Ms. Teets revised assignments in the Nursing capstone course, NSG 435, Challenges in Health Care Delivery, to incorporate more critical thinking into the assignments.  Most of the students in the class are experienced nurses.  This course attempts to broaden their outlook from daily patient care or the issues that might be affecting their hospital to a more global look at the health care system.  The revisions focused on the Weekly Thought Questions that are provided for each chapter of the textbook.  Each student selects one of the questions for a weekly written response, then several of the questions are used to frame class discussions.  Ms. Teets found that some of the questions were not useful in eliciting critical thought and revised those.  She also developed a rubric which focused on understanding context, supporting evidence, and the student’s own perspectives and/or assumptions which she used to grade the writing assignments. On some assignments she graded with both the rubric she had been using and the new rubric and compared the results.  She found that the new rubric was “more accurate and a bit easier to use.”

Assignment

Teets Assignment

Rubric

Teets Rubric