Bruin Brief 2022-12-04 End of Course Reports

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“Life is like a camera.  Focus on what is important. Capture the good times. Develop from the negatives, and if things don’t work out, take another shot.” -Unknown

Dean Lin Zhan talks about reflective teaching as an introspective practice at the heart of teaching excellence. Cyclical progress through teaching-reflecting-improving produces better teachers over time. Each quarter, the Office of Academic Programs sends each faculty member an End of Course Report to formalize the process of reflective teaching.  Completing the form requires a few minutes to consider pedagogical accomplishments, shortcomings, and new ideas for future course offerings. The End of Course Report for each class, each quarter is entered into the corpus of evaluative documents that inform the UCLA SON AACN Accreditation Report.

For faculty teaching a class to BS, MECN, MSN-MSN-APRN or DNP students, the End of Course Report form was first distributed on 11/27/2022 by email. The PhD program is not included (so far) in End of Course Reports because AACN accreditation does not apply to the PhD program. All End of Course Reports for Fall 2022 are due this Friday 12/9/2022. Each quarter, a new report will be sent out, and a new deadline set at the end of the quarter.

The End of Course Report Life Course

This extended analogy explains how we developed the End of Course Report, implemented it, benefit from it at a faculty and school level, and how the report complements other forms of evaluative teaching data in academic programs.

Birth

The End of Course Report idea was born in Spring 2020, when SON faculty leaders formalized the process of reflective teaching and self-evaluation. Reflection is guided by the form to address key questions, like how well students were prepared for the course, whether students actively engaged in course activities, and the extent to which the course objectives were attained. 

The most valuable part of completing an End of Course Report is the contemplative opportunity itself. How often do we race through each day, putting together class activities and competency assessments, without actually pausing to consider if it all worked?  Was it effective? Do we have evidence that students can “do” what we expect in outcome competencies? 

Life Span

The End of Course Report embarks on pre-determined path once it is written. As the material product of the teacher’s critical reflection, the form goes from the faculty member’s email into an eValue databank, where it is stored for three purposes: 1) for program directors to review and consider if the faculty member or the course could use some additional help. Is the class mis-placed in the course sequence? Is the teaching team right-sized for enrollment? Are there pre-requisite competencies that should be enhanced in prior classes to make this course more successful? 2) Sometimes, reflections and suggestions deserve to be heard by the respective program committee (Prelicensure Committee, APRN Committee, Doctoral Committee). 3) Curriculum Committee works on big picture curricular improvement, benefitting at every major decision from on-the-ground observations offered by instructors.

The life trajectory of the End of Course Report was written about in the last CCNE Self-Study report.  “Problems related to instruction are discussed in multiple venues, including the Curriculum Committee and Program Meetings. Recently, the Evaluations Subcommittee of the FEC initiated a new plan to review Faculty End of Course Reports by program on a quarterly basis. Based on their analysis, the Evaluation Subcommittee will forward recommendations to Program Directors.  Based on their analysis, recommendations will be forwarded to the Curriculum Committee if curriculum changes are necessary or to program faculty if further programmatic discussion is required.” (UCLA CCNE 2020 CCNE Self Study, pg. 50).

Family

A collection of other data sources join the End of Course, almost like siblings in a family. For example, student evaluations of both the course and the instructor complement the faculty member’s reflective data. Peer evaluations of teaching also provide insight. Student performance on OSATs, OSCEs, and CETs provide an indicator of course success by way of student attainment of competencies in lab and clinical settings. As a suite of complementary indicators, all of these data sources provide faculty with data about teaching excellence and course effectiveness.

The Mechanics of Completing the End of Course Report: Options 1 and 2

How do I access the evaluation to fill it out?

See screen shots (below) or you can go to the SON intranet for more information.

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Log in via Single Sign On with your mednet credentials. http://www.nursing.ucla.edu/evalue

A Gold Star to Early Adopters of the End of Course Report

Thank you to the faculty who have already completed it! 

Beth Koser-Schwartz, Emma Cuenca, Nancy McGrath, Nalo Hamilton, Kristen Schulz!

Significant Contributor:

Brenda Yeung MSN, OCN, CMSRN, CBCN 
Project Policy Analyst
Office of Academic Programs
nursing.ucla.edu