DNP 960 Topic 1 Individual Success Plan
Planning is the key to successful completion of the Direct Practice Improvement (DPI) Project. The Individual Success Plan (ISP) assignment in this course requires your collaboration with your chair early on to establish a plan for successful completion of mutually identified and agreed upon specific deliverables for your programmatic requirements. Programmatic requirements are: (1) completion of required practice immersion hours, (2) completion of work associated with program competencies, and (3) work associated toward completion of your Direct Practice Improvement (DPI) Project.
General Requirements:
Use the following information to ensure successful completion of the assignment as it pertains to deliverables due in this course:
- Locate and download “Individual Success Plan” (ISP) document in the DC Network.
- Review the “DNP Program Milestones” document and identify which milestones apply to this course. Note: Not all courses have milestones.
- Determine what practice experiences you plan to seek in order to address each competency. Include how many hours you plan to set aside to meet your goals. Learners will apply concepts from each of their core courses to reflect upon, critically examine, and improve current practice and are required to integrate scholarly readings to develop case reports that demonstrate increasingly complex and proficient practice.
- Use the Individual Success Plan to develop a personal plan for completing your practice hours and how competencies will be met. Show all of the major milestones and deliverables.
- Within the Individual Success Plan, ensure you identify specific deliverables which can include the following: individualized DNP practice immersion contracts; comprehensive clinical log of hours applied to doctoral level learning outcomes; learner evaluations; mentor evaluations; current and updated CV; scholarly activities; GCU DNP competency self-assessment; reflective journal; course goals and plan for how competencies and practice immersion hours will be met; faculty and mentor approvals of course goals and documented practice immersion hours; and DPI Project milestones.
- Identify the specific deliverables you will complete throughout this course from those defined above or others negotiated with your faculty. You need to turn in a new Individual Success Plan for each DNP course.
- Identify the remaining deliverables you will complete in the upcoming courses.
- This assignment uses a rubric. Please review the rubric prior to beginning the assignment to become familiar with the expectations for successful completion.
Consider the challenges you expect to encounter as you continue the practice hour and competency requirements throughout this course? How might you overcome these challenges?
You can renegotiate these deliverables with your faculty throughout this course and update your Individual Success plan accordingly.
Directions:
Complete the Contact Information table at the beginning of the ISP resource, and type in your signature and the date on which you completed the table.
Read the information in the ISP document including the following:
- Learner expectations.
- Derivation of the ISP.
- Instructions for completing the ISP.
Follow the instructions and complete the ISP.
Portfolio Practice Hours
Learners will track their practice hours within the Typhon Tracking System throughout each course and via the Practice Hours Completion Statement provided in this assignment.
Complete the following statement in a Word document, submit it to the instructor, and complete the Typhon Tracking System entries appropriate for this course.
Practice Hours Completion Statement DNP-960
I, (INSERT NAME), verify that I have completed (NUMBER OF) practice hours in association with the goals and objectives for this course. I have also tracked said practice hours in the Typhon Student Tracking System for verification purposes and will be sure that all approvals are in place from my faculty and practice mentor.
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.
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.
