JISC

The PC3 project will develop a framework that places coaching at the heart of the personalised curriculum design. Learners will be able to select provision suitable to their needs, construct an award (or module set), access resources and learning support, and negotiate assessment, with structured support from a personal coach. Coaching is a non-directive process that aims to enable learners to see what they are doing more clearly and discover their own ways to improve. The PC3 Framework is facilitating this process by developing the necessary processes, documentation, training and technological support, within the context of Leeds Met’s flexible learning regulations and systems.

Aim and objectives

The aim of the PC3 project is to develop and evaluate an innovative coaching-based framework to support personalized curriculum creation, to be embedded in assessment, learning and teaching practice. This framework will incorporate the processes, documentation, training and technological support needed to implement personalised curriculum creation on an institutional scale.

This will be achieved through the following specific objectives:

1. To analyse existing curriculum design processes and identify requirements for change and enhancement.
2. To design and document a new personalized curriculum design process based on coaching.
3. To develop and document a prototype technology infrastructure to support this process, including integration where required and feasible with other university systems.
4. To develop staff development resources and opportunities to provide coaching skills.
5. To pilot and evaluate the PC framework (2-4 above) with at least 4 cohorts of students from different discipline areas, refining the framework on each iteration. 
6. To make policy recommendations to the institution on future developments to support flexible curriculum development.
7. To disseminate our progress and findings to the wider community and engage in support and synthesis project activities.

Project Methodology 

The PC3 project will follow an iterative, learner-centric development methodology, with an emphasis on stakeholder engagement and piloting through real case studies. The main piloting phases of the project will be preceded by a significant period of review and planning and will be followed by a focus on embedding and dissemination.

The project team will pilot the necessary processes and software for the selected cohorts and work with relevant institutional services to ensure widespread adoption of the PC3 approach. The team will seek to manage institutional expectations of the scale of support they can provide but will provide support and resources to enable colleagues to roll out the approach on a wider basis. The team will also work with commercial suppliers and their existing products to embed the necessary tools to support the approach. It is critical that any technology must fit with existing products and be scalable to a large institution.

Anticipated outputs and outcomes

• Models of existing and modified curriculum design processes
• Prototype technology platform integrated with existing university systems 
• Documentation and tutorials demonstrating use of that technology 
• Staff development resources for coaching 
• Evaluation instruments for the impact on teaching practice 
• Patterns of good practice for coaching in an educational context 
• Workshops, case studies, JISC reports, website etc. 
• Contributions to the CIRCLE community, blog and support and synthesis project 
• Better understanding of personalised curriculum creation 
• Increased knowledge of coaching in an educational setting

Technology used

• PDF for documents, reports etc.
• PLML for recording patterns. 
•  XML etc for web standards 
• REST for web services 
• W3C WAI WCAG for accessibility

Lead institution

• Leeds Metropolitan University