Clear and effective written communication has been identified as a critical skill for nurses to promote patient safety by the Institute of Medicine,1 The Joint Commission,2 and nursing programs.3 Given this directive, teaching skillful writing is a primary goal for nursing faculty. Writing assignments develop students' reflective skills and analysis of nursing knowledge.3 Second, effective written communication using common types of writing expected within the nursing field can improve understanding and appreciation of the professional identity. A current review of the literature, including a systematic review,3 reveals that efforts to increase the writing proficiency of nursing students focus on improving the skills of the students and not on improving the skill or consistency of faculty evaluation of student writing.3-5 Based on this gap, faculty in 1 fully online RN-to-BSN program began a journey to improve writing outcomes for their students. The purpose of this article is to describe the planning, staff development, and implementation of a common grading rubric as an entry point for addressing student writing in nursing.

Problem-Focused Trigger

Factors identified as affecting writing skills include both student and faculty characteristics.6 RN-to-BSN faculty anecdotally complained about poor professional tone, inappropriate formatting using American Psychological Association style, and errors in writing mechanics. Conversely, a perception of grading inconsistency was identified by students in both course and program evaluation surveys. Based on this knowledge, program data were reviewed for problem-focused triggers7 potentially affecting writing outcomes. Course data revealed greater than 10% variability in grade averages. Given these factors, grading inconsistency was identified as a potential trigger and first focal point for change.

Faculty Characteristics

The faculty for the RN-to-BSN program consist of tenured, tenure-track, and adjunct faculty. A challenge faced in both identifying and addressing issues in students' writing performance lies in faculty demographics; a majority of the faculty teaching in the fully online program live more than 50 miles from the main university campus. Program meetings are held online, and although meeting attendance is more than 85%, limited time and competing program business hampered the process of problem identification. In addition, adjunct faculty numbers fluctuate. This realization supported the need for faculty development and guidance related to program writing expectations.

Exploring the Trigger

To explore the assertion of grading inconsistency, in fall 2013, faculty were asked to grade a sample paper using an existing grading rubric. The grading exercise was voluntary. Of 21 faculty teaching in the program, 15 completed the grading exercise (72% response rate). More than 100 errors were identified by the 15 faculty. However, agreement of those errors was variable, with only 10 faculty agreeing on 15 errors, and deductions assigned to errors were inconsistent, supporting student perceptions of grade variability.

Evidence-Based Guideline Development

In clinical practice, guidelines are used to improve change,7 and writing benefits from similar measures. In the summer of 2014, to help develop a programmatic writing guideline and evaluation process, the English Department faculty members were invited to work with nursing faculty to achieve the objective of improved student writing outcomes.

Identification of Goals

To begin, faculty from both departments discussed the goals of writing in the nursing program. The English faculty acknowledged each discipline has its own discourse, language conventions, format, and structure; the type of evidence, style, and organization acceptable in 1 discipline may not be acceptable in another. Moreover, students do not automatically transfer learning how to write for the university's composition courses to discipline-specific writing tasks.8,9 Each discipline must take responsibility for making the requirements of its discourse community transparent to students.10,11 To participate successfully in the discourse of the nursing community, for example, students should be taught discipline-specific conventions and then practice using them; it cannot be assumed that students will simply know the discipline-specific writing conventions.

Tailoring to the Needs of the Nursing School

An initial step in tailoring the writing guidelines was taken by asking each faculty member to identify 3 issues commonly encountered in students' writing. Using these identified issues, a writing guideline that included the purpose of writing in the nursing profession and Considerations for Assigning Writing in Any Course12 was proposed to the RN-to-BSN faculty. However, guideline integration was slow. To explore barriers to faculty use of the guideline and to develop a common grading rubric to improve consistency in evaluation of student writing, a 2-day writing workshop was held in the summer of 2015. Funding for overnight accommodations was secured from the university's Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning.

Writing Workshop

The workshop opened with discussion on the meaning writing held for each of the participants in lieu of a lecture on the importance of writing. The exercise gave faculty an opportunity to explore their feelings and beliefs about writing. Next, faculty viewed rubric examples to identify common rubric elements and language. The last hour focused on the use of plagiarism detection tools, online grading techniques, and electronic rubric development.

Development of the Rubric

Day 2 of the workshop focused on development of the common grading rubric and a subsequent grading exercise. To achieve a rubric that would be applicable to a variety of writing assignments, identification of consistent themes-regardless of assignment type-was undertaken.

Identification of Themes and Weighting

The writing issues previously identified by faculty as "pet peeves" were displayed on a whiteboard. Using these issues, dialogue was initiated to identify recurrent themes. Themes identified for the faculty were issues with formatting, style, mechanics, and content.

To promote consistency in grading, the themes were then weighted in terms of their importance within the rubric. To accomplish consensus, the previously identified issues were revisited. Each issue was rated based on its perceived importance to the faculty. The analogy of a stoplight was used. For example, this issue is (1) a red light, and the faculty member will not read any further if confronted with that issue; (2) a yellow light, problematic and worrisome, but the faculty member will proceed cautiously; or (3) a green light, which might be an annoyance to the faculty member, but grading will continue. Each issue was then color coded based on this analogy. After color coding, the issues identified the themes that carried the most significance for the faculty based on the most prominent color displayed within the theme.

Grading Using the Rubric

Once the common rubric was established, faculty were directed to use the rubric in a grading exercise. A copy of a student's paper was distributed to each workshop participant; 20 minutes were allowed for evaluation. Three questions were explored: (1) what worked well using the common grading rubric, (2) what needs to be changed on the common rubric, and (3) what needs to be revised in existing rubrics using the common rubric as a base? Using this feedback, the final hour of the workshop was spent revising the common grading rubric for insertion into the writing guideline and evaluation process document.

Writing Guideline

Stemming from the collegiality of the faculty workshop, a revised draft of the writing guideline was formalized in fall 2015. Additions included a strong statement regarding plagiarism, with the resulting documentation forwarded to the Office of Student Conduct in the event of student plagiarism; the process for evaluation of written work including assignment and grading guidelines for faculty and the common rubric for student writing; and lastly, a formatting checklist and list of common writing errors. The preferred outcome is that the rubric and checklist provide students with not only more consistent feedback across the curriculum, but also clearer expectations of writing within the nursing profession.

Discussion

The writing workshop was pivotal to the development and acceptance of the program's writing guideline. The workshop schedule was intentional in exposing faculty to experiences that built toward the next experience-the events of day 1 were vital to the progress made on day 2. The act of norming, or coming to agreement on the weighting and valuing of particular features of texts, can be arduous if assessors have previously acted individually.13

Conversations about writing stimulated broader discussions about the nursing program and philosophies of nursing. Airing expectations allowed faculty to determine not only shared values held about writing within nursing, but also how the courses taught, and the writing within those courses, fit into the overall discipline and the students' introduction to the expectations of writing in nursing. The partitioning of subject matter is common to all disciplines: faculty focus on the presentation of somewhat isolated pieces of a whole, and the expectations of writing within each courses can be influenced by that focus.14 In some disciplines, this can become a matter of contention13; however, the nursing faculty's common goal of producing student outcomes with excellent content area literacy led to positive results. The development of the rubric not only provides a common means of measuring and assessing student writing throughout the nursing curriculum, but it also provides an understanding of how emphasizing particular criteria of the rubric can prepare students for the next step in the program and the students' writing preparation.

Future recommendations include yearly norming sessions to evaluate use of the guideline and interrater reliability. Compliance in use of the common rubric will be challenging; however, changes in faculty perception were evident during the workshop.

In conclusion, the authors believe interprofessional collaboration and faculty participation were key aspects to the development of these guidelines. It is expected that, through the process of identifying a problem-focused trigger, engaging stakeholders in solutions, and developing the writing guideline, the quality of writing by nursing students will be improved.

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