You’ve just posted exam grades, and the numbers are not what you hoped. A third of the cohort missed the same cluster of questions on heart failure management. The discussion board posts last week were thin. Two students emailed to say they “studied everything” and still don’t understand what went wrong. When nursing students aren’t learning, we need to find out where something in the system broke down. Let’s look at how to diagnose the problem.

When I accepted my first faculty position, I thought I understood the job: I would teach. Then I received my first workload assignment. There was something about credit hours, clinical ratios, and committee meetings, and I stared at it the way a new grad stares at a 12-lead EKG for the first time. I recognized the words, but not in those particular combinations. Nobody explains faculty workload to clinicians before they make the jump.

This post will break down what concept-based curriculum is, how it differs from competency-based curriculum, and why the two actually work better together.

Most of us were educated in a traditional, content-based model, and then we taught the way we were taught. Now the ground is shifting under the entire discipline of nursing education, and it's happening fast. Chances are you are doing some sort of a curriculum update, whether it’s a total overhaul or course-specific updates. So, let's break down what competency-based curriculum actually is, why nursing education is moving toward it, and what it means for you as a faculty memb

Teaching students how to think isn't a vague, feel-good aspiration. It's a specific instructional shift, and it looks different depending on where your students sit developmentally.

Here's how to craft rubrics for nursing faculty that hold up to student appeals, to accreditation site visits, and to your own sense of "did I grade this fairly?"

There is a moment (and maybe you've already had it) where you're sitting across from a student who finally gets it. The clinical reasoning clicks. The hesitation lifts. You watch something shift in them, and you think: I had a small part in that. That moment is not incidental to your work. It is your work. That feeling, that moment is powerful beyond what most days in the trenches of grading, curriculum committees, and course revisions will let you feel. Summer has a way of s

The semester is over — and if you're already building a summer to-do list, this is your sign to pause. NP faculty are wired to keep moving, but sprinting straight from finals into a packed development agenda isn't growth. It's just working under a different label. This summer, try a different approach: rest first, then grow. Your fall students — and your future self — will thank you.

A 2022 article published in Medical Education Online titled "When Students' Words Hurt: 12 Tips for Helping Faculty Receive and Respond Constructively to Student Evaluations of Teaching" by Cornes and colleagues offers evidence-based guidance for exactly this moment. I'm breaking down their key recommendations here through the lens of NP faculty life, because this research is too good not to keep sharing.

Your graduate nursing students are the not the same “blank slates” that they used to be in their undergraduate programs. These students are nurses. Some of them will have twenty years of professional nursing wisdom, while others will be fresh from a BSN program, and they can all be admitted together in the same cohort. This heterogeneity is not a challenge to be managed. It is a gift to be used. But only if you understand two theoretical frameworks: andragogy & constructivism

Research on higher-order learning consistently shows that students rise to the level of the task they are given. If the task is to post a thoughtful summary, that is what they will do. If the task is to reason through a complex clinical situation, differentiate between competing diagnoses, and defend a management decision — well, that is a fundamentally different cognitive experience. The format of discussion boards is not the barrier. The design is.