Curriculum design and development
Everyone involved in teaching has a role in curriculum design. When starting to teach that role is usually confined to designing sessions, whereas with a lectureship usually comes the need to design or modify modules and work as part of a departmental team on course design.
These pages offer guidance on all these levels of curriculum design and development, which are held together by the principle of constructive alignment. In a well-designed curriculum there will be alignment between courses, modules, modes of teaching, assessment and grading criteria and this is achieved by linking everything to clearly stated learning outcomes.
The principles for good design of teaching and learning are much the same for individual sessions, modules and courses so these pages start by outlining the key characteristics of constructive alignment and how learning outcomes can make curriculum design easier.
The links on the left will take you to related pages that will go into more depth on particular aspects of curricuum design and development.
The relevant documents and templates for Curriculum Approval (new courses and modules or module updating) can be found on the Academic Office web pages.
Constructive Alignment and Learning Outcomes
Constructive alignment is the dominant theory underpinning curriculum design processes. You can read more about constructive alignment from John Biggs but in terms of curriculum design, it is about aligning everything to the learning outcomes. Starting the design/development process by deciding what the successful learner will be able to DO by the end of the session, module or course gives a clear focus for content, mode of teaching, assessment and even grading criteria. Learning outcomes also allow us to differentiate between expectations at different levels. In order to achieve alignment it is important that session outcomes contribute to module outcomes which in turn contribute to course outcomes - which themselves align with the QAA Quality Code Part A which is concerned with setting and maintaining threshold academic standards. This includes programme (course) and subject level guidance. So a first step before writing your learning outcomes is to check where they fit in the bigger picture, by reading the relevant QAA subject benchmark statement, the requirements of any external accrediting bodies, course or module documents. Once you have familiarised yourself with the context you can set about writing clear learning outcomes for your course, module or session.
TLDU runs TLD Events on many aspects of curriculum design and development including a workshop on planning sessions for those starting out in HE teaching.
Further guidance on curriculum development at Sussex is available from the university's Academic Office.
The TLDU web links also include an up-to-date collection of links on the subject of curriculum.