A tech-driven approach to curriculum mapping the new Essentials

The purpose of this project was to develop an efficient process for mapping an existing nursing curriculum to the 2021 American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) New Essentials, through clear and visually engaging formats. This manuscript describes the implementation of this framework using a quality improvement design to operationalize technology in curriculum mapping. Qualtrics Surveys and Microsoft Excel were used to streamline the complex process of mapping of domains, spheres, competencies, and sub-competencies. A separate process using Gemini AI was used to create visualizations of where the New Essential concepts were presented in each program. This approach engaged faculty while markedly reducing their time and effort in mapping processes, focusing efforts on high-level validation and substantive curriculum revisions. The resulting visualizations offered a transparent, interpretable, and comprehensive representation of curriculum alignment.