Curriculum Mapping Pre-Conference Session – STLHE

While the session I wanted to go to this morning was canceled, but the session ( Curriculum Mapping: The Path to Improving Student Learning and Faculty Effectiveness Through Curriculum AlignmentJohn Mahaffy, Gloria Svare and Karen Kopera-Frye, University of Nevada, Reno) that I wanted to go to in the afternoon was really well done and gave me exactly what I wanted to get – some starting point as to how to assemble a means to view curriculum in the Faculty with regards to technology (and everything else… we might as well get both answers at the same time) to see where we have to go. But what about how or what this means to anyone else?

Well in K-12, this manner of thing is done usually with ease as the curriculum process is top down, but in Higher Ed, with the specter of “academic freedom/independence” this is much harder to do, especially in a larger institution. So while this might be completely off the way to do it, this is what my plan is. Many of you might have done this already, others are thinking that you might have to do it as well, especially if there is a new focus that needs to find it’s place in the teaching and learning space of your institution.

The process should start with figuring out what to map and at what level. These “whats” are, or should be objectives/skills and concepts. The higher the level, the more general the detail. So at the Faculty level, there might be a skill of “understand scientific process” and at the course level you might be “refine experimental processes based on the application of research findings”. Each of these items must have some level at which they are assessed. Usually, the Faculty does not and can not to assessment and so this falls to courses. Courses that are specific for certain streams or are requisites for graduation should be identified and their assessments of higher level skills/objectives (eg from the Faculty or department). Assessments should define the type (MC exam, paper, project and identify what it’s various levels of achievement – think rubrics here) Once the objectives and assessments are all identified, they can be mapped in a single unified chart that can show who, what, when and how objects are being met and what, if any overlap or gaps exist. The higher level process should most likely be done at through meetings with Deans and Chairs and the course level should be done with program coordinators for larger courses or in smaller courses, with the instructor.

Working with the instructor, the process should not really have as much talking, but more a spreadsheet/worksheet. Each course should go over and identify how it meets what is defined at the Faculty and department levels. Each course should then add it’s particular goals and objectives and also identify what the pre-requisites and “post-abilities” are related to each course to see how, in addition to the defined objectives, course are connected. The course specific additions might reveal objectives that were not identified at the higher levels (for better or worse). This with the understanding that students really only ever remember stuff long enough to answer questions on the exam, with the exception of a small percentage.

To get this process done, there needs to be a time line and some manner of reward for participation. Ideally, the reward would be that the students are better served, but as many of know, teaching is often secondary to research or other duties for many instructors, and in the end, the thing that talks loudest is money. So if the participation can be shown on an annual review, so much the better. If the instructors are keen on teaching, but are claiming that they should be able to enjoy “academic freedom” while teaching, they can be told that if they participate and get others to do so as well, they will better be able to know what students are coming into the course with and this saves time for everyone and allows for personal interests to be explored with the knowledge that students might even be able to deal with what is being covered and the instructor isn’t just producing noise that has to be cut out with iPods.

In the end the grid would be a table with courses and their respective assessments on the left side in a single column going down and across the top the skills and objectives identified for each level.


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