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DLT Forum 30 JuneCurriculum 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
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 • 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. • 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.
BroadeningMartin 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 ThreadsMitch 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.
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 how this transition is demonstrated. 20
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 mapping template. 21
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. 22
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. 23
Research-Led Teaching [1] Completing the template for each Level of study will demonstrate the shift in the balance from RL to RB 25
