Transcript Curriculum Innovation at the University of Southampton

Curriculum Innovation at the University of
Southampton:
Curriculum design for a post-Browne world
Dr Peter Smith
Associate Dean (Education & Student Experience)
Faculty of Social & Human Sciences
Associate, Economics Network
September 2011
The HE environment from 2012
• A more competitive market for higher education?
• Market intervention creates market distortions
• Changing student expectations
• Impact on the pattern of demand?
• Enhanced focus on future earnings potential?
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Curriculum design 2011
• Radical reform or inertia?
• Periodic programme review
• Research and teaching
• Research-led teaching
• Teaching for research
• Producing professional economists
• Graduate destinations…
– equipping our graduates for life after Uni…
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Curriculum design 2012
• QAA Economics subject benchmarks
– provide a foundation
– but can be achieved in a subset of modules in a
programme
• Student choice and opportunity
– maintaining disciplinary coverage and rigour
– broadening horizons
http://www.qaa.ac.uk/Publications/InformationAndGuidance/Documents/Economics.pdf
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Curriculum innovation at Southampton
• to build a curriculum for our students that:
– delivers a high quality educational experience
– prepares them for their life as a graduate
– reflects and preserves the strengths of the
university
– recognises the internal and external constraints
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Part 1 (NQF level 4)
Laying the disciplinary
foundations
Part 2 (NQF level 5)
Build on disciplinary knowledge
and understanding;
opportunity to choose to deepen
further or expand perspectives
Part 3 (NQF level 6)
& Part 4
where applicable
Continue to build within discipline;
opportunities for independent
study via research:
in discipline or interdisciplinary
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Graduate Passport
Curriculum design for choice and opportunity
Broadening horizons
• Enabling our students to look beyond their disciplinary
boundaries
– if they wish to do so
• …in a managed way
• so we do not raise expectations beyond what can be delivered
– need to work within available resources
– and to recognise the internal and external constraints
• Rooms/timetable, IT, staff
• QA infrastructure, fees, accreditation & regulation
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Modules under development
•
Expected for 2011/12 S2
•
Also under development
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Communicating with web-based
maps
•
Crime and security beyond the state
•
Global challenges
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Health care ethics
•
The human brain and society
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Jekyll or Hyde
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Managing risk and uncertainty
•
The pathology of human disease
•
Sink or swim
•
Sustainability in the local and global
environment
•
Education for health & wellbeing
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Global Health
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Living with environmental change
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Total enterprise simulation
•
Work futures in a global context
Further call for new module ideas
to be developed ready for 2012/13
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Example: Living with Environmental Change
• Emanates from a multidisciplinary research group
• Lectures from specialists in a range of disciplines
• Backed up by interactive facilitated workshops
– with online multidisciplinary support materials on edshare
– including podcasts, journal articles, datasets, web links
• Students will become part of a learning community to help shape the
content by identifying key topics
• Assessment:
– online quizzes (40%), group oral presentation at an end-of-module
conference (30%), online resource package designed for a lay
audience (30%)
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Other modules available in 2011/12
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Languages
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Other modules include:
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Arabic
Latin
•
The search for life in the cosmos
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Chinese
Russian
•
Gender and society
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French
Spanish
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German
Portuguese
Introduction to social & cultural
archaeology
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Italian
Perhaps Polish
•
The living earth
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Japanese
•
Biology, behaviour and learning
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Perception
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Knowledge and mind
•
Introduction to political philosophy
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CIP in 2011/12 (semester 2)
• Programmes involved:
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Applied Social Sciences
Archaeology
Economics
Educational Studies
History
Mathematics
Music
Philosophy
Politics & International Relations
Population & Geography
Sociology & Social Policy
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