Curriculum by Design

Professor Marnie Hughes-Warrington

Monash University

Ako Aotearoa

2 December 2010

This is not a jet engine

This is curriculum

• 2071• 4335• 10030

• Curriculum has many purposes

This is curriculum

• This is efficient• This gives students choice• This is strategic• Students don’t know enough

• Curriculum shapes the experience—and wellbeing—of staff as well as students

This is curriculum

• Is curriculum atomic?

Who is it for?

42% of first year students aren’t sure that at least one of their teachers knows them by name

31% of students believe that they are learning about research undertaken in their university

20% of students want a general first year experience (28% in 1994)

1 in 2 feels welcome on campusThe First Year Experience Survey 2009

Starting Points

44% of students under the age of 25 find lectures helpful

98% utilise learning technologies

What is the staff experience?

Is this a way of thinking about curriculum?

Re-visioning Curriculum

Learning Spaces Research

Andrew Milne, ‘Designing Blended Learning Space to the Student Experience’, in D. B. Oblinger (ed.), Learning Spaces, educause 2006

ethnographic research in youth and cultural studies, and anthropology

Reframing Curriculum

Taking a Wider view

People poor repository? Thoroughfare?

Curriculum by Design

• ‘Flow’ design– What does it ‘feel like’ to move through

curriculum?

• entry and exit:– where do I go in, where do I go out?

• Formal and informal– where do ‘take on board’ and when do I

‘wind down’?

Curriculum by Design

• Course and unit reduction, renewal• Timetabling and movement• Curriculum and co-curriculum: The Monash

Passport• ‘Enhancing Coursework Approvals’