NR 723 Week 5 Faculty Development Plan Example

Faculty Development Plan: Calibrating Nine Clinical Instructors on One Clinical Judgment Rubric, Built From the Course's Own Grading Data

Student Name

College of Nursing, Chamberlain University

NR 723: Role of the Educational Leader Across Settings

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

Faculty Development Plan: Calibrating Nine Clinical Instructors on One Clinical Judgment Rubric, Built From the Course's Own Grading Data

The Need, From Data Already Held

The need for this plan comes from three sources the course already collects, not from a sense that instructors need training. First, item analysis of the spring 2027 clinical judgment reflections: on the criterion for analyzing cues, 38% of 612 graded reflections were rated below standard, and the rate ranged by section from 22% to 39%. A spread that wide on the same assignment, with students allocated to sections by schedule rather than ability, points to differences in grading as well as in learning. Second, calibration results: before the first January session, the nine instructors agreed exactly on 44% of rubric items when grading the same ten reflections; after two sessions, 61% overall, but only 40% on the prioritizing criterion before it was rewritten. Third, course evaluations: of 61 written comments in spring, 14 said that instructors in different sections expected different things.

Who These Teachers Are

The plan is for nine clinical instructors: two full-time faculty and seven adjuncts. Five of the adjuncts hold staff nurse jobs at the same agencies where their sections meet, mostly on twelve-hour shifts. All seven are paid per section for clinical days and grading, have no contractual time for development and are on term-by-term contracts. Two adjuncts are usually new each term. They are experienced clinicians and, for the most part, new teachers; several have said in course meetings that they grade by asking whether the student "thinks like a nurse," which is sound instinct and a poor shared standard. Any plan that assumes they can attend weekday afternoon meetings, or that they will do unpaid preparation, describes different teachers from these.

What the Plan Will Do

The plan is deliberately small, aimed at one skill: applying the shared rubric the same way. It has three parts.

A paid January calibration session of ninety minutes, held on a weekday evening, in which instructors grade five reflections independently, compare ratings item by item and agree on the reasons for each rating. The session ends with a short written record of the agreed reasons for each criterion, which becomes the course's grading guide.

A short online module of ten graded exemplars, available two weeks before each term, which every instructor grades before the first clinical day; results are returned showing where the instructor differed from the agreed ratings and why. New adjuncts complete it with a thirty-minute call with the coordinator.

A twenty-minute midterm check, held by video after a clinical day, in which instructors grade two current, anonymized reflections and compare. Differences are discussed, not scored.

Delivery That Fits Their Week

Each part is placed where these instructors can reach it. The January session falls in the gap between terms, when no clinical sections run and staff nurses can trade shifts with notice. The exemplar module can be completed at home in about forty minutes at any hour. The midterm check takes twenty minutes on a video call at the end of a clinical day, when instructors are already working for the course. No part requires a weekday daytime meeting.

The Incentive, Written as a Line

Attendance is invited, not required, because the coordinator has no authority to require anything of adjunct instructors. The incentive is pay and recognition, written as budget lines. The January session and the exemplar module are paid at the school's adjunct hourly rate, $50 an hour, for two and a half hours a year per adjunct, about $875 a year for seven adjuncts. The midterm check is already within paid clinical time. In addition, the two largest agencies' education councils have agreed that completing the calibration program counts toward the clinical ladder points their nurses need for advancement, which costs the school nothing and matters to the five adjuncts who work there. Full-time faculty attend as part of their contracts.

Why This Design

The design reflects what is known about faculty development that changes teaching. Programs tend to work better when they are sustained over time rather than delivered once, use the participants' own teaching tasks, include practice with feedback and build a community among participants (Steinert et al., 2016). Grading actual course reflections against a shared rubric is all four: practice on the real task, feedback on each rating, repeated across the year and done together. A one-time workshop on clinical judgment theory would have been easier to schedule and would have done little for consistency.

Evidence It Changed Teaching

The plan will be judged by changes in grading, not by satisfaction. Three measures will be used. Agreement on the exemplar module should reach at least 80% of rubric items for every instructor by the fall 2028 term. Between the best and worst section, the gap in reflections rated below standard on analyzing cues should close to 15 points at most. And student comments about inconsistent expectations should fall from 14 of 61 to fewer than 5. Satisfaction with the sessions will be asked, but will not decide whether the plan continues. The rubric itself rests on a clinical judgment model whose integration into nursing programs is well described (Dickison et al., 2019), so the plan does not need to justify the content, only the consistency.

Evaluating the Plan by Level

The three measures map onto the levels commonly used to evaluate training: reaction, learning, behavior and results (Kirkpatrick & Kirkpatrick, 2016). Reaction, the instructors' view of the sessions, is collected but carries no weight in the decision. Learning is the exemplar agreement score. Behavior is the narrowing spread between sections in live grading, the level that shows instructors grade differently in practice and not only in an exercise. Results, the effect on students' clinical judgment itself, is the hardest to show and is left to the program evaluation, because one course's reflections cannot separate better grading from better learning. Naming the levels keeps the plan honest about which claim each measure can support.

What the Plan Does Not Attempt

It does not try to make the instructors better teachers in general, cover theory of clinical judgment in depth or change how instructors coach at the bedside. Those are worthwhile and would need more time than these instructors have. The plan aims at one shared standard, applied the same way, because students are currently graded differently depending on which section their schedule placed them in.

References

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

Kirkpatrick, J. D., & Kirkpatrick, W. K. (2016). Kirkpatrick's four levels of training evaluation. ATD Press.

Steinert, Y., Mann, K., Anderson, B., Barnett, B. M., Centeno, A., Naismith, L., Prideaux, D., Spencer, J., Tullo, E., Viggiano, T., Ward, H., & Dolmans, D. (2016). A systematic review of faculty development initiatives designed to enhance teaching effectiveness: A 10-year update: BEME Guide No. 40. Medical Teacher, 38(8), 769-786. https://doi.org/10.1080/0142159X.2016.1181851