Guide

Curriculum change

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About this guide

Published: 6 March 2014
Updated: 21 January 2015

The curriculum provides a framework for engaging with technologies that are educationally relevant.

For students, digital practices in the learning environment are shaped within their programme of study where they tend to look to teaching staff for guidance on recommended technologies or adopt those required by the curriculum. Embedding digital capability into the curriculum aligns with their educational aspirations and helps make sense of the tasks and technologies in use.

However, there is generally a lack of consistency within institutions in how students are introduced to technology in their studies, how technology is used in curriculum activities and how digital skills are assessed if at all. Engaging staff and students in development activities and systematically designing digital literacy into the curriculum will help address some of these issues.

Oxford Brookes University

Oxford Brookes University has taken a wholesale and strategic approach to developing digital literacies across the curriculum.

The Brookes Strategy for Enhancing the Student Experience 2010-2015 requires all programmes to include the development of five graduate attributes, one of which is digital and information literacy. Every programme now produces a new programme specification and a narrative explaining the digital and information literacies their graduates will develop and the learning activities and assessments that will support this development.

The strategy is taken forward by faculty associate deans (student experience) and digital media and e-learning developers (learning technologists), supported by a central course design initiative and wiki-based resources.

Taking a discipline focus

Focusing on digital literacies within different subject disciplines is the most meaningful way of engaging staff and students in discussions around the types of technologies and related capabilities that are of most relevance to them.

For staff, the sense of being overwhelmed by the digital can be managed through a focus on what is really relevant in their specialism and on the ways they can add value to students’ digital know-how.

For students, the discipline provides the context for shaping their digital practices to support their studies and, in many cases, professional development.

Developing faculty learning communities at the University of Bath

The University of Bath has been exploring what it means to be ‘digitally literate’ within different subject disciplines. The PriDE project took an action learning approach to defining and developing digital literacies across its four faculties by working through faculty ‘learning communities’ made up of staff, students and researchers.

These groups came together to develop a rich set of digital literacy statements which describe the attributes of learners, researchers, teachers and professionals within the context of their subject disciplines.

This disciplinary approach to engaging staff and students in discussion around digital literacy has been a catalyst for significant change at the university and a number of the project’s achievements are showcased in the special edition of Better@Bath.

Curriculum design and development

The curriculum design process is key to ensuring that digital literacies are embedded in learning and teaching. Course validation and review provide opportunities to rethink how digital literacy can be reflected in learning outcomes and the tasks and assessments which support these so working with course teams at these critical points is key. The involvement of specialist professionals in this process (eg library staff, TEL staff, academic advisors) also allows new ideas to spread across subject boundaries.

A resource set on developing digital Literacies in the curriculum provides a range of resources such as case studies, workshop materials, guides and briefings, frameworks and learning design tools which can be used with staff and students.