Subject Design and Curriculum Renewal Program

INTRODUCTION

This program will introduce you to the research and evidence about students’ experiences and perceptions of learning to inform the way you go about subject design and curriculum renewal processes. It will draw on 40 years of research about the student learning experience in higher education (Prosser & Trigwell, 1999; Ramsden, 2003; Biggs, 2007) to support you in developing a scholarly and evidence-based approach to subject design and curriculum renewal. You will learn about the different elements of subject and curriculum design and their relationship to the quality of student learning. The program is intended to help you develop an educational, scholarly and evidence-based rationale to your decisions about teaching and student learning.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

In addition to any learning outcomes you would like to achieve yourself, upon completion of the program, it is intended that you will be able to:

• provide evidence of your professional teaching development
• develop a more sustainable approach to subject design and curriculum renewal that is focused on improving the quality of student learning
• locate and draw on educational research and evidence to underpin your decision making about subject design
• write appropriate learning outcomes for your subject
• apply and evaluate different methods of assessment and feedback to support student learning
• use the LMS in a way that supports student learning in your subject
• seek and respond to feedback from your students in a balanced way
• draw on different methods of subject evaluation to complement the QoT survey data
• diagnose how you can improve your own teaching and your students’ learning

You will receive a certificate upon completion of all 6 modules.


LEARNING CONTEXTS AND RESOURCES

To focus and maximise your learning in the program, you will be invited to draw on a specific subject that you are currently responsible for overseeing or coordinating. This subject will be the context for your learning in the program. You may wish to review or make a number of changes to it. You’ll be encouraged to experiment with the assessment, the learning activities and to ask yourself whether the design of the subject really provides students with the best opportunity to learn and to demonstrate that learning.

All the modules are designed as interactive workshop sessions (although the overall program will also have an LMS presence). We are relying on you to be an active participant, sharing your experience and knowledge with others to learn some new things about subject design and curriculum. It is likely that the participants in the program will have different levels of academic experience–from the novice to the expert teacher. That diversity will be a key resource for the program.

 SESSIONS IN SEMESTER 1, 2009

The sessions will be held fortnightly (from Week 2, semester 1, 2009) on Wednesday afternoons (see below for dates) between 11-2pm. Lunch will be provided. You will get the most out of the program if you can commit to participating in all 6 sessions because you will take away a more coherent and holistic approach to subject design and curriculum renewal. However, it is possible to participate in individual sessions. You will need to register for each session if you do not intend to participate in the whole program.

There is no expectation that you complete work outside the scheduled session times. However, we will provide a list of resources for you to take away with you should you wish to extend your learning.

5. RESOURCES TO SUPPORT YOUR LEARNING

The LMS Community Site
In addition to the resources available at sessions, there will be others housed on the program’s Community site in the LMS. These will include:

• A list of articles and publications focused on the topic of each session
• A Discussion Board
• Links to relevant teaching and learning websites

In order to provide you with access to the LMS Community Site, we will ask you to provide us with your username before the program begins.

6. PROGRAM FEEDBACK & EVALUATION

The feedback you provide about your learning during the program is important to us. We will not only invite you to provide feedback at the end of the program (summative) but will give you an opportunity to offer feedback as the program progresses (formative). We are committed to using your feedback to improve the program. In doing so, we undertake to report our response to your comments.

7. TLU CONTACT

The Coordinator of the Program is Dr Tai Peseta, Room 04.038, Level, 4 198 Berkeley St. Tai’s email is tpeseta@unimelb.edu.au and ph 8344 5301.