Kick off!

We've just held our second kick-off meeting for 13 Curriculum Design Things Cambridge, bringing the number of participants we've seen in person up to 10 (out of 14) - all course designers in some capacity, and all interested in swapping notes and discovering technologies which might help them.

I'm embedding the introduction slides below.

13 things kick off presentation 18-03-11

We used the '10 ways to ruin a course' activity from the Learning Design Toolbox on CloudWorks as a warm-up to the programme.  The outputs are in the comments on CloudWorks, but I'm posting them below as well.

Curriculum design problem clusters: Friday 18th March

Friday's group flipped the list on its head so it became "top considerations for a successful course"

1.     [understand] variety of backgrounds - widening participation, plugging gaps, identifying knowledge vs. ability
2.     clear aims and objectives for all
3.     using right mix of teaching tools + supporting tools
4.     communication between teaching staff
5.     consider range of assessment types and uses
6.     staff/expertise availability
7.     [find optimum balance between] content breadth vs. depth

10 problems of course design: Monday's group get to work with some post-its

Curriculum design problem clusters: Monday 21st March

Monday's group also decided to list do's rather than don'ts.  The discussion dived deep into educational philosophy for a while before returning to zip through this list in the last few minutes, so apologies if my note-taking falls short.

1.     Define clear expectations and common goals - learning agreement with clear plan, 'rules' for taking part and learning objectives
2.     Align assessment with learning objectives
3.     Clearly communicate curriculum structure
4.     Set up effective lines of co-ordination amongst teaching staff, especially between different departments
5.     Create a sense of being part of a learning community (including online)
6.     Crease a sense of progression: clearly communicate progress through the curriculum, or provide means for students to do that for themselves
7.     Activities and tasks must align with content and objectives