By Alastair Buckley, Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Sheffield
This post was originally written in 2019 and was published on the old Elevate blog.
At the heart of any good curriculum design are a set of intended learning outcomes. You start with these
and then plan a series of learning activities that support the development of the outcomes. Finally, you
design assessments that test the intended outcomes – so that you can tell whether they have been
achieved or not.
Simple! This is certainly how I was taught to teach when I enrolled on the CiLT course as a new member
of staff 10 years ago. It’s certainly how school curricula are developed and there certainly is a whole
heap of evidence that supports the use of this so called "constructive alignment" approach.
The administrative processes that support new programme and module creation and module and
programme refinement assume constructive alignment as the central design tool. As part of curriculum
development, course aims, learning outcomes, learning and teaching methods and assessments need
to be identified and written down. The links between the different components then need to be identified.
These data are then logged on the "system". There they remain until someone asks that they are
updated or refined. The problem is that the process of curriculum development doesn’t map well onto
the process of filling out a form and submitting it. In order to meet the requirements of the Competition
and Markets Authority, the forms need completing well ahead of the delivery of the learning and teaching.
And things change, especially when multiple linked modules are being developed simultaneously like
they are under Programme Level Approach (PLA). New approaches to particular outcomes might
become available, new resources identified, and language may need modifying – when it becomes
clear that the students won’t or don’t understand the learning outcomes as they are stated in the form.
So having a set of information that is static on the "system", immediately leads to disengagement and
resentment of the process of creating the form from the teaching staff: "Not another bloody E1".
The new student system (SITS) should make updating information easier, and help to avoid multiple
proliferations of course information, but the challenge of long lead-in times remains.
But that’s only half of the problem. The other problem is that there are a very broad range of
interpretations of what the different sections of the form are there to do. Not all teaching staff speak the
“language" of constructive alignment, particularly if they haven’t had formal training in learning and
teaching.
In the past I think we muddled through. Modules didn’t join up very well and student expectations weren’t
particularly high in terms of programme integration. But in the era of PLA that’s changing. We’re starting
to sell our programmes on an integrated approach. At some point the E1 data will become increasingly
visible to students in the new SITS system. So it’s critical that all teaching staff have a common
understanding of curriculum design. Staff development around learning and teaching can be hard to
factor into busy schedules, but a new range of opportunities and more 'bite sized' information is
becoming available via Elevate.
It’s also critical that the process to amend, update and continually develop the curriculum data for a
module and a programme is easy, timely and fit for purpose. It needs to flow naturally through the
governance of programmes at departmental level. At the moment these processes can feel like
barriers; it is important that processes to support a more joined up and dynamic approach to
programme design are embedded within the new Student System.