Nursing Education & Improving Program Outcomes and Internal Evaluation of Program
Improving Program Outcomes Evaluation in Nursing Education, Internal Program Evaluation In Nursing Education, Comprehensive Program Evaluation In Nursing Education.
Improving Program Outcomes Evaluation in Nursing Education
For the purpose of determining how to improve the program’s outcomes, faculty first must review each variable that contributes to program success.
These can include:
- Qualifications of students admitted to the program
- Definition and implementation of progression policies
- Quality of the curriculum
- Quality of instruction
- Evaluation methods used to determine students’ knowledge, skills, and abilities
- Student preparation for employment and employer satisfaction
The program evaluation plan should be reviewed at regular intervals to determine that each of these variables are examined as a part of the program evaluation plan. A similar process should be followed for all program outcomes. Mapping the relationship between and among variables may help to clarify the role each variable has in influencing outcome achievement.
Potential variables should be reviewed annually and added to the evaluation plan as needed. Intervening variables may be identified through literature review, program evaluation reports, or internal studies. All variables need to be evaluated at some point in the program evaluation plan. Analysis of these variables will help to define where to make program improvements so that benchmarks can be met.
Internal Program Evaluation in Nursing Education
Some universities require programs to undertake an internal evaluation or review of their programs. The purpose of many of these program evaluations is to assess and improve the quality of programs and whether they are helping to accomplish the university’s mission. The questions to be answered include:
(1) How well are we doing what we say we are doing?
(2) How do we support student learning?
(3) How well are the academic programs relating to each other
(4) Is the university fulfilling its mission and achieving its goals?
This process informs the university about successes and weaknesses in the programs so that improvements can be made. The assessments are generally made in a rotation so that each program is reviewed at a specific interval. The process usually calls for a written, evidence-based self-study.
The information is reviewed by a team from outside the department and at least one representative from the profession who is external to the school who can be objective reviewers. The reviewers are responsible for synthesizing and making judgments about the program quality. Those judgments then lead to a list of recommendations for improvement.
The availability of resources to accomplish the goals and recommendations is assessed along with the involvement of campus administrators, faculty, and the community in the program and its evaluation. Although each institution may have a different process, many regional accrediting bodies require that institutions of higher learning conduct internal program evaluations (Middle States Commission on Higher Education, 2014).
Comprehensive Program Evaluation In Nursing Education
Overall program evaluation provides the opportunity to examine the program in its entirety and to make revisions to improve its effectiveness. Program evaluation seeks to ensure that program improvement occurs as a result of a comprehensive program evaluation. A comprehensive program evaluation plan should be developed and written and should include the following questions:
- What areas should be evaluated?
- How often should the evaluation occur?
- Who is responsible for collecting and analyzing the data?
- Who is responsible for making decisions based on the data?
- What benchmarks is the program setting to show quality?
The areas to be evaluated include any potential intervening factors and should designate what data will be collected and how the data will be collected. The accreditation standards are often used as a framework to help define intervening factors and demonstrate that the standards are met.
The evaluation plan should also be reviewed at regular intervals for completeness. The time frame for evaluation of each area should be set. For example, the mission and goals of the program may not need to be evaluated often. A cycle of every 3 or every 5 years may be often enough for something so all-encompassing that changing it would only occur very carefully.
However, graduation rates and National Council Licensure Examination—Registered Nurse (NLCEX–RN) pass rates need to be evaluated annually. Someone should be designated as responsible for the data collection, analysis, and decision making related to each item in the evaluation plan. Things tend to be overlooked unless someone takes responsibility. The responsibility will lie with a committee, or a person associated with a position.
For example, evaluation of faculty often lies with the dean, whereas evaluation of the curriculum lies with the faculty or a faculty committee such as a curriculum committee. Setting benchmarks provides a goal for which to aim. It is a quality designation that allows you to determine progress towards achievement of the goal. They should be set fairly high but not at an unattainable level.
They should be reviewed at regular intervals and altered as appropriate. Examining other schools nationwide and trend data for some benchmarks may help faculty set the benchmark. For example, it may be unreasonable to set 100% pass rate as a benchmark for NCLEX–RN. However, after examining trend data you may decide that 90% is an attainable benchmark that demonstrates quality.
Once the evaluation plan is developed, it should be implemented correctly. Identifying evaluation activities called for in the plan by responsible parties at the beginning of the academic year will help to ensure that evaluation activities are completed.
Entering the program evaluation plan into an electronic spreadsheet or database may assist faculty in determining responsible parties, activities, and time frames allowing the plan to be sorted on these categories.
Preparation of a year-end report with all completed forms and data sets will help track implementation of evaluation activities. A record of the data collected, the analysis of the data, decisions made related to the data, and program changes resulting from evaluation activities should be maintained.
Analysis of the data may not always result in change. The ultimate decision may be to gather data for another year or to maintain what exists and reevaluate. But any decision should be reported. Actions taken to improve program quality can be summarized in an annual report. This report will serve as a permanent record of the utility of the evaluation plan in bringing about program improvements.
Faculty may want to review these summary reports, discuss strengths and limitations of the plan, and propose changes to improve the plan’s effectiveness after they have reviewed year-end reports.
Questions that will help guide this review include the following: “Does the plan provide information when it is needed for decision making?” “Do the faculty trust the information provided by evaluation strategies?” Another important factor in the plan’s effectiveness is the reliability and validity of evaluation tools. Reliability refers to the accuracy of measurement.
Validity means that evaluation tools measure what they intend to measure. Internally developed measurement tools should be evaluated for reliability and validity at the time of their development. If faculty are unable to demonstrate reliability and validity of evaluation tools, they will not be able to trust the results of program evaluation activities. In addition, data needs to be appropriately aggregated and trended over time to support decision making.
Faculty should be cautious about making decisions based on limited data. The evaluation of any educational program is context specific. Consequently, the results of program evaluation may not be generalized to other programs. Nevertheless, nursing faculty should report successful strategies in program evaluation in the nursing literature.
Nursing faculty across the nation may benefit from program evaluation research studies, such as those that report successful assessment strategies or provide insight about intervening variables for common program outcomes.