C922 Emerging Trends and Challenges in 21st Century Nursing Education, catalog number NURS 6005, is a two-CU MSN Nursing Education course on the trends, technologies and challenges facing nurse educators, with emphasis on the barriers to and facilitators of interprofessional collaboration. The risk in a trends course is writing a magazine article. What is scored is not awareness of what is changing but analysis of what a specific change costs, who resists it and what would make it work.
What NURS 6005 is actually testing
Trends courses are easy to write badly because the material is everywhere. Simulation, virtual reality, competency-based progression, telehealth in curriculum, faculty shortage, clinical placement scarcity, artificial intelligence in assessment. Every one of those can be described in three paragraphs of enthusiasm that score nothing.
The scored version has four parts. What is the trend, stated precisely enough to be false if it were false. What evidence exists that it improves an outcome anyone measures, and how strong is that evidence. What does adopting it actually cost in money, faculty time and displaced content. Who has a reason to resist it, and are they wrong.
The catalog singles out interprofessional collaboration, and it deserves the emphasis because it is the trend that has been endorsed longest and implemented least. The barriers are almost never philosophical. They are timetables that do not align across schools, faculty workload that has no room for joint planning, physical distance between programmes, accreditation requirements that differ by profession, and status differences between disciplines that survive every attempt to design around them. A paper that names those specific barriers, and proposes a mechanism that survives contact with them, is doing exactly what the aspect asks.
Turning scored aspects into a section plan
Your Course of Study carries the rubric rather than the catalog. Count the aspects first. Each is scored independently on a three-point scale and each needs a 2, so a strong trend description does not carry a thin barriers analysis.
The word budget, worked. Assume five scored aspects and directions asking for about 1,500 words. Reserve 110 for an introduction naming the trend and the setting, and 90 for a close, leaving 1,300 across five aspects, or 260 each. Then weight it. The barriers and facilitators aspect deserves 380, since it has to carry named obstacles paired with responses. The evidence aspect deserves 300, because grading the strength of the evidence takes more room than reporting it. That leaves 620 for three aspects at about 207 each, which is enough for a tight, sourced paragraph on each.
Choose one trend. A two-CU paper covering four trends gives each of them 300 words, and 300 words buys a description rather than an analysis. Depth on one is worth more in every aspect.
A structure that fits a trends and challenges paper
Where the task directions specify headings, use theirs. Where they do not, this arrangement keeps analysis ahead of enthusiasm.
| Section | What belongs in it | What earns the aspect |
|---|---|---|
| The trend defined | What the change actually is, in operational terms | A definition specific enough to be argued with |
| Drivers | Why it is happening now, including workforce, regulatory and technological drivers | Causes rather than a claim that the world is changing |
| Evidence | What the research shows about outcomes, and how good that research is | Evidence graded rather than accumulated |
| Cost and displacement | Money, faculty time, physical space and what leaves the curriculum to make room | The subtraction named, because programmes are already full |
| Barriers | Structural, financial, cultural and regulatory obstacles, specifically | Concrete barriers such as timetable misalignment, not general resistance to change |
| Facilitators | What has been shown to make adoption work, paired to each barrier | Paired writing; an unpaired facilitator list is half an aspect |
| Implementation in your setting | What you would do first, with who and by when | A first step small enough to actually be taken |
| Evaluation | How you would know it worked, with a measure and an interval | A measure that would also be able to show failure |
| References | APA list of nursing education research and workforce or policy sources | Research for effect claims, policy documents for regulatory claims |
Where interprofessional education is your trend, resist writing about its benefits. The benefits are widely accepted and cheap to assert. The interesting and scoreable material is entirely in the barriers and in the mechanisms that have overcome them.
Evidence craft when the subject is a trend
Emerging topics have a characteristic evidence problem: enthusiasm arrives years before outcome data, and the loudest sources are the ones selling something.
- Separate vendor material from research. Product documentation can describe a capability and cannot establish an educational effect.
- Grade the evidence you have. A single-site pilot with 22 students and a multi-site controlled study are not equivalent, and treating them as such weakens the whole section.
- Prefer outcomes over satisfaction. Learners frequently enjoy innovations that do not improve performance, and satisfaction data alone will not carry an effectiveness claim.
- Use workforce and policy sources for structural claims. Faculty shortage and placement scarcity are documented, and cited figures with a year beat impressions.
- Watch publication dates on anything technological. A source from five years ago about educational technology may describe a capability that no longer resembles the current one.
- Quote sparingly. Position statements are quotable and heavily reproduced, and WGU runs submissions through a similarity check.
One more sourcing distinction is worth holding onto in this course. A position statement from a professional organisation tells you what the profession has decided to advocate. A research study tells you what happened when someone tried it. Both belong in a trends paper and they answer different questions, so a claim that a trend is endorsed should cite the position statement, while a claim that it works should cite the research. Papers that use an endorsement as though it were evidence of effect lose the evidence aspect even when the topic choice was strong, and it is an easy error to avoid once you notice you are making it.
The strongest papers in this course make a prediction and say what would falsify it. If this trend is real, here is what should be observable in nursing programmes within three years, and here is what would tell us it was overstated. That is a level of intellectual honesty that trends writing rarely contains and evaluators rarely see.
What separates Competent from a submission sent back
Aspects score on their own, and the barriers and facilitators aspect is the one that most often comes back thin.
- One trend is analysed rather than several described.
- Evidence is graded, and weak evidence is labelled as weak.
- Cost is quantified in money, hours or displaced content.
- Every barrier has a facilitator paired to it, and both are specific.
- The implementation step is small enough that someone could start it this month.
WGU performance assessment work can be revised and resubmitted with no grade penalty, so a return costs time rather than standing. Terms run six months at a flat rate, so every course closed inside the term lowers the effective cost of the rest. In the education specialty C922 typically sits just before the field experience, and the field experience is the course least able to absorb a delay because it depends on other people's availability.
Five mistakes that cost time in C922
- Describing several trends instead of analysing one. Breadth reads as avoidance and starves every aspect.
- Treating enthusiasm as evidence. A trend being widely discussed is not proof that it works.
- Writing barriers as attitudes. Resistance to change is a label. Timetables, workload, accreditation and money are mechanisms.
- Leaving cost out. Simulation centres, virtual platforms and joint teaching all cost real money and real faculty hours.
- Proposing an implementation nobody could start. A first step requiring institutional restructuring is not a first step.
How support works on this course
C922 is quick for students who choose one trend and slow for everyone else. Send the rubric out of your Course of Study with the task directions and the first pass is trend selection, checking that there is real evidence to grade and real barriers to analyse. From there you get an aspect-mapped draft, evidence graded rather than piled up, cost quantified, barriers paired one to one with facilitators, and an implementation step small enough to be credible.
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 C922
Is C922 the same course as NURS 6005?
Does C922 have to be about interprofessional collaboration?
Can I write about technology I have not used?
Choosing a trend for C922?
Send your Course of Study rubric and the task directions. We test the trend for gradeable evidence and real barriers, then build the analysis against the scored aspects.
Where C922 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.