Evaluation of an online graduate nursing curriculum: examining standards of quality.

Recent offerings of online courses have outpaced the evaluation of the quality of those offerings, particularly at the program level. The purpose of this project was to evaluate the quality of a set of 16 graduate nursing courses developed for three master's specialty programs. An interdisciplinary group of nursing faculty and instructional technologists collaborated in the development of a quality assessment tool and evaluated 16 online graduate nursing courses. Faculty members for each of the courses were interviewed as part of the process. The collaborative design and development process is discussed, as well as evaluation techniques and the data collection instrument. Examples of best practices and areas for improvement in online courses are presented. The findings will help others as they develop and evaluate online curricula. This project provides a model for interdisciplinary collaboration on the evaluation of online programs that can be reviewed, modified, and implemented at other institutions. Instruments are included as supplementary material.