Abstract:

Following the mandates within Higher Education (HE), curriculum design is managed following the prescriptive scientific framework where aims and objectives, learning outcomes, indicative content, teaching and learning activities and assessment details are defined. However, in the instance where a curriculum is undertaken by a large number of student cohorts and managed by a teaching team, this does not necessarily culminate in good rates of student attendance and engagement in learning.

Collective feedback from staff observations and different student cohorts spearheaded a move towards a major curriculum delivery revision. This resulted in a longitudinal case study to find the best fit framework incorporating the use of readily available technology such as the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) within the HE to deal with such persistent problems that very often affect large student cohorts.

The iterative curriculum delivery revisions transformed the student roles from passive, rote learning to active, collaborative learning. This change process and experience exposed various scenarios of delicate imbalance on the duty of care in terms of ensuring sufficient learning and the increasing overload of administrative duties in curriculum management. Various other key impacts such as the lecturer and student roles, the learning engagement resulting from the dimensions of control and dominance in the formative learning process, the “instant” rewards and awareness, and group collaborative learning provide valuable lessons.

Strategic and creative iterative revisions of the curriculum delivery which target specific “problem areas” can help minimise negative impacts and provide progressive sustenance in student engagement, thus improving learning.

Keywords:

Iterative curriculum delivery revisions, blended learning, collaborative learning, collaborations, student engagement, absenteeism.