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

54 ❘
Teaching, supervising, learning
Teacher perspective: objectives
Teaching activities
assessment
Student perspective: assessment
Learning activities
outcomes
Figure 4.3 Views of the curriculum
Source: Biggs (1999: 142). Reproduced with permission from
the Open University Press Publishing Company.
Interrogating practice
Using any of the curriculum development models shown above, work
through any module or programme for which you have some responsibility
and consider whether or not you have an appropriate alignment between the
intended learning outcomes and the assessment strategies you currently
adopt or intend to adopt.
Curriculum design in an e-learning environment
In today’s climate of embedding e-learning into the student learning experience,
no chapter on curriculum design and planning would be complete without mention
of learning activity design, or instructional design as it is often termed (see also
Chapter 7).
Instructional design is defined as: the systematic development of instructional
specifications using learning and instructional theory to ensure the quality of instruction.
In essence the pedagogical principles of teaching and supporting student learning must
be applied to the design and development of online or web-based modules, courses and
programmes of study. Design is a useful term because it encompasses the entire process
of analysis of learning needs and goals, and the development of a delivery system to meet
those needs. It includes the development of learning materials, activities, practice
elements (often using technology) and evaluation of all teaching and learning activities
(Clark and Mayer, 2002).