ENGAGING ACADEMICS IN CURRICULUM REVIEWS: LOOKING BEYOND A SUBJECT TO WHOLE OF COURSE LEARNING

Transitioning perspectives of student learning from subject based content to a whole of course perspective can prove challenging for both higher education institutions and those responsible for delivering student learning outcomes. Subjects and content can be the result of many years of teaching practice or the consequence of materials inherited from other academics. Recent moves with government programs such as the Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF) mean there is greater requirement for visibility and accountability to demonstrate how whole of course outcomes are achieved and learning outcomes assured.

An issue which became more evident during our own institutional implementation is that academics and teaching staff tend to focus on their own subject or subjects without having the perspective of where their subject sits within a degree or curriculum. Engaging academics in the process of redesign is usually limited to committees and process forms to document how subject content and assessment tasks align to the learning expected within a subject or topic area. This has led to situations where an academic has assumed that students arriving in their lectures or tutorials are already equipped with the necessary knowledge and skills. Experiences reveal that this is not necessarily the case.

This paper summarises ongoing work into a different approach seeking to visualise curriculum design and engage academics in embracing assessment design changes. The process of visually mapping curriculum using the principles of business process re-engineering (BPR) brought academics into a wide ranging conversation about where their subject or subjects were located in the course of study. By mapping subjects and assessment tasks on walls and corridors in the faculty academics became interested in seeing where their subjects sat. Conversations about what was expected and what was missing from student skill sets led to assessment redesign which took in the subject and course learning outcomes. Further discussions let to effective changes that considered the student learning as well as academic workload and principles of academic integrity. The end result was a win for everyone, in particular a new level of interest considering whole of course learning outcome perspectives.