Transforming curriculum delivery through technology
Overview
Following on from the publication of the Leitch Review of Skills, and the publication of the Government’s World Class Skills implementation plan institutions are no longer expected to simply prepare graduates for a world of work, but to continuously support the learning and professional development of working people. It is therefore important for institutions to develop more flexible and creative models of delivery in order to support the development of autonomous, lifelong learners who are skilled in reflecting on their learning (both formal and informal) and planning for their personal, educational and professional development. This programme aims to stimulate change, working towards this vision.
Curriculum Delivery in this context is meant as shorthand to embrace the many ways in which learners are enabled to achieve the outcomes offered to them by a curriculum. Teaching, learning support, advice and guidance, coaching, mentorship, peer and collaborative learning, feedback and assessment, personal development planning and tutoring, skills development and practice, and enabling access to curriculum resources are all processes that might be involved.
Managing Curriculum Change
Managing Curriculum Change publicationThe newly launched ‘Managing Curriculum Change’ publication gives an overview of the aims of the Institutional Approaches to Curriculum Design and Transforming Curriculum Delivery programmes alongside a vision for the enhancement of the curriculum design and delivery lifecycle through technology. The publication introduces the projects involved in the programmes and illustrates through a combination of text and graphics what might be achieved at different stages in the curriculum lifecycle, with a focus on who needs to be involved to enable institutional aspirations to become a reality.
Curriculum delivery call
Redesigning the curriculum
Lisa Gray & Sarah Knight interviewed
on the Curriculum Design and Delivery ProgrammesThe JISC e-Learning Programme invited proposals for projects in Circular 08/08 for projects who wish to transform how they deliver and support learning across a curriculum area through the effective use of technology, in response to a particular challenge faced by the discipline(s), department(s) or institution(s) involved.
A total of 65 bids were received for this call, which included 9 proposals from Further Education colleges seeking Becta funding.
A total of 15 projects were funded, 13 through JISC funding, and 2 through Becta funding.
Programme meeting, October 2009
The Curriculum Design and Delivery programme meeting will be held on the 13-14 October 2009. See information and details on how to register
Projects
Details of the projects are provided below. The projects started in November 2008, and will complete by October 2010. For further information on this programme, please contact Lisa Gray.
The projects are working alongside a sister programme, ‘Institutional Approaches to Curriculum Design’. Both programmes are supported by a central Support and Synthesis project which is managed by JISC infoNet with contributions from JISC Advisory Services and Innovation Centres.
| Lead institution, Project name, Funded proposal |
Summary |
|
Newcastle University
DynamicLearning Maps
|
Navigable Dynamic Learning Maps will be developed and evaluated to assist students and staff in actively mapping learning by drawing on formal curricular and personalised learning records, supported by easy to use facilities to add and rate resources, and tools to support discussion and reflection. These maps will fuse both ‘semantic web’ and ‘Web 2.0’ approaches, building on established technologies and standards to provide ‘mash-ups’ of resources and curriculum information (managed learning environments) and personal learning records (ePortfolios/blogs). |
|
Kingston College
Kingston Uplift for Business Education (KUBE)
|
This project aims to develop and evaluate models of good practice in using technology to transform the teaching, learning and assessment in higher-level business education delivered at Kingston College in partnership with Kingston University. It will involve supporting learners through the use of interactive online resources; enriching learning and teaching through the use of mobile technology; extending the role of e-learning through blended curriculum delivery models; and supporting teaching staff through an e-supported peer observation scheme. |
|
University of Westminster
Making Assessment Count
|
This project will enhance curriculum delivery through the development of an innovative assessment feedback system. Existing e-based technologies (currently available through the existing VLE) will be used in an innovative way to develop an integrated process which will collate feedback, guide student reflections and facilitate their use of feedback to improve performance and inform their ensuing aspirations. |
|
University of Bristol
eBioLabs: A personalised virtual environment to support laboratory-based bioscience
|
This project aims to transform the delivery of laboratory based courses in the biosciences by deploying and evaluating a personalised learning space. Today’s larger and more diverse learner cohort coupled by the decreasing unit of resource has tended to make laboratory sessions more facile and ‘cookbook’-like. It is the aim of the project to transform lab-based courses so that they realise their potential to be active and discovery-led, through the provision of tools that allow learners to interact with and contextualise the tasks to be accomplished within a multi-layered virtual environment. |
|
University of Leicester
Delivering University Curricula: Knowledge, Learning and INnovation Gains (DUCKLING)
|
This project aims to develop advanced delivery, presentation and assessment processes to enhance the work-based learning experience for students studying remotely. They aim to demonstrate the practical marriage of sound approaches in delivery with new technologies and work-based pedagogies for learning support, communication and assessment of professional adult learners from commencement to completion of study. The project will support three programmes of study to delivery peer-enabled, work-based, professional development by driving delivery through collaborative group work and ‘e-tivities’, as well as offering the three programmes three innovative approaches – e-books, weekly pedagogical podcasts and deployment of the Second Life Media Zoo. |
|
Kingston University
Mobilising Remote Student Engagement (MoRSE)
|
This project will develop the idea of learning beyond the institution by developing discipline-based approaches to the enhancement and student-ownership of fieldwork and placements. In particular, the project will integrate outcomes from previous projects on mobiles, web 2.0, and learner experience in order to focus on issues of isolation, interaction, reflection and feedback for students undertaking fieldwork and placements. This will be achieved through a partnership between students, employers and tutors. |
|
The Open University
Achieving Transformation, Enhanced Learning and Innovation through Educational Resources in Design (ATELIERD)
|
This project will construct a virtual atelier that combines well established practice in art and design education with new opportunities presented by ICT to create a powerful new approach to learning and teaching design. It is founded on the delivery of three core design courses and their integration in a new design programme. The project platform will be OpenLearn, the Open University’s open content initiative plus other elements of the VLE such as Web 2.0 tools (e.g. videoconferencing and social networking applications), knowledge mapping software and a virtual design studio. |
|
University of Exeter
Integrative Technologies Project
|
This project looks to address the challenges faced by the University’s flagship Business School as it enters a phase of student expansion and international diversification. Drawing on, and supported by the Carnegie Institute’s Integrative Learning Project the project aims to foster students’ abilities to integrate learning over time, across courses, and between academic extra curricular, community and personal life. Technology will provide an integrative framework through which learners will be able to connect higher level skills, knowledge and experiences drawing on multiple sources. Pedagogic tools, including technology supported communities of learning, technology-enhanced assessment and feedback, and e-portfolios (e-PDP) are at the heart of the project. |
|
Middlesex University
Information Spaces for Collaborative Creativity
|
This project will address a recurrent problem in design education, that students are sometimes disengaged from key ‘creative conversations’ and that this problem can be exacerbated by learning technologies. The project will deploy trial ‘information spaces’ that will provide learners with the appropriate artefacts and modes of interacting with a learning situation, and with their peers and tutors, to enable them to engage more flexibly and effectively in conversations characterised by innovation and reflective, critical thinking. Key technological components will be the management and display of design information and critical feedback across appropriate display surfaces; the capture in appropriate media of significant design information; and the ability to replay, annotate and reflect upon such captured content. |
|
St George's University of London
Generation 4 (G4)
|
St. George’s, University of London currently delivers a problem-based learning curriculum for its undergraduate medicine course, which is paper-based, linear and inflexible. This project aims to use recently-developed technologies to assist in the creation of a more interactive and integrated model for curriculum delivery in medicine. This will include interactive patient cases which provide students with the opportunity to make realistic decisions and explore the consequences of their actions. The intention is to create a more adaptive, personalised, competency-based style of learning which more closely matches the role of practitioners. |
|
University of Oxford
Developing new models to transform the delivery and support of learning for continuing and professional learners at the University of Oxford (CASCADE)
|
This project aims to implement new strategies to create improved curriculum delivery models that allow the Department of Continuing Education to respond more flexibly to stakeholders’ needs. The project will develop and pilot a series of technology-enabled delivery models and policies and strategies to embed these new delivery solutions on an ongoing basis. |
|
Coventry University
Coventry Online Writing Laboratory (COWL)
|
The project is looking to address the challenge of the need to provide students with academic writing support. They will develop a pilot implementation of the new approach including online writing tutorials and sample stand-alone writing resources and teaching materials, in paramedic science and economics. They will then roll this out all areas of work. |
|
University of Hertfordshire
Effecting Sustainable Change in Assessment Practice and Experience (ESCAPE)
|
This project is responding to institutional and national concerns regarding assessment and feedback. Working with two Schools in the institution, the project will develop assessment for learning activities to enhance the assessment experience for all learners and staff in the schools. Building on the curriculum development activities within their Blended Learning Unit, they will investigate and incorporate ICT to improve effectiveness and efficiency of assessment practices. |
|
College of West Anglia
KLTV – an Internet TV Station to enrich teaching and learning
|
The project will establish and sustain an Internet TV Station to enrich curriculum delivery by providing enhanced resourcing and a diversity of learning experiences for learners on the First and National Diploma in Film and Television Media Production, ‘A’ Level Media and Film Studies, and on the colleges pre-journalism courses with subsequent extension to support the 14-16 Diploma in Creative and Media. The project will create a realistic fully operational TV production and broadcast environment in which learners are able to develop media skills underpinned by relevant subject knowledge. |
|
Lewisham College
Making the New Diploma a Success
|
This project will address the national challenge – the introduction of the new diplomas. The key challenge is that it is delivered through a shared responsibility and in a variety of locations between schools, the College and employers. They will address issues such as timetabling, data management, tutorial planning, access to support, and monitoring progress from different locations. The Learner Portal will bring together a wide range of existing college systems, as well as introducing new functionality to provide Diploma stakeholders with a ‘one stop shop’ for all aspects of the course. |
Meetings