Development of the Oregon Consortium for Nursing Education: Delivering an Innovative, Competency-Based Curriculum in the USA

This chapter presents an innovative, competency-based curriculum delivered on 16 community college and university campuses throughout the state of Oregon. In the early 2000s, a leadership group developed the structure, governance, and financing for a multicampus consortium responsible for development, delivery, and evaluation of a baccalaureate curriculum. A 35-member curriculum committee representing all full partners of the consortium began the 2-year project of developing what would become a shared baccalaureate curriculum taught on all campuses of the consortium. Beginning with faculty development opportunities, this committee adopted key principles drawn from learning science and nursing education research, developed ten competencies with a focus on deep learning, as well as end-of-year benchmarks reflecting each competency; they also adopted an organizing framework for the curriculum and designed competencies, course descriptions, and learning activities. Committee members were also responsible for leading changes on their respective campuses, encouraging all consortium faculty to engage in curriculum work and to participate in summer faculty development activities. This chapter describes the underlying principles for the curriculum emanating from faculty development, the resulting design of the 3-year nursing curriculum, the major pedagogical changes, including the integration of case-based learning, simulation-based learning experiences, and clinical education redesign.