In baseline reports for the Curriculum Design programme, frustrations with curriculum processes were particularly evident around course-related information ('all the information involved in the creation, quality control, marketing and subsequent management of our course products'). Many baseline reports described 'excessive bureaucracy', and 'unnecessary duplication and repetition', with course-related documents such as student handbooks, web-site entries, and VLE module shells being produced quite separately, and often from separate information databases. Students, potential students, administrators, external validators, teaching staff and heads of department all need very different views of 'the course', in different formats and media, to support their actions and decisions.
Many projects are now addressing the issue of course-related information in a more integrated way. They are working to rationalise the information flows around curriculum design and delivery, and to support innovative means of communicating course-related information to different stakeholders. The ideal is that 'information is readily shareable across stakeholders, processes and systems'. As well as saving time and simplifying systems for staff, this has also provided cost savings for institutional managers, and enhanced the experience of students who have better access to information about courses.
The T-SPARC project is working in Sharepoint to develop an information system with a single point of entry, version control, and connections between course data and student data held in the SITS database to support e.g. timetabling. The sharepoint development will support provision of the new Key Information Sets and will eventually map to the xcri CAP. The project has also achieved an important milestone in developing an approval process that captures the ‘lived experience’ of the curriculum. BCU is now looking at new ways to provide information to students via a rich Course Guide and building a 'Rough Guide to Curriculum Design' for staff which provides all the information relating to course design and approval via a single interface.
City University's PREDICT project has continued to work with staff to ensure that programme and module specifications are student-facing and allow the philosophy and learning benefits to be clearly communicated. PALET's student-facing module description template, which allows schools to capture much more detailed descriptions of each module, including assessments, is now being used by four schools to manage course information entirely online. The ENABLE project at Staffordshire has had further success in convincing senior managers that joined-up information processes can enhance the student experience, for example allowing information to be provided students on their preferred devices.
We are now seeing evidence that trusted, authoritative information can enhance design practice:
The first-year undergraduate curriculum is now on-line, which is already providing benefits in terms of sharing good practice and identifying areas where further central support is required (e.g. on embedding employability, or the use of particular types of assessment). (SRC)
A side-effect of this kind of development is that the curriculum is exposed to a whole range of stakeholders, including students and potential students.
Trust in shared data is critical. UG-Flex describes how technical enhancements to the student records system have increased trust in the quality of information held centrally, making it more likely that records will be consulted and information acted on in the course of curriculum design. Shared data, with a single trusted source of authority, has become a new goal of the information strategy at Staffordshire (
Enable). PALET has articulated a set of key principles around course information, which have been adopted by Cardiff's Academic Standards and Quality Committee (ASQC):
- One programme – one set of information;
- One programme – one school;
- The right data – the right purpose;
- Personalised information for students
There are challenges around defining a core data set for programme specification because the information has to serve a variety of purposes, for instance supporting validation, producing a student programme handbook, and managing the programme. The systems involved (e.g. SITS) have typically been developed for use by admin staff and/or Registry. Projects face a number of challenges in designing interfaces that academic staff can engage with directly, and ensuring that representations of the curriculum are aligned with academic and learning needs.
It is of the utmost importance that programme teams generate artefacts that emerge naturally from their design activity and that we avoid a situation whereby people are constructing evidence/artefacts for the sake of being seen to do so. (T-SPARC)
Artefacts that support the design process – and support staff development in the process of design – are best evolved iteratively, through piloting and development in a range of different contexts (course teams, students using outcomes of the design process, external stakeholders) (
Viewpoints)
PALET has used various methods to
represent design processes to stakeholders, including IBM WebSphere Business Modeller, Lovely Charts and MS Visio:
Whilst these tools have been useful to map current processes, they have not been useful in representing the concepts, relationships and interactions core to the new processes being designed. The project has recently used PowerPoint to map out processes in a simple and logical way, which allows all uses to engage with, discuss and understand how the processes might work in an electronic system. (PALET)
All of these developments may be expected to take on increased significance under a new QA regime and the requirement to provide Key Information Sets for all courses.
Dynamic Learning Maps focused on pulling together disparate course information and presenting this in a range of transparent ways to enhance student and staff understanding of how the curricula related and linked to each other. This has had a significant impact on how students experience and make connections within their learning experience, and is strengthened by the capacity to add their own resources and information to these maps. Staff benefitted from being able to see where their contribution to the course fits in to the whole and the maps also highlighted duplication and inconsistencies in the whole curricula. Making services and structures transparent and open has influenced timing of some sessions and enhanced the experiences of staff and students.
Using technologies to bring together information and data normally scattered across institutional departments can prevent duplication and inconsistencies in areas such as timetabling (Making the new Diploma a success, CourseTools) and improve vital frontline systems such as online enrolment and payment for courses (CASCADE). Projects offer strong evidence that changes to these systems not only save money but significantly enhance the overall student experience.
Supporting Responsive Curricula, CoEducate and Enable are all exploring use of the XCRI (eXchanging Course Related Information) standard to improve the management of course information in a single, reliable version, and its use across a range of institutional processes from marketing to timetabling and course design.
‘For students the most popular and motivating tool has been the instantaneous access to their timetables, attendance and punctuality reports. As a result Registry no longer provides students printouts but instead points them to them on eME. This has also resulted in significant cost savings.’ Making the new Diploma a success
‘Costs need to be considered at both an institutional and programme level. A high level of detail will take more staff time to map and maintain over time. The more that information can be fed into DLM on an automated or semi-automated basis from existing systems and data sources, the more economical it becomes. Setting up such feeds may involve technical, governance and practical challenges.’ Dynamic Learning Maps
See also Design Studio resources on representing the curriculum
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