Why undertake curriculum review?
The aim of curriculum review and redevelopment is to enhance student learning, engagement, experience and outcomes.
The process of curriculum review and enhancement can be a valuable developmental process for both individuals and programme teams. It has the potential, if planned and executed well, to improve communication and collaboration between staff, leading to a stronger programme team ethos and programme identity.
Many Schools and Departments have curriculum review embedded into their culture. As such, the scope of your Curriculum Framework review may be relatively light-touch and focus on more explicit integration of the Curriculum Framework Graduate Attributes through constructive alignment. Other programmes may use the opportunity provided by the Curriculum Framework Review to embark on a more ambitious curriculum change programme. This may be in response to a number of drivers, for example:
- Changing nature of the discipline
- To rationalise your offering, for example by avoiding duplicate provision or reducing the assessment burden for staff and students
- Opportunities offered by new learning technologies
- Increasing cohort size
- Shifting student demographics
- Trends in student retention, progression and achievement (including attainment gaps between students from different demographic groups)
- Trends in student satisfaction surveys (e.g. NSS)
- Trends in recruitment
- Changing expectations of professional statutory and regulatory bodies
- Analysis of programme information (e.g. KIS data)
- Outcomes of cyclical quality assurance processes, such as external examiners' reports
- Outcomes of module and programme evaluations
- Original aims and outcomes of the programme having been lost through 'module drift' over time