Transcript Document

DLT Forum 30 June
Curriculum Enhancement Project
Working in partnership with staff, students and employers to ensure the
academic excellence and contemporary relevance of our undergraduate
programmes; leading to graduates who are capable of articulating the
benefits of a Leeds research-led education and understand how this
prepares them to compete successfully in the employment market.
Agenda
• Project update
• Views on proposals for academic year
structure
• Broadening consultation update
• Curriculum mapping for RLT
Decisions made so far
• Employability, ethics and responsibility and global and
cultural insight - the core threads within Leeds curriculum
• Threads to be demonstrated in all programmes from 2012
onwards
• Broadening strands will replace the current electives system
• No stand-alone electives will be offered outside the strands
• Broadening either within or beyond the programme will be
demonstrated from 2013/14 onwards
• Any changes to the academic year will be introduced from
2013/14 onwards
What are the next steps?
New website launch 18 July 2011
Threads:
• Guidance to schools in September 2011 to support evidencing of core
threads
• Schools to evidence RLT and core threads during 2011/12
Broadening:
• Consultation feedback discussed at July Project Board and taken to
October FLTCs
• Funding call to schools to develop broadening strands July 2011
Academic Year:
• Staff and student consultation late June to end October 2011
• Impact on systems, timetabling, space, RAM in parallel
Structure of the academic year
Chris Butcher: SDDU
Proposed changes to the academic calendar
Semester 1 will be an uninterrupted 11 week period for teaching, learning and school-based assessment before the Christmas break.
There will not be a University-organised, assessment period after the Christmas break. This does not preclude programmes from
arranging (school-based) assessment as needed and gives the opportunity and incentive to be more innovative and radical with the
way that students are assessed.
Semester 2 will be an uninterrupted 11 week period for teaching, learning and school-based assessment between New Year and
Easter; term dates will have to be arranged to enable this.
After the Easter break it is proposed that there will be a two week period when appropriate staff will be expected to be available to
work with students prior to assessment. This period will be used for some form of organised activity, for example:
• formative feedback in essay / assignment surgeries
• peer support
• revision workshops
• student-led conferences
• group tutorials
• organised reading / preparation for assessment
• preparation for summer placements etc.
After this there will be a four-week, University-organised, formal assessment period
Consultation: the feedback we ask for
1. Faculties, Schools, other Units and individuals are asked to reflect on
the structure of the academic year, and suggest the benefits and
problems associated with the proposed, revised year structure.
2. The group expects that this exercise will lead to discussions about the
primacy of programme design over that of individual modules,
and aims to encourage the development of innovative assessment
scenarios, based on the new calendar, that test and reward programme
level learning outcomes. We are, therefore, particularly interested in:
• your views on the replacement of the current two formal university
assessment periods with one, at the end of semester 2, designed
to promote more synoptic learning and synthesis across modules
• how you think that teaching and assessment can be enhanced by
taking advantage of the proposed year structure.
Broadening
Martin Purvis: Pro Dean Student Education
Environment
Broadening - update
• A reminder of the basic principles
• Types and functions of Broadening Strands
• Consultation – initial feedback/ideas
• Next steps
Broadening: basic principles
• Broadening to be achieved in different ways/at
different points in specific degrees – within and
beyond core disciplinary content
• A choice not a requirement for students
• Aim to reinforce appeal/coherence of existing
elective system by presenting modules as themed
strands
• Students will not be locked into strands
• Some change will be evolutionary not
revolutionary
Types/functions of Broadening Strands
• A structured exploration of key aspects of an
academic subject
• Modules which develop additional skills and
competences – with academic and/or vocational
relevance
• Modules which enhance understanding of external
commercial/institutional environments and/or
enterprise
• A co-ordinated exploration of an important issue
or debate from a complementary range of
disciplinary perspectives
Consultation
Consultation document asked you to …
• review existing elective provision in the light of strand
model – may entail more selectivity about which
modules offered as electives
• consider scope for innovative strands – taught within
School/Faculty or through new inter-disciplinary
partnerships
• consider strands that you and your students would like
to see developed to generate new broadening
opportunities
Broadening: initial consultation outcomes
• 20+ responses from across UoL – further
thoughts welcome
• Imaginative presentation of existing
‘disciplinary’ elective provision as strands
• Foundation for ‘applied’ strands: careers/
professional development; enterprise;
leadership; communications & languages;
computing; digital literacy; numeracy etc.
• Emerging nuclei for issue-led strands
Broadening: starting to imagine
issue-led strands
Proposals included:
• Sustainability/development/global challenges
NB several proposals in this broad area
• Conflict & security in the contemporary world
• Nutrition/health/wellbeing
• Art and society
• Knowledge, communication and technology
• Key global regions: history/politics/culture/
language
• Tolerance and intolerance - ethics
Broadening: key stages
•
•
•
•
Clearer (more selective) presentation of existing
electives as coherent strands across 2+ levels
Improved information – highlight value of elective
strands defined in ‘conventional’ disciplinary/skills
development terms
Explore imaginative (cross-disciplinary)
combinations of existing modules to create new
strands
Funded piloting of selective new/‘purpose-built’
and issue-led strands
Broadening: practical facilitation
•
•
•
•
•
Information provision – communicating the
appeal of broadening and clarifying choices in
practice
Degree structures/assessment – studying at
different levels
Timetabling issues – ensuring genuine choice
and meeting expectations
Funding – clarifying implications for RAM
Matching supply and demand – delivering types
of broadening/enhancement students want –
without compromising core teaching
Broadening: information as an
immediate priority
• Provision of information for staff/students about
rationale of broadening and range of available
opportunities
• A web-based facility for guiding student choice:
i) by initial area of interest
ii) then choice of relevant strands
iii) then module combinations/pathways through
specific strands
iv) ideally with automatic capacity to show module
choices that fit around an individual’s core timetable
Programme Threads
Mitch Waterman: Pro Dean Student Education
Medicine and Health
Research-Led Teaching
Definition
By research-led teaching we mean:
all programmes will actively develop students’ independent research
skills and provide students with opportunities to put these skills into
practice such that at the culmination of the programme, students are
able to undertake, with supervision, an autonomous piece of research
work;


the characteristics of our research strengths will underpin all our
programmes; and

the latest research, including that produced by our own staff, will
contribute to the curriculum.
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Research-Led Teaching
We can’t simply assert this! Need to demonstrate it for all
stakeholders (including us).
Proposed curriculum mapping exercise
RLT mapping necessarily differs from thread exemplar identification
because:
RLT is argued to be pervasive within programmes and this needs to
be demonstrated;
RLT is characterised as a journey such that experiences for
students at the start and finish of their programmes should be
explicitly different, and that programmes should be able to articulate
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how this transition is demonstrated.
Research-Led Teaching
What are we proposing to the Board?
That UG programmes, at module level, then programme, identifies the
nature of the RLT achieved in the module, and demonstrates for the
programme, as a whole, how students move from research-led to
being able to undertake a supervised autonomous piece of
research.
What is to be mapped?
Modules, and then through combination, the programme
Who maps?
Module leaders or teams
How? Which tools?
The Healey Matrix and RSDF from the University of Adelaide, a
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Research-Led Teaching
What to be identified as a level/quadrant of RLT?
Conceivably, mode of delivery, student activity, nature of assessment, and
learning outcomes. Light touch (i.e. simply aligning what you have with a
quadrant/level).
What is the output?
The template itself, when all modules listed, can demonstrate how the
balance of modular activity shifts from research-led (teaching structured
around content, with the students as audience, and mainly communicating
that knowledge to each other and assessors) to research-based
(emphasising students undertaking research, often determining the
research questions and methods to address such questions). That is, the
balance of modules shifts from RLT to RBT over the levels.
Who sense checks/audits?
A subgroup of SLTC, and then SLTC/FLTC via AHCs, SAERs.
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Research-Led Teaching
Healey, M., 2005. Linking Research and teaching: disciplinary spaces. In Barnett, R., (ed) Reshaping the university: new
relationships between research, scholarship and teaching. Maidenhead: McGraw-Hill/Open University Press.
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Research-Led Teaching
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Research-Led Teaching
Curriculum Enhancement Project: Mapping Template for Research-Led Teaching
School:
Level[1]
Programme:
Module
Code and
Title
Elements Identified
(L.Outcomes/content/delivery/
assessment)
Healey
Quadrant
(RL/RT/RO/
RB)
RSDF labels
(Facet of
Inquiry: F to A;
Level of Student
Autonomy: level
I to V)
SLTC Subgroup
confirmation
(Elements
confirmed as
aligned with labels)
SLTC confirms
module balance
by level:
RL/RT/RO/RB
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
[1]
Completing the template for each Level of study will demonstrate the shift in the balance from RL to RB
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