Assessment methods in undergraduate nursing programs: A survey of nurse educators

• Nurse educators utilize various assessment tools to evaluate students' achievement of program learning outcomes in prelicensure nursing programs. • In this study, the investigators identified the current assessment tools nurse educators use to measure student achievement of program learning outcomes. • Nurse educators can review the results of this study to identify similarities between their programs’ assessment tools and those identified in the study. The pandemic prompted undergraduate nursing programs to shift their instructional delivery from traditional face-to-face to online, hybrid, and/or HyFlex formats. While some programs resumed in­ person or hybrid instruction, many continued online and/or hybrid models through Spring 2022. This study aimed to identify the formative and summative assessment tools nurse educators use to measure student achievement of program learning outcomes in undergraduate nursing programs, changes in assessment tools following the pandemic, and the alignment of assessment tools with evolving instructional delivery methods. A quantitative descriptive design, along with a researcher-developed electronic survey, was employed to gather data from 48 nurse educators. Descriptive analysis was then applied to interpret the collected data. Clinical evaluation tools were primarily used as formative and summative assessment methods following the pandemic. Most of the 48 nurse educators indicated that the formative and summative assessment tools remained the same before and after the pandemic. Summative assessment tools were modified in response to changes in instructional delivery and, therefore, aligned appropriately with the delivery method. Assessment methods remained consistent before and after the pandemic. However, further exploration is needed to effectively adapt assessment tools to different learning modalities.