TECHNOLOGY– BASED SOLUTIONS

FOR ENHANCED CURRICULUM DESIGN

IN HIGHER EDUCATION

A JOURNEY OF INVOLVEMENT, INFLUENCE AND CHANGE

Five HEIs with some striking differences in

background, philosophy, specialisms, image,

aspirations and — of course — students, have found

enormous value in sharing the practice, ideas,

experiences and outcomes of their separate socio-

technical institutional change projects.

DRIVERS Enhancing the quality of the student experience;

Promoting innovation & flexibility in

teaching & programme design;

Desire for a more streamlined

programme design and approval process;

Desire for more consistent and effective use of

programme information;

Anticipated demographic shift / changing markets;

Government cuts / funding squeeze;

Requirement to be more demand driven;

JISC funding opportunity.

APPROACHES Stakeholder consultation and collaboration

informing and driving change;

Mapping of current processes;

Use of „Lean Principles‟ and

participatory design to review

processes;

Re-engineering based on detailed specifications

gathered from stakeholders;

Promoting innovation, flexibility and responsiveness

in teaching and programme design;

Development of bespoke tools, both technology enhanced and non-technology related;

Piloting/Re-engineering a range of open source and proprietary software, including SharePoint, Maharaja,

Wombat, Kuala Student, Twitter, Banner [Student].

OUTCOMES ”Staff now actually discuss curriculum design in terms

of content and philosophy and don‟t just focus on the

approval event and the paperwork”;

Student-facing versions of module/

programme specifications are in

development;

Students are being employed to develop

curriculum in collaboration with staff;

Projects are at various stages of developing &

testing appropriate technical solutions to support

curriculum design and approval;

„Scope creep‟ has emerged whereby some

projects have become associated with solving

related—and occasionally entirely unrelated—

issues.

LESSONS LEARNED It is very important for institutions to

acknowledge that engaging staff from all the required areas is a significant challenge, taking time and effort;

Technology-driven solutions are not always the most appropriate nor does it follow that they will have the

biggest impact;

Raising & managing expectations in the context of scope creep is proba-

bly an inevitable consequence of

approaches driven by stakeholder

consultation and collaboration;

“Selling the pain” of inaction can been an effective

approach; another is a “snowballing approach” whereby the process of rethinking curriculum design

can encourage increased engagement levels more generally.

Each project is at the mid-way point of the four year

JISC funded programme, „Institutional Approaches to

Curriculum Design‟.

http://jisccdd.jiscinvolve.org/wp/

Institutional distinctiveness has resulted in

different degrees of emphasis & engagement in curriculum

design and a range of technologies and possible solutions.

More significant is the emergence of common issues,

concerns & priorities and of complementary

outcomes and shared lessons learned.

Read on to find out more about significant drivers, approaches, outcomes and reflections on institutional

approaches to curriculum design that have emerged from the five projects so far:

OUR COMMON GOAL:

BETTER COURSES THROUGH

BETTER DESIGN

Projects: T-SPARC—PALET—Course Tools—PREDICT—UG-Flex

FURTHER DETAILS: http://www.netvibes.com/dcb09#DCB_09

ALT-C 2010 Poster: 0048:A rich and strange journey of involvement, influence and change in five HEIs