May 17, 2013, by Teaching at Nottingham

Curriculum review conference

Dr Anna Betram: “Kay Bond discussed her curriculum review project for Faculty of Engineering courses. The learning outcomes for each course and module were established by considering the requirements of the governing bodies and following input from module convenors. In conjunction with the Medical School and Information Services software was developed to map learning outcomes across modules and courses. Once the learning outcomes were determined for each module they established how each was being assessed. The resultant course maps showed where some learning outcomes were over assessed whilst others were under assessed. The Faculty is now reviewing assessment accordingly.

“The outcome of this curriculum review is that both students and staff are now much clearer about the aims of every session, this has improved student motivation, encouraged independent learning and helped to improve feedback.
All of our modules have learning outcomes associated with them but Kay’s talk made me realise the importance of re-evaluating these often and considering using these as a framework for curriculum development.

“In another presentation Max Wilson from Computer Science described activities he’d arranged to engage students with the school. He set up a peer mentoring scheme in which first year students were put into groups and given a second-year student ‘Guru’. The purpose of the scheme was to introduce the first years to their tutors, help them with the transition to University and take them to social events. After week 1 the mentoring gradually tailed off but it was maintained for students who were still benefitting from it. Max also set up competitions for fun which saw students taking part in ‘hackathons’ overnight, and travelling to similar events in Europe. These ideas have given me a totally different perspective on engaging students, we always focus on engaging students in each individual module but perhaps by having additional activities which are just for fun could really help improve the engagement within the school.”

Dr Anna Bertram
School of Chemistry

Recordings of conference presentations are available from:
http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/teaching/event/cr-conference.aspx

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