Stage 1 goals, Stage 2 evidence and Stage 3 learning plan rebuild a composite program's population health course in the NU524 Unit 3 outline, anchored by a GRASPS performance task. Searches like "nu 524 unit 3 assignment example", "nu524 unit 3 sample" and "nu524 unit 3 example" land here.
Evidence Before Lessons: A Backward Design Outline for a Population Health Course, With a Coalition Presentation in Place of a Participation Grade
[Student Name]
Purdue University Global
NU524: Curriculum Development Process, Assessment, and Evaluation Strategies
Unit 3 Assignment
[Instructor Name]
[Date]
The program, course and county are composite; the design framework, competencies and data sources cited are published.
Why This Course
The curriculum map showed population health appearing in semester one and then disappearing until this final-semester course, and found that the course's only graded component tied to the outcome was a participation grade for attending community site visits. Attendance is not evidence of understanding. The course was redesigned from its outcome backward.
Stage 1: Desired Results
Established goals. Program Outcome 3: the graduate partners with communities to assess health needs and plan interventions that address social determinants of health. Related Essentials competencies in Domain 3, population health, including engaging in partnerships to improve population health and using data to identify populations at risk (American Association of Colleges of Nursing, 2021).
Enduring understandings. Students will understand that:
1. A neighborhood's health is produced mostly outside its clinics, by housing, income, transport, food and safety.
2. Data about a population are never neutral; what is counted, and who is missing, shapes what can be seen.
Essential questions.
1. Who is missing from this clinic's data, and why?
2. What would have to change outside the health system for this outcome to improve?
3. Whose knowledge counts in deciding what a community needs?
Knowledge and skills. Students will know sources of population data such as census estimates and county health rankings, the difference between a rate and a count, and the basic components of a community assessment. Students will be able to compare a neighborhood's indicators with its county's, identify community assets as well as needs, and present findings to a lay audience.
Stage 2: Assessment Evidence
Wiggins and McTighe (2005) ask what would count as evidence that students understand, and require that question be answered before any lesson is planned. The answer here is a performance task in which students must use data, community knowledge and judgment together, in front of an audience that will question them.
Performance task, in GRASPS form.
1. Goal: recommend one priority for a county health improvement plan.
2. Role: nurses in the county health department's community health division.
3. Audience: a mock county health coalition of faculty, a community partner and a local public health nurse.
4. Situation: the coalition must choose one priority for the coming three-year plan and has asked each team for a recommendation for one neighborhood.
5. Product: a twelve-minute presentation and a two-page brief, using at least three data sources, including county health rankings data (University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute, 2024), and one interview with a community member or organization.
6. Standards: a rubric with four criteria, use of data, identification of assets and gaps, reasoning about social determinants, and communication to a lay audience, each at four levels.
Other evidence. Two short data exercises, comparing tract and county indicators, and a reflection on the essential question about missing data. The participation grade is removed.
Stage 3: Learning Plan
Weeks 1 to 2: essential questions introduced; a data scavenger hunt in public sources. Weeks 3 to 4: rates, counts and comparison; first data exercise. Weeks 5 to 6: social determinants frameworks; community site visits reframed as asset mapping, with a structured observation guide. Weeks 7 to 8: interviewing a community member; ethical considerations. Weeks 9 to 10: team drafting with feedback on a rubric-scored draft. Week 11: coalition presentations. Week 12: reflection.
Alignment Table
1. Enduring understanding 1: assessed by rubric criterion 3, reasoning about social determinants; taught in weeks 5 and 6.
2. Enduring understanding 2: assessed by rubric criterion 1 and the missing-data reflection; taught in weeks 1 to 4.
3. Knowledge of data sources: assessed by data exercises; taught in weeks 1 to 4.
4. Skill of presenting to a lay audience: assessed by rubric criterion 4; practiced in the week 9 to 10 draft.
Every goal has evidence, and every piece of evidence has instruction before it.
What Faculty Found Hardest
The hardest step for faculty was Stage 1, not Stage 2. The old course had eleven content topics, and faculty found it difficult to accept that several would now be taught only as far as the performance task needed them. Two topics, epidemiological study designs and environmental health regulation, were moved to a supporting role rather than taught as separate lectures, because the coalition presentation does not require students to master them. The discussion that settled this was a simple test Wiggins and McTighe recommend: for each topic, ask what students would do with it in the performance task. Topics without an answer were not removed from the program, but they were no longer allowed to crowd out the work of understanding.
What Changes for Students
Students now spend the site visits looking for assets and gaps they will need for a presentation, rather than attending to earn a grade. The shift from attendance to performance is the course's main change.
References
American Association of Colleges of Nursing. (2021). The essentials: Core competencies for professional nursing education.
University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute. (2024). County health rankings and roadmaps. https://www.countyhealthrankings.org
Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design (Expanded 2nd ed.). Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.
How this NU524 Unit 3 example is structured
Three stages in strict order, with an alignment table after them proving the order held. Stage 1 separates what students should understand from what they should know and be able to do, a distinction the template insists on and the outline keeps visible in two columns. Stage 2 opens with the question Wiggins and McTighe pose, what would count as evidence of understanding, and answers it before any lesson is mentioned. The rubric for the coalition presentation is summarized in four criteria: data use, identification of a priority need, partnership reasoning and a feasible intervention. Stage 3 sequences the semester's learning through WHERETO, and a short section lists content cut because no goal required it, including a long lecture on the history of public health nursing. The alignment table closes the outline.
Get an NU524 Unit 3 example written to your instructions
Name the course you would redesign, its level, and the program outcomes it serves, and the Unit 3 prompt goes in alongside its grading criteria. A composite version is written free the first time, returned within 24-48h, and laid out in whatever backward design template your instructor supplies, whether the full Understanding by Design form or a shorter one. The paper above is an original model document written by our desk, not a submitted student paper and not an official Purdue University Global document.
NU524 Unit 3 questions, answered
What is the difference between an enduring understanding and an objective?
An enduring understanding is a big idea meant to outlast the course, stated as a full sentence about why something matters. An objective names a specific, measurable performance. The outline keeps them in separate columns, 'a neighborhood's health is produced mostly outside its clinics' beside 'calculate incidence and prevalence from county data'. Both are needed, and the template distinguishes them deliberately.
What does GRASPS stand for?
Goal, role, audience, situation, product or performance, and standards. Wiggins and McTighe use it to design authentic performance tasks. In this outline, students take the role of county health department nurses presenting a community assessment to a coalition, with the rubric's four criteria as the standards. Each element fits on a single line.
Does the outline include full lesson plans?
No. Stage 3 sequences learning experiences with WHERETO and names the main activities, but detailed lesson plans sit outside a backward design outline. Each module here gets a line or two tied to the performance task. Prompts that want full lessons usually say so, and the outline would then carry appendices.