Curriculum Plan for the Associate Degree
Curriculum Plan for the Associate Degree
The Courses As you learned in Week 1, the formal curriculum is the planned program of study. The curriculum includes all the courses in the program; for an associate degree program, that is generally 60 semester hours or 90 quarter hours. The number of semester hours for a baccalaureate degree program is generally 120 hours. In nursing programs, these courses include general education courses, science courses, and nursing courses. Some nursing programs require prerequisites (courses taken before the student is admitted to the nursing program), however, these hours are included in the total number of credits for a nursing program. Courses are identified by a course prefix, number, and title. For example, this course is NR524 Curriculum Development. The prefix is the department code, for example, NR indicates nursing. Other prefixes that could be used are NSG, NURS, or NUR. The next part is the number of the course, which indicates the level of the course. In general, first-year courses are numbered in the 100s, second-year courses in the 200s, thirdyear courses in the 300s, and senior courses in the 400s. Graduate courses are 500and 600-level courses. The final component is the name of the course. The name should be a broad indicator of the content or focus of the course. For example, Fundamentals of Nursing would indicate that it is a beginning course for nursing students. Another part of the course identifier is the number of credits for the co
urse. Courses can range anywhere from one to 10 credits. After the course identifier, the total number of credits for the course is listed, then these credits are broken into didactic (theory), clinical, and/or laboratory credits. In the college catalog, the course information would be written as the following. NR101 Fundamentals of Nursing, 8 credits (3T, 3C, 2L) In reading this, the student would know that this course is administered by the nursing department, it is a first-year course, they will have 3 hours of lecture a week, and hours in both the laboratory setting and the clinical setting. If a course is an 8-credit course, what does this mean for the student as to the number of hours he or she will be expected to participate in the course? Using the example above, we can calculate the number of hours. Each school can have a specific formula for calculating hours, however, theory or didactic hours are calculated as 1:1 in general. This means that for every credit hour, the student will spend one hour in the classroom over 15 or 16 weeks. Note: Didactic hours are 50 minutes long. Clinical hours are generally calculated on a 1:3 ratio. For every one hour of credit, the student will spend 3 hours in the clinical setting. Laboratory hours can be calculated using either a 1:2 or 1:3 ratio. Course Description Once the course has been identified, the next step is to write a brief (3–4 sentences) course description. This is a broad overview of what content will be covered in the course. Curriculum Plan for the Associate Degree