After three years of preparation, Oklahoma Christian University is now accepting students for a new online, competency-based RN to BSN program.
The director of the new program, Jennifer Gray, said she is excited about what the program will add to the nursing department.
“This program actually just started here in January,” Gray said. “We had a similar RN to BSN program before, but never could get an adequate enrollment to make it financially feasible. As we reflected on that and looked at our evaluations, we began to think about how this program could be reshaped to be successful. One of the things we figured out is that the students came to us with a lot of life experience and prior education that we probably had not adequately recognized.”
The new program differentiates itself from competitors by being competency-based and considering the education and work of the students who are coming in as registered nurses. The program considers nine competencies to complete the BSN, which expand into 40 sub-competencies, according to Gray.
“We started looking about 2 1/2 or 3 years ago at competency-based education,” Gray said. “The idea of competency-based is that you are able to demonstrate that you have achieved a competency, regardless of how much time you have put in on that competency. So, if I already know it from my experience, and I can complete the assessment of this competency and demonstrate that I know it at an adequate level, then I just skip this content and go on to the content that I don’t know.”
The strength in this competency-based education is students are able to move at their own pace and control the price of their degree, Gray said. The price of each term in the program is $4,000, with the term number depending on each student.
“Some students will move through quickly and others may take more time, partly based on their life circumstances,” Gray said. “What they do is pay a flat tuition and sign up for about four months, and you can complete as many competencies in that time as you want. So you basically control how much your degree is going to cost by how much time you spend and what knowledge you already bring. So people should be able to move through and finish in a year, while others may take two years.”
Unlike some RN to BSN programs, which give students a pass or fail grade, Oklahoma Christian will offer graduates of this program a concrete GPA. According to Gray, this will set graduates up well if they wish to pursue a postgraduate degree.
“These students are going to be earning a grade in each competency, so they will come out with a traditional GPA,” Gray said. “We think that will help them as they go on into graduate school. A lot of time nurses come back because they have been an RN for 15 years, and now they have decided they would like to be a nurse practitioner, but they cannot start graduate school until they get their bachelor’s. This could be a good way for them to make that first step.”
According to Gray, the most powerful thing about the new program is the component of it being completely online, which allows students to work while they continue their education. This not only allows the students to expand their career options, but also assists their employers in having more well-trained professionals in their institutions.
“The students will have clinical experiences they can do at their place of employment,” Gray said. “The research has shown in about 30 studies that the more BSN-prepared nurses you have in a hospital, the better your outcomes are. A lot of the marketing we have done at first has been through institutions. We did a lot of marketing with Mercy; we are looking to do some marketing with Integris; we are going to be talking about this program to associate degree program heads because they are the ones who are getting their students to think about going on, and it would be nice for them to know this an option.”
Gray said she also believes the faith-based nature of the education will make it uniquely valuable to nursing students seeking an education based in a Christian worldview.
“I don’t know of other competency-based programs in nursing that really have the Christian element,” Gray said. “We have a course that incorporates missions, certainly philosophy papers. Everything we look at is going to be from that worldview. Many of them have come to us because we are Christian; they want that kind of education. I think it would be a wonderful service to our community and really beyond.”
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