Defining best practices and validation for curriculum mapping

Figures & data

Table 1. Summary results of curriculum measures identified by faculty at retreat.

Client needs categories (No. of measures identified across curriculum)	% Measures identified by faculty	Recommended NCLEX-RN percent (%)
Management of care, MOC (n = 1247)	16	15–21
Safety and infection control, SIC (n = 497)	6	10–16
Health promotion and maintenance, HPM (n = 1111)	14*	6–12
Psychosocial integrity, PSYI (n = 1437)	18*	6–12
Basic care and comfort, BSS (n = 516)	7*	6–12
Pharmacological and parenteral therapies, PPT (n = 1293)	16	13–19
Reduction of risk potential, RRP (n = 987)	12	9–15
Physiological adaptation, PA (n = 912)	12	11–17

*Indicates out-of-rage result.

Table 2. Selected faculty qualitative feedback.

1. I would have met with course leads before and identified content that needed to map, not copy the entire content outline.

2. Curriculum mapping to accreditation standards (in which case course learning outcomes will be mapped to the essentials).

3. I would suggest longer time sessions for the clinical course – the activity generated lots of discussion and significant view points.

4. It would be helpful to collapse all the requirements – accreditation standards and essentials to one list. Map the current content to the requirements.

5. I would ask that faculty choose which course/courses they would most want to be involved in with the curricular mapping.

6. At least one faculty member who teaches in the course should review the plan ahead of time. Sometimes things are not obvious on syllabus or to a person who doesn’t teach in the course.

7. It seemed like the mapping was subjective, therefore open to the interpretation of the participants, and some people are new to teaching.

8. We mapped topics and exemplars to the NLCEX blueprint that didn’t match anything. We left content on the table to tie to the new essentials, leaving some of the blueprint guessed.

Figure 1. Overlay plot of the validation data as a percentage of items mapped by client needs category. Client needs categories as defined by the NCSBN are Management of Care (MOC), Safety and Infection Control (SIC), Health Promotion and Maintenance (HPM), Psychosocial Integrity (PSYI), Basic Care and Comfort (BCC), Pharmacological and Parenteral Therapies (PPT), Reduction of Risk Potential (RRP), and Physiological Adaptation (PA). Client needs categories are mapped across the x-axis with each mapping event represented by as symbol and on the y-axis as a percentage of the total items mapped within the category.

Table 3. Correlation matrix assessing the strength of the association in the validation study.

Pearson correlation coefficients
(p-Value)
	Retreat	Evaluator 1	Evaluator 2
Retreat	1.00	0.848	0.961
		(p = 0.0078)	(p = 0.0001)
Evaluator 1	–	1.00	0.841
			(p = 0.0089)
Evaluator 2	–	–	1.00