NURS-FPX4010

NURS-FPX4010

Description

For this assessment you will create a 2-4 page plan proposal for an interprofessional team to collaborate and work toward driving improvements in the organizational issue you identified in the second assessment.

The health care industry is always striving to improve patient outcomes and attain organizational goals. Nurses can play a critical role in achieving these goals; one way to encourage nurse participation in larger organizational efforts is to create a culture of ownership and shared responsibility (Berkow et al., 2012). Participation in interdisciplinary teams can also offer nurses opportunities to share their expertise and leadership skills, fostering a sense of ownership and collegiality.

You are encouraged to complete the Budgeting for Nurses activity before you develop the plan proposal. The activity consists of seven questions that will allow you the opportunity to check your knowledge of budgeting basics and as well as the value of financial resource management. The information gained from completing this formative will promote success with the Interdisciplinary Plan Proposal. Completing this activity also demonstrates your engagement in the course, requires just a few minutes of your time, and is not graded.

Demonstration of Proficiency

• Competency 1: Explain strategies for managing human and financial resources to promote organizational health.
  • Explain organizational resources, including a financial budget, needed for the plan to be a success and the impacts on those resources if nothing is done, related to the improvements sought by the plan.
• Competency 2: Explain how interdisciplinary collaboration can be used to achieve desired patient and systems outcomes.
  • Describe an objective and predictions for an evidence-based interdisciplinary plan to achieve a specific objective related to improving patient or organizational outcomes.
  • Explain the collaboration needed by an interdisciplinary team to improve the likelihood of achieving the plan’s objective. Include best practices of interdisciplinary collaboration from the literature.
• Competency 4: Explain how change management theories and leadership strategies can enable interdisciplinary teams to achieve specific organizational goals.
  • Explain a change theory and a leadership strategy, supported by relevant evidence, that are most likely to help an interdisciplinary team succeed in collaborating and implementing, or creating buy-in for, the project plan.
• Competency 5: Apply professional, scholarly, evidence-based communication strategies to impact patient, interdisciplinary team, and systems outcomes.
  • Organize content so ideas flow logically with smooth transitions; contains few errors in grammar/punctuation, word choice, and spelling.
  • Apply APA formatting to in-text citations and references, exhibiting nearly flawless adherence to APA format.

Reference

Berkow, S., Workman, J., Aronson, S., Stewart, J., Virkstis, K., & Kahn, M. (2012). Strengthening frontline nurse investment in organizational goals. JONA: The Journal of Nursing Administration, 42(3), 165–169.

Professional Context

This assessment will allow you to describe a plan proposal that includes an analysis of best practices of interprofessional collaboration, change theory, leadership strategies, and organizational resources with a financial budget that can be used to solve the problem identified through the interview you conducted in the prior assessment.

Scenario

Having reviewed the information gleaned from your professional interview and identified the issue, you will determine and present an objective for an interdisciplinary intervention to address the issue.

Note: You will not be expected to implement the plan during this course. However, the plan should be evidence-based and realistic within the context of the issue and your interviewee’s organization.

Instructions

For this assessment, use the context of the organization where you conducted your interview to develop a viable plan for an interdisciplinary team to address the issue you identified. Define a specific patient or organizational outcome or objective based on the information gathered in your interview.

The goal of this assessment is to clearly lay out the improvement objective for your planned interdisciplinary intervention of the issue you identified. Additionally, be sure to further build on the leadership, change, and collaboration research you completed in the previous assessment. Look for specific, real-world ways in which those strategies and best practices could be applied to encourage buy-in for the plan or facilitate the implementation of the plan for the best possible outcome.

Using the Interdisciplinary Plan Proposal Template [DOCX] will help you stay organized and concise. As you complete each section of the template, make sure you apply APA format to in-text citations for the evidence and best practices that inform your plan, as well as the reference list at the end.

Additionally, be sure that your plan addresses the following, which corresponds to the grading criteria in the scoring guide. Please study the scoring guide carefully so you understand what is needed for a distinguished score.

• Describe an objective and predictions for an evidence-based interdisciplinary plan to achieve a specific goal related to improving patient or organizational outcomes.
• Explain a change theory and a leadership strategy, supported by relevant evidence, that is most likely to help an interdisciplinary team succeed in collaborating and implementing, or creating buy-in for, the project plan.
• Explain the collaboration needed by an interdisciplinary team to improve the likelihood of achieving the plan’s objective. Include best practices of interdisciplinary collaboration from the literature.
• Explain organizational resources, including a financial budget, needed for the plan to succeed and the impacts on those resources if the improvements described in the plan are not made.
• Communicate the interdisciplinary plan, with writing that is clear, logically organized, and professional, with correct grammar and spelling, using current APA style.

Additional Requirements

• Length of submission: Use the provided template. Remember that part of this assessment is to make the plan easy to understand and use, so it is critical that you are clear and concise. Most submissions will be 2 to 4 pages in length. Be sure to include a reference page at the end of the plan.
• Number of references: Cite a minimum of 3 sources of scholarly or professional evidence that support your central ideas. Resources should be no more than 5 years old.
• APA formatting: Make sure that in-text citations and reference list follow current APA style.

1 attachments

NURS-FPX4010 Health Care Professional Interview

NURS-FPX4010 Health Care Professional Interview

Assessment #2 Instructions:

For this assessment, you will create a 2-4 page report on an interview you have conducted with a health care professional. NURS-FPX4010 Health Care Professional Interview.  You will identify an issue from the interview that could be improved with an interdisciplinary approach, and review best practices and evidence to address the issue.As a baccalaureate-prepared nurse, your participation and leadership in interdisciplinary teams will be vital to the health outcomes for your patients and organization. One way to approach designing an improvement project is to use the Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycle. The Institute for Healthcare Improvement describes it thus:

The Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycle is shorthand for testing a change in the real work setting—by planning it, trying it, observing the results, and acting on what is learned. This is the scientific method adapted for action-oriented learning…Essentially, the PDSA cycle helps you test out change ideas on a smaller scale before evaluating the results and making adjustments before potentially launching into a somewhat larger scale project (n.d.).

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You might also recognize that the PDSA cycle resembles the nursing process. The benefit of gaining experience with this model of project design is that it provides nurses with an opportunity to ideate and lead improvements. For this assessment, you will not be implementing all of the PDSA cycle. Instead, you are being asked to interview a health care professional of your choice to determine what kind of interdisciplinary problem he or she is experiencing or has experienced in the workplace. This interview, in Assessment 2, will inform the research that you will conduct to propose a plan for interdisciplinary collaboration in Assessment 3.It would be an excellent choice to complete the PDSA Cycle activity prior to developing the report. The activity consists of four questions that create the opportunity to check your understanding of best-practices related to each stage of the PDSA cycle. The information gained from completing this formative will promote your success with the Interview and Interdisciplinary Issue Identification report. This will take just a few minutes of your time and is not graded. NURS-FPX4010 Health Care Professional Interview

Reference

Institute for Healthcare Improvement. (n.d.). How to improve. Retrieved from http://www.ihi.org/resources/Pages/HowtoImprove/de…

DEMONSTRATION OF PROFICIENCY

• Competency 2: Explain how interdisciplinary collaboration can be used to achieve desired patient and systems outcomes.
  • Summarize an interview focused on past or current issues at a health care organization.
  • Describe collaboration approaches from the literature that could be relevant in establishing or improving an interdisciplinary team to address an organizational issue.
• Competency 3: Describe ways to incorporate evidence-based practice within an interdisciplinary team.
  • Identify an issue from an interview for which an evidence-based interdisciplinary approach would be appropriate.
• Competency 4: Explain how change management theories and leadership strategies can enable interdisciplinary teams to achieve specific organizational goals.
  • Describe change theories and a leadership strategy that could help develop an interdisciplinary solution to an organizational issue.
• Competency 5: Apply professional, scholarly, evidence-based communication strategies to impact patient, interdisciplinary team, and systems outcomes.
  • Communicate with writing that is clear, logically organized, and professional, with correct grammar and spelling, using current APA style.

PROFESSIONAL CONTEXT

This assessment will introduce the Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) Model to create change in an organization. By interviewing a colleague of your choice, you will begin gathering information about an interprofessional collaboration problem that your colleague is experiencing or has experienced. You will identify a change theory and leadership strategies to help solve this problem.

SCENARIO

This assessment is the first of three related assessments in which you will gather interview information (Assessment 2); design a proposal for interdisciplinary problem-solving, (Assessment 3); and report on how an interdisciplinary improvement plan could be implemented in a place of practice (Assessment 4). At the end of the course, your interviewee will have a proposal plan based on the PDSA cycle that he or she could present to stakeholders to address an interdisciplinary problem in the workplace.For this assessment, you will need to interview a health care professional such as a fellow learner, nursing colleague, administrator, business partner, or another appropriate person who could provide you with sufficient information regarding an organizational problem that he or she is experiencing or has experienced, or an area where they are seeking improvements. Consult the Interview Guide [DOCX] for an outline of how to prepare and the types of information you will need to complete this project successfully.Remember: this is just the first in a series of three assessments.

INSTRUCTIONS

For this assessment, you will report on the information that you collected in your interview, analyzing the interview data and identifying a past or current issue that would benefit from an interdisciplinary approach. This could be an issue that has not been addressed by an interdisciplinary approach or one that could benefit from improvements related to the interdisciplinary approach currently being used. Additionally, you will start laying the foundation for your Interdisciplinary Plan Proposal (Assessment 3) by researching potential change theories, leadership strategies, and collaboration approaches that could be relevant to issue you have identified.When submitting your plan, use the Interview and Issue Identification Template [DOCX], which will help you to stay organized and concise. As you complete the template, make sure you use APA format for in-text citations for the evidence and best practices that are informing your plan, as well as for the reference list at the end.Additionally, be sure to address the following, which corresponds to the grading criteria in the scoring guide. Please study the scoring guide carefully so you understand what is needed for a distinguished score.

• Summarize an interview focused on past or current issues at a health care organization.
• Identify an issue from an interview for which an evidence-based interdisciplinary approach would be appropriate.
• Describe potential change theories and a leadership strategies that could inform an interdisciplinary solution to an organizational issue.
• Describe collaboration approaches from the literature that could facilitate establishing or improving an interdisciplinary team to address an organizational issue.
• Communicate with writing that is clear, logically organized, and professional, with correct grammar and spelling, and using current APA style. NURS-FPX4010 Health Care Professional Interview

ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS

• Length of submission: Use the provided template. Most submissions will be 2 to 4 pages in length. Be sure to include a reference page at the end of the plan.
• Number of references: Cite a minimum of 3 sources of scholarly or professional evidence that support your central ideas. Resources should be no more than 5 years old.
• APA formatting: Make sure that in-text citations and reference list follow current APA style.

Portfolio Prompt: Remember to save the final assessment to your ePortfolio so that you may refer to it as you complete the final Capstone course.

• SCORING GUIDE Use the scoring guide to understand how your assessment will be evaluated.VIEW SCORING GUIDE

scoring_guide_and_resources_2.docx

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Interview and Interdisciplinary Issue Identification Scoring Guide

CRITERIA	NON-PERFORMANCE	BASIC	PROFICIENT	DISTINGUISHED
Summarize an interview focused on past or current issues at a health care organization.	Does not summarize an interview focused on past or current issues at a health care organization.	Discusses an interview, but the focus of the interview, the issues addressed, or the specifics of health care organizational context are unclear or missing.	Summarizes an interview focused on past or current issues at a health care organization.	Summarizes an interview focused on past or current issues at a health care organization. Notes strategies employed in the interview to ensure that sufficient information was gathered.
Identify an issue from an interview for which an evidence-based interdisciplinary approach would be appropriate.	Does not identify an issue from an interview for which an evidence-based interdisciplinary approach would be appropriate. NURS-FPX4010 Health Care Professional Interview	Identifies an issue with an unclear connection to the interview or for which an evidence-based interdisciplinary approach seems inappropriate.	Identifies an issue from an interview for which an evidence-based interdisciplinary approach would be appropriate.	Identifies an issue from an interview for which an evidence-based interdisciplinary approach would be appropriate, providing one or more specific reasons to justify this approach.
Describe potential change theories and a leadership strategies that could help develop an interdisciplinary solution to an organizational issue.	Does not describe potential change theories and a leadership strategies that could help develop an interdisciplinary solution to an organizational issue.	Identifies change theories and leadership strategies that are unclear, incomplete, or irrelevant to developing an interdisciplinary solution to an organizational issue.	Describes potential change theories and leadership strategies that could help develop an interdisciplinary solution to an organizational issue.	Describes potential change theories and a leadership strategies that could help develop an interdisciplinary solution to an organizational issue. Notes which sources seem most credible or relevant to the specific organizational issue.
Describe collaborative approaches from the literature that could be relevant in establishing or improving an interdisciplinary team to address an organizational issue.	Does not describe collaborative approaches from the literature that could be relevant in establishing or improving an interdisciplinary team to address an organizational issue.	Identifies collaborative approaches from the literature but the relevance to establishing or improving an interdisciplinary team to address an organizational issue is unclear or insufficiently explained.	Describes collaborative approaches from the literature that could be relevant in establishing or improving an interdisciplinary team to address an organizational issue.	Describes collaborative approaches from the literature that could be relevant in establishing or improving an interdisciplinary team to address an organizational issue. Notes which sources seem most credible or relevant to the specific organizational issue.
Communicate with writing that is clear, logically organized, and professional with correct grammar and spelling, using current APA style.	Does not communicate with writing that is clear, logically organized, and professional with correct grammar and spelling, using current APA style.	Communicates inconsistently, using writing that is unclear, illogically organized, and/or containing numerous errors in grammar or APA style.	Communicates with writing that is clear, logically organized, and professional with correct grammar and spelling, using current APA style.	Communicates with writing that is clear, logically organized, and professional with correct grammar and spelling, using current APA style with no errors.  NURS-FPX4010 Health Care Professional Interview

Resources: Interviewing

·        Interviewing

• Byrne, D. (2017).Data collection: How do I collect data using interviews? [PDF]. Project Planner, 1–7.
  • This resource provides an overview of interview methods and tips to collect the type of data you are seeking.
• Knight, R. (2016).How to get the most out of an informational interview. Harvard Business Review Digital Articles, 2–7.
  • This article provides tips on how to best use interview time to get necessary information.

Resources: Evidence- Based Practice

·        Evidence-Based Practice

• Evidence-Based Practice in Nursing & Health Sciences.
  • This guide from the Capella University Library addresses basic EBP principles and collects resources and links for learning about EBP in greater depth.
• Spruce, L. (2015).Back to basics: Implementing evidence-based practice. AORN Journal: The Official Voice of Perioperative Nursing, 101(1), 106–114.
  • This article provides a framework for identifying and appraising research, as well as how to implement changes and practices based on research.

Resources: Plan- Do- Study- Act Model

·        Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA)

• Donnelly, P., & Kirk, P. (2015).Using the PDSA model for effective change management. Education for Primary Care, 26(4), 279–281.
  • This article looks at ways to apply the PDSA model to drive and maintain change initiatives.
• Institute for Healthcare Improvement. (n.d.).How to improve. Retrieved from http://www.ihi.org/resources/Pages/HowtoImprove/default.aspx
  • This website provides an overview of the PDSA cycle and resources related to using it to drive improvement and change.
• Institute for Healthcare Improvement. (n.d.).QI games: Learn how to use the PDSA cycles by spinning coins [Video]. Retrieved from http://www.ihi.org/education/IHIOpenSchool/resources/Pages/AudioandVideo/QI-Games-Learn-How-to-Use-PDSA-Cycles-by-Spinning-Coins.aspx
  • This video walks you through a simplified PDSA cycle.

Resources: Collaboration, Interprofessional, and Leadership Model

·        Collaboration and Leadership

• Dyess, S. M., Sherman, R. O., Pratt, B. A., & Chiang-Hanisko, L. (2016).Growing nurse leaders: Their perspectives on nursing leadership and today’s practice environment. The Online Journal of Issues in Nursing, 21(1), 1–11. Retrieved from http://ojin.nursingworld.org/MainMenuCategories/ANAMarketplace/ANAPeriodicals/OJIN/TableofContents/Vol-21-2016/No1-Jan-2016/Articles-Previous-Topics/Growing-Nurse-Leaders.html
  • This study presents findings related to the current development of new nurse leaders, and the perspective of new and developing nurse leaders.
• Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. (n.d.).Transforming care at the bedside: Empowering better nursing care [Video] | Transcript. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CtXFdITU8w
  • Run time: 4:48.
  • This video shows a leadership and change project at a hospital.
  • NURS-FPX4010 Health Care Professional Interview

Interprofessional Collaboration

• Varagona, L., Nandan, M., Hooks, D., Porter, K. J., Maguire, M. B., & Slater-Moody, J. (2017).A model to guide the evolution of a multiprofessional group into an interprofessional team. The Journal of Faculty Development, 31(2), 49–56.
  • This article focuses on an educational context but provides a good example of ways to bring a group together into an interprofessional team.
• World Health Organization. (2010).Framework for action on interprofessional education and collaborative practice. Retrieved from http://www.who.int/hrh/resources/framework_action/en/
  • This report from the WHO outlines actions and strategies to improve collaboration within local health systems.

Resources: Program Resources

·        Capella Writing Center

• Introduction to the Writing Center.
  • Access the various resources in the Capella Writing Center to help you better understand and improve your writing.

APA Style and Format

• Capella University follows the style and formatting guidelines in thePublication Manual of the American Psychological Association,known informally as the APA manual. Refer to the Writing Center’s APA Module for tips on proper use of APA style and format.

Capella University Library

• BSN Program Library Research Guide.
  • The library research guide will be useful in guiding you through the Capella University Library, offering tips for searching the literature and other references for your assessments.
  • NURS-FPX4010 Health Care Professional Interview

NURS-FPX4010

Discussion: NURS FPX4010 Capella Proposal to Solve Communication Issues in Healthcare PPT

Discussion: NURS FPX4010 Capella Proposal to Solve Communication Issues in Healthcare PPT

Question Description
I’m working on a Nursing presentation and need support to help me study.

Please find attached “assessment 2” needed for this project. Thank you

For this assessment you will create an 8-12 slide PowerPoint presentation for one or more stakeholder or leadership groups to generate interest and buy-in for the plan proposal you developed for the third assessment.

As a current or future nurse leader, you may be called upon to present to stakeholders and leadership about projects that you have been involved in or wish to implement. The ability to communicate a plan—and potential implications of not pursuing such a plan—to stakeholders effectively can be critically important in creating awareness and buy-in, as well as building your personal and professional brand in your organization. It is equally important that you know how to create compelling presentations for others’ delivery and ensure that they convey the same content you would deliver if you were the presenter.

You are encouraged to complete the Evidence-Based Practice: Basics and Guidelines activity before you develop the presentation. This activity consists of six questions that will create the opportunity to check your understanding of the fundamentals of evidence-based practice as well as ways to identify EBP in practice. The information gained from completing this formative will help promote success in the Stakeholder Presentation and demonstrate courseroom engagement—it requires just a few minutes of your time and is not graded.

DEMONSTRATION OF PROFICIENCY
Competency 1: Explain strategies for managing human and financial resources to promote organizational health.
Explain how the interdisciplinary plan could be implemented and how the human and financial resources would be managed.
Competency 2: Explain how interdisciplinary collaboration can be used to achieve desired patient and systems outcomes.
Explain an organizational or patient issue for which a collaborative interdisciplinary team approach would help achieve a specific improvement goal.
Competency 3: Describe ways to incorporate evidence-based practice within an interdisciplinary team.
Summarize an evidence-based interdisciplinary plan to address an organizational or patient issue.
Propose evidence-based criteria that could be used to evaluate the degree to which the project was successful in achieving the improvement goal.
Competency 5: Apply professional, scholarly, evidence-based communication strategies to impact patient, interdisciplinary team, and systems outcomes.
Communicate the PowerPoint presentation of the interdisciplinary improvement plan to stakeholders in a professional, respectful manner, with writing that is clear, logically organized, with correct grammar and spelling, using current APA style.
PROFESSIONAL CONTEXT
This assessment will provide you with an opportunity to sharpen your ability to create a professional presentation to stakeholders. In this presentation, you will explain the Plan-Do-Study-Act cycle and how it can be used to introduce the plan (P), implement the plan (D), study the effectiveness of the plan (S), and act on what is learned (A) to drive continuous improvement. By using this cycle, the stakeholders will have a tool and a proposal to expand on these ideas to drive workplace change and create improved processes to solve an interprofessional collaboration problem.

SCENARIO
In addition to summarizing the key points of Assessments 2 and 3, you will provide stakeholders and/or leadership with an overview of project specifics as well as how success would be evaluated—you will essentially be presenting a discussion of the Plan, Do, and Study parts of the PDSA cycle. Again, you will not be expected to execute the project, so you will not have any results to study. However, by carefully examining the ways in which your plan could be carried out and evaluated, you will get some of the experience of the thinking required for PDSA.

When creating your PowerPoint for this assessment, it is important to keep in mind the target audience: your interviewee’s organizational leadership. The overall goal of this assessment is to create a presentation that your interviewee could potentially give in his or her organization.

INSTRUCTIONS
Please follow the Capella Guidelines for Effective PowerPoint Presentations [PPTX]. If you need technical information on using PowerPoint, refer to Capella University Library: PowerPoint Presentations.

Be sure that your plan addresses the following, which corresponds to the grading criteria in the scoring guide. Please study the scoring guide carefully so you understand what is needed for a distinguished score.

Explain an organizational or patient issue for which a collaborative interdisciplinary team approach would help achieve a specific improvement goal.
Summarize an evidence-based interdisciplinary plan to address an organizational or patient issue.
Explain how the interdisciplinary plan could be implemented and how the human and financial resources would be managed.
Propose evidence-based criteria that could be used to evaluate the degree to which the project was successful in achieving the improvement goal.
Communicate the PowerPoint presentation of the interdisciplinary improvement plan to stakeholders in a professional manner, with writing that is clear, logically organized, and respectful with correct grammar and spelling using current APA style.
There are various ways to structure your presentation; following is one example:

Part 1: Organizational or Patient Issue.
What is the issue that you are trying to solve or improve?
Why should the audience care about solving it?
Part 2: Relevance of an Interdisciplinary Team Approach.
Why is using an interdisciplinary team relevant, or the best approach, to addressing the issue?
How will it help to achieve improved outcomes or reach a goal?
Part 3: Interdisciplinary Plan Summary.
What is the objective?
How likely is it to work?
What will the interdisciplinary team do?
Part 4: Implementation and Resource Management.
How could the plan be implemented to ensure effective use of resources?
How could the plan be managed to ensure that resources were not wasted?
How does the plan justify the resource expenditure?
Part 5: Evaluation.
What would a successful outcome of the project look like?
What are the criteria that could be used to measure that success?
How could this be used to show the degree of success?
Again, keep in mind that your audience for this presentation is a specific group (or groups) at your interviewee’s organization and tailor your language and messaging accordingly. Remember, also, that another person will ultimately be giving the presentation. Include thorough speaker’s notes that flesh out the bullet points on each slide.

ADDITIONAL REQUIREMENTS
Number of slides: Plan on using one or two slides for each part of your presentation as needed, so the content of your presentation will be 8–12 slides in length. Remember that slides should contain concise talking points, and you will use presenter’s notes to go into detail. Be sure to include a reference slide as the last slide of your presentation.
Number of references: Cite a minimum of 3 sources of scholarly or professional evidence that support your central ideas. Resources should be no more than five years old.
APA formatting: Make sure that in-text citations on your slides and in your notes pages and reference slide reflect current APA Style and Format.
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ORDER NOW FOR AN ORIGINAL PAPER ASSIGNMENT: Discussion: NURS FPX4010 Capella Proposal to Solve Communication Issues in Healthcare PPT

You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.

Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.

Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.

The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.

ADDITIONAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE CLASS

Discussion Questions (DQ)

Initial responses to the DQ should address all components of the questions asked, include a minimum of one scholarly source, and be at least 250 words.
Successful responses are substantive (i.e., add something new to the discussion, engage others in the discussion, well-developed idea) and include at least one scholarly source.
One or two sentence responses, simple statements of agreement or “good post,” and responses that are off-topic will not count as substantive. Substantive responses should be at least 150 words.
I encourage you to incorporate the readings from the week (as applicable) into your responses.
Weekly Participation

Your initial responses to the mandatory DQ do not count toward participation and are graded separately.
In addition to the DQ responses, you must post at least one reply to peers (or me) on three separate days, for a total of three replies.
Participation posts do not require a scholarly source/citation (unless you cite someone else’s work).
Part of your weekly participation includes viewing the weekly announcement and attesting to watching it in the comments. These announcements are made to ensure you understand everything that is due during the week.
APA Format and Writing Quality

Familiarize yourself with APA format and practice using it correctly. It is used for most writing assignments for your degree. Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for APA paper templates, citation examples, tips, etc. Points will be deducted for poor use of APA format or absence of APA format (if required).
Cite all sources of information! When in doubt, cite the source. Paraphrasing also requires a citation.
I highly recommend using the APA Publication Manual, 6th edition.
Use of Direct Quotes

I discourage overutilization of direct quotes in DQs and assignments at the Masters’ level and deduct points accordingly.
As Masters’ level students, it is important that you be able to critically analyze and interpret information from journal articles and other resources. Simply restating someone else’s words does not demonstrate an understanding of the content or critical analysis of the content.
It is best to paraphrase content and cite your source.
LopesWrite Policy

For assignments that need to be submitted to LopesWrite, please be sure you have received your report and Similarity Index (SI) percentage BEFORE you do a “final submit” to me.
Once you have received your report, please review it. This report will show you grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors that can easily be fixed. Take the extra few minutes to review instead of getting counted off for these mistakes.
Review your similarities. Did you forget to cite something? Did you not paraphrase well enough? Is your paper made up of someone else’s thoughts more than your own?
Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for tips on improving your paper and SI score.
Late Policy

The university’s policy on late assignments is 10% penalty PER DAY LATE. This also applies to late DQ replies.
Please communicate with me if you anticipate having to submit an assignment late. I am happy to be flexible, with advance notice. We may be able to work out an extension based on extenuating circumstances.
If you do not communicate with me before submitting an assignment late, the GCU late policy will be in effect.
I do not accept assignments that are two or more weeks late unless we have worked out an extension.
As per policy, no assignments are accepted after the last day of class. Any assignment submitted after midnight on the last day of class will not be accepted for grading.
Communication

Communication is so very important. There are multiple ways to communicate with me:
Questions to Instructor Forum: This is a great place to ask course content or assignment questions. If you have a question, there is a good chance one of your peers does as well. This is a public forum for the class.
Individual Forum: This is a private forum to ask me questions or send me messages. This will be checked at least once every 24 hours.