Abstract:

In higher education we should be able to teach skills modern environment and future employers require from our students and what they might require in future. Our curriculums should be planned to support learning towards a multi-minded expert that is combination of technological and business-oriented skills. Curriculum mapping is a method to develop curriculums to better respond to the requirements of today’s environment. It is an active review process where comprehensive information about the actual curriculum is used to present the actual learning experiment of students (cf. [1], [2]). In curriculum mapping, teachers are committed to develop the big picture of learning. According to Wang [2] curriculum mapping makes degree more transparency, increases recognition of students’ work skills and hence enhance their employment, connects academic skills and professional know-how, and advances teachers’ communality.

Curriculum mapping is data-driven as well as competence-driven [2]. In this paper we argue that business intelligence (BI) approach could be used as a practical tool to support the complex process of competence based curriculum development in higher education context. BI can be seen as a process for systematically acquiring and analyzing data and information from various sources to gain understanding about the organization’s environment to support decisions that are met for achieving organization’s objectives (cf. [3]). BI process is a continuous process that consists of five phases: defining information needs, information gathering, information processing, information sharing and utilizing information and feedback.

Based on an empirical case study from higher education setting, this paper proposes that BI process model can help to identify the key stakeholders and data sources necessary for holistic competence based curriculum development. Furthermore, the BI process model offers a systematic approach for planning and implementing the development process in addition to the more pedagogic frameworks and models. The empirical case of this paper is from a technical university that is in the middle of a big curriculum development process. The empirical data focuses on the first phases of the curriculum development process, i.e. the planning phase and the implementation phase of the degree program level competence based development, leaving out the level of actual courses. Empirical data is gathered through semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions involving different stakeholder groups, e.g. students, alumni, company representatives, teachers and administrative personnel.

References:
[1] H. H. Jacobs, Mapping the Big Picture. Integrating Curriculum & Assessment K-12. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 1997.
[2] C. L. Wang, “Mapping or tracing? Rethinking curriculum mapping in higher education,” Studies in Higher Education, vol. 4, no. 9, pp. 1550-1559, 2015.
[3] R. J. Thierauf, Effective business intelligence systems. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2001.

Keywords:

Curriculum planning, business intelligence process, higher education, case study.