Systematic Plan of Evaluation Part II: Assessment of Program Outcomes

Abstract

As an accrediting agency recognized by the U.S. Department of Education (USDE) and the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA), the Accreditation Commission for Education in Nursing (ACEN) has established Accreditation Standards and Criteria for the evaluation of nursing programs, including the evaluation of outcomes. This article focuses on the essential components and processes for systematic evaluation of program outcomes, including licensure examination pass rate, program completion rate, and job placement rate.

Introduction

This article is the second in a two-part series discussing the assessment of nursing program outcomes. The assessment of outcomes for a nursing program is a major component of the 2017 ACEN Standards and Criteria, specifically Standard 6 Outcomes. A program's compliance with Standard 6 Outcomes is an essential measure of the program's quality. These outcomes demonstrate to communities of interest that the program provides quality education preparing the graduates to work in the profession of nursing. Faculty members of quality nursing programs participate in regular assessment of these outcomes to identify areas for program improvement. For ACEN-accredited programs or those seeking ACEN accreditation, this assessment requires the development and utilization of a written systematic plan of evaluation that includes the assessment details of each end-of-program student learning outcome as well as each program outcome. Part I of this article focused on the assessment of the end-of-program student learning outcomes, which are the knowledge, skills, or behaviors that the students should be able to demonstrate upon completion of the nursing program. The focus of Part II is the assessment of the program outcomes, including licensure examination pass rate, program completion rate, and job placement rate.

For a program to demonstrate compliance with Standard 6 Outcomes, the faculty must include the aforementioned program outcomes in the systematic plan of evaluation. As a summary of the assessment of outcomes, the faculty should select appropriate assessment methods and then establish specific, measurable expected levels of achievement for each program outcome that are consistent with the assessment method and will result in meaningful data about the outcome. Faculty must also determine the frequency with which they collect, trend, and analyze these data to inform program decision-making. The plan should include documentation of this analysis and the decisions made based on the analysis of data.

This procedure for program assessment should sound familiar to nursing faculty, since it follows the nursing process. In many regards, the systematic plan of evaluation is simply a nursing care plan, but in this case, the “patient” is the nursing program. Just as a “patient” has better outcomes when the care plan is consistently utilized, the faculty can take better care of their nursing program by using a systematic plan of evaluation. The collection and analysis of data documented in a program's systematic plan of evaluation will assist faculty in making decisions about targeted strategies for improvement, when needed. Equally important in this process is documenting these actions and evaluations in the systematic plan. The Criteria for Standard 6 provide guidelines for the evidence of this faculty-driven process, and the written systematic plan of evaluation provides a record of these efforts. Finally, just as a nursing care plan should involve ongoing evaluation and revision as needed, the systematic plan of evaluation should be viewed as a document that demonstrates continual assessment and evaluation of outcomes with revisions as needed to ensure that the program's evaluation process is as effective and current as possible, and that student success is facilitated by the faculty as well as the strategies implemented.

For nursing programs pursuing initial accreditation with the ACEN, including those that may not yet have graduates, the faculty must still develop a systematic plan of evaluation related to the end-of-program student learning outcomes and the program outcomes during the Candidacy process. Newly established programs in Candidacy must begin collecting outcomes data from the time in which Candidacy is achieved. By developing the plan in advance, the faculty are able to begin collecting and analyzing the data with the initial cohort. For nursing programs that have been in existence and are pursuing Candidacy, several years of outcomes data are often available to include in the plan, even though the data available may be incomplete as required by Standard 6.