A symposium by this name was run at Alt-C 2011, with presentations from SRC, PREDICT, Dyamic Learning Maps and OULDI.

Download the abstract and slides here.

Issues in representing the curriculum:

Course documentation doesn't get at 'what students are really doing'

Problem is that representations for different stakeholders meet very different requirements.

We need a 'common spine' of (valid, trusted) course-related information with a variety of versions, enrichments, visualisations etc to meet different purposes.

What projects are doing in this area

OULDI. Baseline view from the OU: five different viewpoints on the curriculum. Pedagogic view (learning design) and financial view are very different.The OULDI project takes a design approach to the development of learning and teaching resources. It recognises the need for different views of the curriculum to focus on different aspects. The project has developed 5 conceptual course views and 2 data driven views; these foreground different aspects of the design process and cover the full spectrum of design from micro to macro level. The five conceptual views are:

• Course map view
• Learning outcomes view
• Course dimensions view
• Pedagogy profile
• Task swimlane
  

The data driven views are derived from student performance and satisfaction data and from financial data.:

• Course performance view
• Cost effectiveness view

A full overview of the OULDI methodology and resources is available in a keynote presentation and associated paper given at the ConnectEd conference in Sydney in June 2010. 

Viewpoints
The Viewpoints projects has developed a range of staff development resources designed to help staff visualise the curriculum and how students will learn. Viewpoints also has a flickr stream which includes many examples of curriculum maps built with the help of their resources.

xcri – quick update on institutions where xcri is being used and applied.

• There is a set of documentation that meets quality needs

• There is the online prospectus and other marketing

• And then there is enrolment/reporting to HEFCE (usually from sudent records)

At all institutions involved, these are not joined up. Institutions making progress with xcri are tackling this but have gone about it in different ways. Xcri steered towards advertising for enrolment choices b/c this was seen as relatively straightforward application. But could it be used for example to map learning outcomes to assessment?

CETIS – special interest group to look at the technical infrastructure for curriculum design

TENCompetence project – trying to describe learning opportunities in terms of competences, yes. Also trying to describe areas of learning that fall outside of traditional degree programmes, which are emerging as new opportunities and needs. e.g. Water Management for the Nile Delta.

Westminster Making Assessment Count project – looking at what aspects of the curriculum are currently being represented. We need a view of what it is students will actually be doing. Partly to manage student expectations about the curriculum. When students choose a degree on paper and turn up to participate in it, they are often disappointed or confused by what they find.

Dynamic Learning Maps Project based at Newcastle University is using semantic web and web 2.0 technologies to create an environment for learners to engage with their curriculum in innovative, flexible, connectable and exciting ways. They aim to provide a personalised map of the curriculum for learners who do not often see the bigger picture of how their modules and choices link to, or connect with, each other. Early surveys with students revealed a, roughly, 50/50 split between those who prefer a visual representation and those who prefer textual views - this has led to the development of both approaches in the learning maps tool.

Pedagogic planning tools have done previous work exploring how representations of the curriculum can support both curriculum design, and instantiation of designs in run-time learning environments

Supporting Responsive Curricula commissioned a report on requirements for an academic database that would hold curriculum information at Programme, Course and Module levels. Download it here

Drivers for 'representing' the curriculum (in new ways)

• Standardisation for credit exchange at a european level – requires interoperability at high-level, curriculum descriptions especially competences, credit, level, which were not previously standardised by universities.
• Representing 'the whole portfolio' of offerings so the university can track its own strategic response to curriculum challenges, and monitor gaps, redundancies etc.
• Student expectations (especially with self-funding) demands representations that support choice, life-long learning, and learner-designed pathways
• Inter-institutional learning – more collaborative development, more learners putting hybrid qualifications together
• Using course representations to enhance design – to support 'better' conversations about learning, teaching and assessment, constructive alignment. Representations are tools for overall process change/enhancement as well as individual decision-making in curriculum design process.
• Developing shared representations so stakeholders can have productive dialogue about educational purposes and rationales (evidence from BCU that where there is greater involvement with students in the process there is evidence of greater uptake and engagement)

What different representations are needed for different users?

• Depends: what decisions and actions they are supporting (representations as tools for action)
• What 'level' is concerned: learning activities, modules, programmes, the whole portfolio
• What representations need to be well described and interoperable within institutions? For purposes of efficiency and accountability as well as pedagogic enhancement.
• What representations need to be well described and shared across institutions? e.g. credit, level, competences. For purposes of lifelong learning and credit transfer.
• Design and redesign may require different representations.
• Need to balance standardisation with flexibility, freedom etc.: find the 'middle way'.
• Language: tension between different representations for different users and the ideal that everyone should potentially have access to learning design decisions – how do students become involved in curriculum design if representations are inpenetrable? Employers have the same difficulty. Example of the hybrid learning model (Viewpoints, Ulster) as shared language between students and staff, helping to make students proactive in their own learning
• Describing the process and rationale behind curriculum design rather than the outputs. - this is highly beneficial to the participants...

Issues in representing the curriculum

• mapping competences

• rationalising CRI

• user-related representations – what is useful e.g. visualising the curriculum for potential students

• aligning representations – strategic, curricular and learner-based, business-oriented and pedagogy-oriented

• using representation to evaluate, review and enhance transformation

• supporting the process of collaboratively representing the curriculum – and possibly sharing outputs (but may be less valuable than collab devment)