Journal of Academic Development and Education JADE Issue 8 | Page 6

6 | JADE
EDITORIAL | 7
DR. KATE CUTHBERT
reaching a curriculum that is truly fit for purpose? There are also the
situational aspects surrounding curriculum development such as the
lonely programme leader without line management powers working
to pull together a curriculum within three months without a dip in
teaching hours. Being in this situation you are forgiven for getting
the task done rather than finding the best way to get the task done.
CURRICULUM DESIGN LEARNINGS FROM PRODUCT DESIGN
Design Principle Curriculum Design Questions
A user-driven mentality:
An upfront exploration
of needs, behaviours and
perceptions of users • How well do we understand our current
students and can we forecast for our
prospective students?
• How well do we understand points of
difference and similarity between students?
• Do we investigate the thresholds (explicit
and implicit) of a curriculum and gather
insight into the messy parts that need
scaffolding? (See Meyer and Land, 2005)
Prototyping:
Iterative design process
using models to test a
concept or idea. The
prototype is reworked
over time as learning
about its effectiveness
is gained by the design
team. • How do we test curriculum ideas? We
are seeing the growth of creative and
collaborative learning and maker spaces -
how about academic practice which allows
co-creativity, co-exploration and importantly
rapidly test ideas. Where is the safe space to
take risks and learn as we build?
• Can academic teams build curricula
without being too constrained by academic
conventions and protocols?
• How can curricula be more agile as new
learning about the learning surfaces?
Concept visualisation:
The outputs of early
brainstorming are
communicated across
variety of media, often
highly visual. • How often do you deviate from your
institution’s validation paperwork to explain
and communicate your curriculum ideas?
• How do you articulate the learner journey
over and above the modular matrix? How do
users get a sense of the experience of the
programme?
A large proportion of academic literature is dedicated to the what of
curricula, the content and the pedagogy but very little transformation
has happened with regards to the development process. How can
curriculum development activities be refreshed in such a way that
results in a better outcome?
Just a pause point here; what is meant by a better outcome in the
context of curriculum development? It is quite a big question but
focusing on this helps recognise the importance on how we develop
curricula. No doubt that at the forefront of your answer will be
“successes for learners”. But as an outcome, that is heavily dependent
on achieving an improved user experience, closer alignment to
development stages and matching up support when needed and
always teaching the right content in the right ways. These elements
could be more attainable if, as academics, we borrowed principles
and practices from the science and art of product design.
Within a recent blog 1 I spent some time thinking about the possible
learning from product design that could be applied to curriculum
development activities. In the blog I describe how The Design Council
distinguished four major phases of design observed in eleven global
companies. The first two phases of Discover and Define have the
responsibility of articulating the problem/need to be addressed by
the eventual product. Both phases use convergent and divergent
thinking to arrive at a problem definition. Only when this has been
reached are design solutions considered. This restraint to solve the
problem before the need is articulated is really powerful and often
missing from our curriculum development activities.
On the opposite page are some questions for you as a curriculum
developer, prompted by the practices observed in the eleven global
brands.
More inspiration to pinch from the design world
Whilst the principles of design that are outlined above offer a
way into rethinking and questioning our curriculum development
1. https://www.heacademy.ac.uk/blog/can-curriculum-development-be-
guided-product-design
Table 1: Design Principles triggering curriculum design questions
practices, sometimes a practical thing to try really helps. Following
are a few design activities that you might like to adopt when sitting
in the curriculum developer’s seat:
Experience-based design & public value activities
Prompted by the need to develop care services in partnership with
patients, experience-based design takes forward a co-production
approach. With some adaptations the toolkit from the King’s Fund 2
would meet the needs of engaging students within curriculum
2. https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/projects/ebcd