JISC

Overview

The University of Bolton’s (UoB) strategic aim is to be a Professional, Employer and Community Facing University where the needs of employers and learners drive both curriculum content and mode of delivery. To support this aim, academic practitioners will deliver professional higher education in partnership and in negotiation with employers and learners, empowering purchasers of higher-level skills to participate in the design and accreditation of their own learning and determine the time and place in which it is delivered. The Co-Educate project will focus our staff on a re-engineering of the professional curriculum.

To achieve this the project will develop new processes and supporting technical systems to support curriculum development and design that start with the needs of the learner (and their organisation) negotiated and delivered in partnership with full recognition of in-work and experiential learning. This curriculum re-engineering is vital to the University’s institutional strategic mission and informs its strategic dialogue with HEFCE about employer co-funding expansion. It builds on an existing major stake in employer led and work-based programmes with sector skills councils, professional bodies, the NHS, the Employer Based Training Accreditation (EBTA) framework and the Greater Manchester Lifelong Learning Network - over 50% of our students study part-time. This project will be a catalyst for our institutional curriculum remodelling.

Aims and objectives

This project aims to develop a technologically supported approach to programme development that is efficient, agile and responsive to purchaser and learner needs while protecting the rigour and quality of the existing validation mechanisms.

Objectives

• development of collaborative and transparent processes for initial course identification & curriculum design across the UoB & with stakeholders
• cross-institutional buy-in to the identification and implementation of the new practices required to develop courses
• cross-institutional capacity building in the ability to critically examine and develop the UoB work-focussed curricula
• embedding of inquiry-based learning including negotiated learning in work-focussed programmes offered by the UoB

Project methodology

The project’s approach is to undertake a complete review of the course development process within the university, from identifying curricular need to validation, in order to identify how this process should be streamlined to allow more dynamic and responsive curriculum processes. The review will necessarily involve modelling academic, departmental and whole university processes, and will use formal problem structuring methods from Operational Research (SODA and SSM).

Following the review we will work with staff and schools to develop processes and adapt technologies to facilitate these. Tools will be implemented to support development of new ideas for courses, examining their fit with existing provision, and course planning for the CPD, inquiry-based, work-focussed approaches we are proposing to adopt.

Anticipated outputs and outcomes

• A set of approaches for institutional wide review of curriculum design
• Formal models of curriculum design processes
• Elaboration of curriculum design models against COVARM
• Institutional wide documentation supporting new curriculum design processes
• Implementation of curriculum frameworks that enable agile design processes
• Implementation of online tools to support the practice of course design

Technology / Standards used (if applicable)

• XCRI-CAP
• COVA reference model
• ADoM stands for Admissions Domain Mapping