C920 Contemporary Curriculum Design and Development in Nursing Education, catalog number NURS 6003, is a two-CU MSN Nursing Education course on building nursing curriculum against national accreditation standards and instructional design best practice for real-world environments. It is the course where students discover that curriculum is not a list of topics. It is an argument that a set of experiences, in a specific order, produces a graduate who can do specific things, and every part of that argument has to be traceable.
What NURS 6003 is actually testing
The organising idea in curriculum work is alignment. A programme states what its graduates will be able to do. Those programme outcomes decompose into course outcomes. Course outcomes decompose into unit objectives. Learning activities develop those objectives and assessments measure them. When that chain holds, the curriculum is defensible. When any link breaks, the programme is teaching something it does not measure or measuring something it never taught.
Written work in this course is scored on whether you can build and show that chain. A curriculum map is the usual vehicle: a grid where outcomes run down one axis, courses run across the other, and each cell says whether the outcome is introduced, developed or assessed there. Building one honestly is uncomfortable, because it exposes outcomes that are introduced in four courses and assessed in none.
The second scored theme is external constraint. Nursing curriculum is not designed freely. Accreditation standards, professional competency frameworks, state board requirements and licensure examination blueprints all shape what has to be present. A curriculum proposal that ignores those reads as an academic exercise, and the aspect asking for standards alignment goes unmet.
The third is that curriculum change is a political act. Faculty own courses, content gets defended for reasons unrelated to evidence, and removing something is harder than adding something. Contemporary design usually means fitting new content into a programme that is already full, which is a subtraction problem more than an addition problem.
Turning scored aspects into a section plan
Rubric detail sits in your Course of Study rather than in the catalog. Count the scored aspects first. Each is judged on its own against a three-point scale and each needs a 2, which is why the standards alignment aspect cannot be handled with a sentence saying the design meets accreditation requirements.
The word budget, worked. Take five scored aspects and directions asking for roughly 1,600 words plus any required map or table. Reserve 120 for an introduction naming the programme and the change, and 100 for a close, leaving 1,380 across five aspects, or 276 each. Then weight it. The alignment aspect deserves 360 because it has to walk the chain from programme outcome to assessment. The standards aspect deserves 320, since each standard invoked needs naming and applying. That leaves 700 for three aspects at about 233 each.
Where a map or matrix is allowed, build it before writing prose. The grid forces every gap into view, and the prose then explains what the grid shows rather than trying to describe a structure the reader cannot see.
A structure that fits a curriculum design paper
Directions win where they specify a format. Where they do not, this arrangement makes alignment visible and keeps the constraints in view.
| Section | What belongs in it | What earns the aspect |
|---|---|---|
| Programme context | Level, length, delivery mode, student profile, accreditation position | Enough detail that the constraints later are credible |
| Need for change | The gap driving the design, with evidence | Evidence such as examination performance, employer feedback or a standards revision |
| Programme outcomes | The outcomes affected, quoted as the programme states them | Working from the actual outcomes rather than inventing plausible ones |
| Standards alignment | Which accreditation standard or competency each outcome answers | Standards named with issuing body and edition |
| Curriculum map | Where each outcome is introduced, developed and assessed | Gaps shown honestly; a map with no gaps is usually a map that was not checked |
| Design proposal | What is added, moved or removed, and where | A subtraction named, since programmes are full |
| Sequencing rationale | Why this order, with prerequisite logic | Cognitive and clinical progression argued rather than assumed |
| Implementation and evaluation | Who approves it, when it starts, and how you will know it worked | Governance acknowledged and an evaluation measure with a timeframe |
| References | APA list of standards, competency documents and curriculum literature | Editions and years, because standards are revised on cycles |
Say what comes out. A proposal that only adds content is not a curriculum design, it is a wish, and evaluators who have worked in programmes recognise the difference immediately.
Evidence craft when the subject is curriculum
Curriculum claims sit on documents rather than on studies, and knowing which document answers which question is most of the skill.
- Cite accreditation standards to the accrediting body with the edition and year. Nursing programmes are accredited by specific organisations and their standards documents are public.
- Cite professional competencies separately from accreditation standards. They are different instruments and they do not say the same things.
- Use the programme's own published outcomes where the deliverable allows. Working from real outcomes produces a real alignment argument.
- Support sequencing decisions with learning or curriculum literature rather than with tradition. Because it has always been in the second semester is not a rationale.
- Give the need for change evidence with a number where one exists. Examination pass rates, attrition, employer survey results.
- Quote sparingly. Standards language is highly quotable and heavily reproduced, and WGU runs submissions through a similarity check.
The strongest curriculum papers acknowledge the hidden curriculum: what students learn from how a programme is run rather than from what it teaches. A programme that preaches interprofessional collaboration and never lets students meet another discipline teaches something it did not intend. Naming a mismatch like that, and proposing a structural fix, shows a level of thinking that a two-CU course does not require and evaluators notice.
What separates Competent from a submission sent back
Aspects score independently, and alignment is the aspect that most often comes back.
- The chain from programme outcome to course outcome to activity to assessment is complete and visible.
- Every standard invoked has an issuing body and an edition year.
- The map or matrix shows real gaps rather than a full grid.
- The proposal removes or compresses something as well as adding.
- Implementation names who approves the change and how long approval takes.
Performance assessment work at WGU can be revised and resubmitted with no grade penalty, so a return costs schedule. Terms run six months at a flat rate, so each course closed inside a term lowers the effective cost of the others. In the education specialty this course also feeds the assessment course and the capstone, so a delay here tends to be paid for twice.
Five mistakes that cost time in C920
- Designing a course list instead of a curriculum. Topics in an order is not alignment. Outcomes traced to assessments is.
- Mentioning accreditation without using it. Name the standard, quote its requirement, show where the design meets it.
- Adding without subtracting. Programmes are full, and a proposal with no removal in it will not survive a curriculum committee.
- A map with no holes. Real curriculum maps have outcomes that are underdeveloped or unassessed, and finding them is the point of building one.
- Ignoring governance. Curriculum change is approved by committees on cycles, and a proposal that assumes a change can start next term has skipped the implementation aspect.
How support works on this course
C920 is more analytical than it looks and the map is where the work concentrates. Send the rubric from your Course of Study with the task directions and the first pass is the alignment chain: which programme outcome, which course, which assessment, and where the break is. From there you get a curriculum map built to reveal gaps rather than to look tidy, standards and competency documents located and cited to their issuing bodies with editions, a design proposal that includes a subtraction, and an implementation section that respects governance.
The boundaries hold. Objective assessments at WGU are proctored, so we prepare only, never sit them, and never ask for portal credentials. On field-based courses in this track we never complete practice hours, contact mentors or sites, sign placement paperwork or fill in hour logs.
Questions students ask about C920
Is C920 the same course as NURS 6003?
Do I have to design a whole programme?
Which accreditation standards should I use?
Building a curriculum map for C920?
Send your Course of Study rubric and the task directions. We build the alignment chain first, then the map, then the proposal with a subtraction in it.
Where C920 sits in WGU's programs
The July 2026 catalog places this code in 3 current WGU programs. Open a program page for the complete standard path and term positions. The live Degree Plan remains authoritative after transfer credit, substitutions, and mentor planning.
The assessments, one by one
The public catalog does not publish this course's PA/OA identity or task count. WGU Tutors publishes at most one PA manual per course and only from a WGU-controlled public rubric. Until that source exists, PA help begins from the student's real Course of Study and OA support remains preparation only.