	16.9%	2	5	3	10
Labor and birth	19%	3 of 18	17.9%	2	6	3	11
Postpartum care	16%	3 of 18	16.4%	2	5	3	10
Newborn care	18%	3 of 18	17.4%	2	5	3	10
Complications of pregnancy and birth	22%	4 of 18	22.1%	1	6	6	13
Family, culture and teaching	8%	2 of 18	9.6%	1	3	2	6
Total	100%	18	100%	10	30	20	60

Reading the Grid

Several decisions in the grid are worth explaining. Labor and birth falls from 17 items last year to 11, which matches its share of hours and objectives. Newborn care rises from 8 to 10. Complications receive the most items, 13, and the largest share of analyzing items, 6, because recognizing a dangerous pattern such as postpartum preeclampsia or magnesium toxicity is the clearest example of clinical judgment in the course. Family, culture and teaching receive the fewest items because much of that objective is assessed through the course's teaching project, which is scored with a rubric rather than tested.

The remember-and-understand column is deliberately small, 10 items of 60. Items at this level are easiest to write and tempting to overuse, but they add little information about whether students can apply what they know. Each content area keeps at least one such item, because some facts, such as normal newborn vital signs, are prerequisites for everything else.

Using the Grid to Write Items

Items will be written cell by cell. For each cell, I will list the objectives it covers and write items until the count is met. Items already in the item bank from previous years will be sorted into cells first, and only the gaps will be filled with new items. Last year's excess of labor items will mostly go unused this year and remain in the bank for future examinations. Every new item will follow item-writing guidelines and be reviewed by a colleague before use.

Checking the Examination Against the Grid

When the examination is assembled, a colleague who did not write it will classify each item by content area and cognitive level without seeing the blueprint. If the colleague's classification differs from mine on more than a few items, particularly at the analyzing level, those items will be reviewed. Items that I intended as analyzing items may in practice be answerable by recall, and a blind classification catches this better than my own review. The final examination will be compared with the grid cell by cell, and any cell more than one item away from its target will be corrected.

What the Blueprint Does Not Do

The blueprint ensures that the examination samples the course in proportion to stated weights. It does not ensure that individual items are well written, which depends on the item-writing and review process, or that the examination is reliable, which will be checked through item analysis after it is given. It also does not weigh topics by their clinical danger. A topic such as postpartum hemorrhage may deserve more items than its class hours suggest because errors are so costly. I have handled that by giving complications the largest share of analyzing items, but the weights could be revised next year to include clinical risk as a third source, alongside hours and objectives.

What this page is doingThe blueprint sets weights from class hours and objectives, shows the resulting grid, explains the decisions it embodies and says what it cannot guarantee.

References

Anderson, L. W., & Krathwohl, D. R. (Eds.). (2001). A taxonomy for learning, teaching, and assessing: A revision of Bloom's taxonomy of educational objectives. Longman.

Dickison, P., Haerling, K. A., & Lasater, K. (2019). Integrating the National Council of State Boards of Nursing Clinical Judgment Model into nursing educational frameworks. Journal of Nursing Education, 58(2), 72-78. https://doi.org/10.3928/01484834-20190122-03

Oermann, M. H., & Gaberson, K. B. (2019). Evaluation and testing in nursing education (6th ed.). Springer Publishing.

The Chamberlain NR 537 Week 3 instructions

Test planning is the focus here. Prompts generally ask for a blueprint for an examination, showing content areas, their weights, cognitive levels and the number of items in each cell, with a rationale. Set weights from stated sources, such as class hours and objectives, rather than from memory. Explain how you combined them. Choose cognitive levels that reflect what the course asks students to do, and justify the proportion of recall items. Check that rows and columns add up. Describe how items will be written or selected to fill each cell, and how the finished examination will be checked against the grid. Name what the blueprint cannot guarantee. Cite measurement sources in APA 7 and present the grid as a table.

How this NR 537 Week 3 example is built

The blueprint begins with a comparison between last year's examination and the course schedule that revealed an overweighted topic. It explains the purpose of a blueprint with an evaluation text. Weights come from averaging class-hour shares and objective counts, and cognitive levels follow the revised taxonomy, with analyzing items linked to the licensing examination's judgment model. Table 1 shows the grid with weights and item counts. A section explains the key decisions, including why complications receive the most analyzing items. Further sections describe writing items cell by cell from the bank, a blind classification check by a colleague and the blueprint's limits, including clinical risk as a possible future weight.

Where the points sit in the NR 537 Week 3 rubric

Blueprint rubrics typically reward a clear grid, justified weights, appropriate cognitive levels, correct arithmetic, alignment with objectives and a plan for using the blueprint. Graders check that rows and columns total correctly and that weights follow the stated sources, so transparent arithmetic earns credit. Explaining the proportion of recall to higher-level items shows understanding of what the examination should measure. Describing how the finished test will be checked against the grid demonstrates quality control. Naming limitations, such as clinical risk not being weighted, shows judgment. Citations to evaluation texts and the cognitive taxonomy support the rationale.

NR 537 Week 3 help from the desk

The most common weakness is a blueprint whose weights are asserted rather than derived. State the sources and the method. Another is a grid that does not add up, which undermines trust in the whole plan. Check every row and column. Students also overload the recall column because those items are easy to write; justify each level's share. Avoid content areas so broad that a cell could be filled with anything. Plan how items will be classified by someone else, since authors misjudge their own items' levels. Do not forget to say what happens to existing items that no longer fit the grid. Finally, revisit the weights each year as the course changes.

Get a NR 537 Week 3 example written to your instructions

Send the objectives your test has to sample, the item count it can hold and whatever instructions came with the assignment, and a custom NR 537 Week 3 blueprint is built to them and returned inside 24-48h. The first is free. If your section supplies a blank grid template, send that so the example arrives in the format it will be marked in.

More NR 537 papers and MSN samples

NR 537 Week 3 questions, answered

Does a blueprint need to be finished before the items exist?

That is the argument the week is making. A grid written after the questions describes what somebody already produced and can approve any distribution, including a bad one. Built first, it commits to a shape the items then have to satisfy, and any area that turns out to be hard to write for becomes visible while there is still time to change the plan.

What if my section names different cognitive levels?

Use theirs. Some sections work from three broad levels, some from a longer taxonomy, and a few ask only that items be split into knowing and applying. The columns matter less than the discipline of declaring them, defining each one and then keeping the cells honest about which is which. The example is built with whatever column set your instructions name.

Does the narrative under the grid have to justify every row?

The heavy rows and the empty ones, at minimum. Nobody questions a middling share, but an area holding a quarter of the test needs its instructional time or its stated priority named, and an objective sampled by a single item needs a reason it was thought minor. That pair of explanations usually separates a defended blueprint from a decorated one.

Where can I find a free NR 537 Week 3 sample paper?

The 60-item maternal-newborn blueprint shown above is the entire NR 537 Week 3 sample and can be read without charge. For a blueprint built on your own course's hours and objectives, share them with us and a weighted grid can be prepared.

How should NR 537 blueprint weights be set?

From stated sources such as class hours and objectives, combined by a stated method. The sample averages each content area's share of hours and objectives and rounds to whole items that total 60.