Curriculum Design Toolkits

The Herts Learning reflective toolkits help teams to consider how our principles relate to their own context. They enable programme teams to consider each principle from as many perspectives as possible before they start honing the design - a process which becomes more and more focused as the validation or review event approaches. The toolkit questions can be shared with all stakeholders to capture their ideas and reflections. The toolkits are currently only accessible through Herts Hub.

This approach has been developed to help staff take a considered look at their current curriculum in terms of their learning, teaching, assessment and the learning environments that they provide. The toolkit offers a common framework for colleagues to be able to readily access a set of research-informed principles of good practice, engage with a simple diagnostic tool and then to consider their results in the context of what features their curriculum has, and what the consequences are for their students.

It is a digestible, non-threatening way for colleagues to be able to evaluate their practice in the light of a range of literature related to the topic in a quick, timely and personalised manner. The toolkit is used by colleagues undertaking periodic review of whole programmes, teams rethinking individual or clusters of modules, or individual lecturers thinking about their own professional practice. It is designed in a series of strands which have been designed to complement fundamental practice, like inclusive teaching, as well as draw attention to institutional drivers, like sustainability. Many of the strands of the toolkit have a range of quick ideas and other resources to help colleagues to further develop their curriculum and teaching practice.

You can access the toolkit via the presentation software Prezi.com which will enable you to see all strands of the toolkit together and view all resources: http://prezi.com/cibiptp5pa3d/curriculum-design-toolkit/

• Assessment for Learning toolkit
• Chickering and Gamson toolkit
• Employability toolkit
• Enterprise toolkit
• Inclusive teaching toolkit
• Internationalisation toolkit
• Research Informed Teaching toolkit
• Sustainability toolkit

As a University we are constantly seeking to improve the educational and wider experiences of our 'users' (students, staff and others). Typically, we use National Student Survey results, complaints, module feedback surveys as the voice of students, supplemented by focus groups to explore a subject in more detail. However, these sources often only tell us what the vocal minorities want us to hear, and don't get under the skin of the silent majority's experiences. Our users can be poor at expressing or knowing what their needs are or imagining what we can do for them.  If we only respond to what these sources tell us, we run the risk of acting on an incomplete or unrepresentative picture and making changes in good faith which create as many problems as they resolve.  Since the beginning of 2017, staff in Library and Computing Services have been experimenting with a User Experience (UX) driven approach to understanding our service users' experiences. By adopting a UX approach, we start with our users and research their behaviour in relation to the 'things' (gaps, problems, opportunities) we're investigating via a range of ethnographic techniques. Through thematic analysis of the research, a range of ideas are developed and prototyped before any decision is made about what, if anything, is implemented. You can find out more about the Experience and Engagement toolkit on Herts Hub (requires login).