A Handbook for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education Enhancing academic and Practice

Curriculum design and development
❘
47
‘generic’ as presented in available guidelines, the idea is that they will be translated
according to discipline and context. It would be unusual to expect individual staff
members to ‘translate’ generic credit level descriptors. It is more likely that this exercise
would be carried out by a course team. The exercise involves mapping existing learning
outcomes against the credit level descriptors.
Credit level descriptors would generally apply to modules within programmes of
study and would be used in the context of curriculum design and development. The UK
Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA, 2001) has presented a framework
for higher education qualifications in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. There are five
levels of qualification within this framework from Certificate level through to Doctoral
level qualifications. This framework is designed to ensure a consistent use of qualification
titles. Key points relating to this framework are that: it is intended, first, to assist learners
to identify potential progression routes, particularly in the context of lifelong learning,
and second, to assist higher education institutions, their external examiners and the
QAA’s reviewers by providing important points of reference for setting and assessing
standards.
Credit level descriptors and qualifications frameworks are inevitably linked to the
development of learning outcomes, and academic staff should be aware of these
frameworks within which higher education operates. Similarly, in the UK, academics
need to be aware of the Subject Benchmark Statements (QAA, 2008) which set out the
general academic characteristics and standards of degrees in a range of different subjects.
These should be used as an external reference point when designing and developing
programmes of study and provide general guidance for articulating the learning outcomes
associated with the programme. Learning outcomes for any course or programme
do not exist in isolation. They must be linked or aligned with the assessment processes,
the learning tasks, the teaching strategies and the external drivers on quality.
In the following section we explore the issue of curriculum alignment and examine
some models of curriculum development.
Interrogating practice
When you are raising student awareness of learning outcomes for your course
or programme, how do you ensure students understand these outcomes in
the way you intend them to be understood?
CURRICULUM DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT
The principle of ‘constructive alignment’ is central to curriculum design and
development. Biggs (1999) describes teaching as a balanced system in which all