Evaluation of educational programs in nursing course and program

Evaluation of nursing curricula as a major consideration in nursing education It is now recognized as an integral phase of curriculum development, with an increasing number of published reports

AIMS AND PURPOSES OF CURRICULUM EVALUATION

- These may be classified as follows: validation; meeting objectives; curriculum improvement; evaluation of innovations; understanding the curriculum in whole or in part. Innovation is a theme explored by Stake (1977), when he discusses the utility of evaluation to course planners and consumers. The aim of these evaluations is to monitor the development of the innovation (formative) and assess its value or success (summative).

A committee was established by WHO to improve the educational standard of nursing and it has given following recommendations to support the fundamental notion of nursing as per needs of health care. Owing to its complexity, assessing the needs of individuals & groups depends on the profession to establish relationship in public. Nursing regarded a problem solving profession based on knowledge of science developed through testing nursing practices.

Criteria to assess the programme development

Relevance: the extent to which the goals, activities, and outcomes of the nursing educational programme are a response to the needs of a particular community or country. (situation, attitude, knowledge, value, need of community may be economical/educational) Relatedness: the extent to which the parts of the nursing programme, i.e., curriculum, teaching of nursing, practice of nursing and research, and administration, influence each other in developing programme goals and in shaping their achievement

 Accountability:- The extent to which the programme teaches the student nurse that the primary responsibility in nursing is to the patient. (Similarly in teaching, the primary responsibility is to the students.)

Design of evaluation
What are the evidence to all criteria? Characteristics of nursing programme to provide evidence? How evidence is collected to ensure the validity, reliability & representativeness Analysis/ conclusion of programme?

 In 1977 the World Health Organisation (WHO) published a monograph (Allen 1977) which specifies the following objectives: To enable each individual school [of nursing] to develop an ongoing evaluation project for . . . study, assessment and development. . To incorporate a system of evaluation within new demonstration-type nursing programmes. To promote the study of comparative education in nursing.

 To obtain further information by evaluative research of programme to see the major problems in programme To study & evaluate one aspect of a programme in number of schools to provide data regarding curriculum, teaching of nursing etc. To highlight programs in the educational field.

------ The following year the erstwhile Joint Board of Clinical Nursing Studies, finding that course planners lacked knowledge and skills to evaluate their courses, produced a package which helped to introduce the practice to nurse educators in Britain (JBCNS 1978).

CRITERIA FOR AND METHODS OF EVALUATION

Stenhouse (1975) suggests five criteria to be used inevaluating a curriculum: meaning, potential, interest, conditionality and elucidation.