Abstract:

During the last ten years or so, colleges and universities have been more and more engaged in transforming their curriculum using an outcome or competence oriented approach (Gahagan, Dingfelder & Pei; 2010). This approach has the advantage of defining more clearly the ending point of the educational process, whether it is by using professional competencies or by using more generic outcomes. By doing so, educators specify what a student should be able to do with what he knows (Mentkowski and al.,2000) rather than just what he should know. Few colleges and university have a meaningful experience in designing curriculum using a competence oriented approach, even though there has been a significant number of books and articles that were published during the last five years on the subject, particularly in French (Le Boterf, 2008; perrenoud, 2008; Jonnaert, 2009; Prégent et al., 2009).
The objective of this study was to elaborate a curriculum design numeric tool using a competence oriented approach and to validate its usefulness and relevance with a group of university teachers. A thorough review of literature was done to identify and summarize relevant articles and books (Tardif, 2006; Scallon, 2007) that could produce the basic principles of the curriculum designing approach. Then a numeric tool composed of a specific number of steps to follow was produced in order to facilitate the designing process. These steps were identified as follow:
a) Inserting the chosen course in a specific program (undergraduate, graduate, continuing education, etc.);
b) Identifying competencies or outcomes aimed at and their components (capacities);
c) Identifying resources ( different types of knowledge) to be mobilized by the learner;
d) Identifying learning situations where the resources should be demonstrated;
e) Constructing a competence’s scale composed of a progression of mastery levels going from beginner to master;
f) Describing learning activities;
g) Describing evaluation activities.
The use of technology was central to this process because it could guide the teacher in his choice of a logic path to follow while allowing for personal choices and going back. It had also the huge advantage to store data, making it possible to retrieve them at any time during the designing process.
The curriculum design process of a group of university teachers (N=10) was explored using the numeric tool. Their reasoning was described by recording how much data they produced and how much time they spent on each step of the designing process. The path that they followed, going from one step to the other, was also recorded. The learning styles of the teachers was measured using the test Inventaire des styles d’apprentissage (Learning style inventory) developed by Talbot, 2000.
Preliminary results showed a great diversity in the designing process, explained in part by the variety of the learning styles of the teachers. Certain steps were found to be more crucial to the whole designing process, suggesting that a minimum time should be spent on them. All teachers found the numeric tool useful, even essential, in guiding them through the designing process. On the whole, the results of this study support the use of such a numeric tool for helping university teachers in the planning of their courses.

Keywords:

Curriculum design, competence, numeric tool.