Curriculum Design. The links in this section provide guidance for faculty who are undertaking curriculum design or revision. Key Definitions & Frameworks Click on the terms below to read more. Curriculum The curriculum is an “academic plan,” which should include: the purpose of the curriculum (i.e., goals for student learning), content, sequence (the order of the learning experience), instructional methods, instructional resources, evaluation approaches, and how adjustments to the plan will be made based on experience or assessment data. (Lattuca, L. & Stark, J. (2009) Shaping the college curriculum: Academic plans in context. The intended curriculum is the documented, official plan -- or what faculty hope students will learn.
Assessment can be helpful in better understanding alignment between an intended and achieved curriculum. Goals & Objectives Goals and objectives are the general intended purposes and desired achievements of a particular educational environment. Outcomes & Competencies Benchmarking. Digital Natives, Yet Strangers to the Web. When Reuben Loewy took up his first teaching gig in 2012, he had a major revelation: The digital revolution has dramatically transformed the way that kids perceive reality.
Perhaps that makes the 55-year-old teacher sound like a dinosaur. What he discovered is, after all, one of the most obvious realities shaping education policy and parenting guides today. But, as Loewy will clarify, his revelation wasn’t simply that technology is overhauling America’s classrooms and redefining childhood and adolescence. Rather, he was hit with the epiphany that efforts in schools to embrace these shifts are, by and large, focusing on the wrong objectives: equipping kids with fancy gadgets and then making sure the students use those gadgets appropriately and effectively.
Educational institutions across the board are certainly embracing (or at least acknowledging) the digital revolution, adopting cutting-edge classroom technology and raising awareness about the perils and possibilities of the Internet. John Seely Brown: Tinkering as a Mode of Knowledge Production. SLResearchSummary. With Tech Tools, How Should Teachers Tackle Multitasking In Class? Important research compiled on the effects of students multitasking while learning shows that they are losing depth of learning, getting mentally fatigued, and are weakening their ability to transfer what they have learned to other subjects and situations.
Educators as well as students have noticed how schoolwork suffers when attention is split between homework and a buzzing smartphone. Many students, like Alex Sifuentes, who admit to multitasking while studying, know the consequences well. “When I was grounded for a couple of months and didn’t have my phone, I got done extra early with homework,” Sifuentes wrote in response to Annie Murphy Paul’s article, “How Does Multitasking Change the Way Kids Learn?” Parents also see a big difference in their kids’ studying habits. Jenifer Gossman reported that her 17-year-old daughter asked her brother to hide her phone so she could study for several important exams. “Look, it’s not going away. “Look, it’s not going away. Related. Beating the Odds: Teaching Middle and High School Students to Read and Write Well. Judith A Langer + Author Affiliations Abstract This study investigated the characteristics of instruction that accompany student achievement in reading, writing, and English.
It focused on English language arts programs in schools that have been trying to increase student performance, comparing those whose students perform higher than demographically comparable schools with schools whose scores are more typical. The study took place in four states and included 25 schools, 44 teachers, and 88 classes studied over a 2-year period each. Although the sample was diverse, including urban and suburban sites, schools with poor and diverse student bodies predominated. Article Notes ↵Judith A. Developing Curriculum in Essential Schools. Sidebars:Widening the Conversation about Curriculum How the ATLAS Communities Structure a Curriculum Balancing Content with Thinking Goals: One Picture of Curriculum Teachers and Students Making Curriculum Together A Teacher's Reflections on Creating Curriculum Using a 'Project Design Template' to Develop CurriculumWhat Makes a Curriculum Team Succeed?
Resources for Curriculum Development If curriculum is to reflect the goals of a school and the needs of its students, it makes sense for teachers to develop it them-selves. But how might they do it, and when? And is it better to adopt or adapt materials 'off the shelf' or should students and teachers be creating curriculum together? Five math and science teachers are sitting around a table piled high with books, papers, software packages, and empty coffee cups.
This scene took place at a new Essential school, the Francis W. Yet all other reasons to develop curriculum pale beside the bald reality that every school is different. Developing Curriculum Leadership and Design. By Nancy J. Mooney and Ann T. Mausbach The status quo was maintained in this district because the curriculum team didn't have any discussions on the best instructional practices. Ann had assumed that the team members already had a solid foundation on these practices, so they jumped right into writing the curriculum. Essential Question How do you align curriculum and instruction through the curriculum development process? When we hear the phrase "the good old days," it is usually uttered with a sense of longing and a fondness for a return to the way things used to be. Aligning Curriculum and Instruction A few years ago there was a story about several new homes that were literally sliding down the slope where they had been built.
Too many times we have entered classrooms and observed teachers using research-based strategies on insignificant content. Conversely, having high academic standards isn't enough if they are not implemented through powerful instructional methods. Learn, Then Do. Do. The National Academy for Academic Leadership: Curriculum review. A quality educational program must be consistent with its institution's mission, have clearly defined outcomes it intends to produce, use the best combination of learning experiences to help each learner achieve these results, include an assessment process that shows whether the results are being achieved, and use the findings of assessment to improve program effectiveness. An approach to continuous program improvement that asks the right questions can provide academic administrators, faculty members, and others with the information they need to develop an appropriate, effective, and efficient academic program.
The focus here is on undergraduate programs, but identical principles apply to curricula at the graduate level as well. Listed below are a number of key questions to ask when reviewing curricula. Most of them are germane whether a curriculum is in general education or a specialized field. A. B. C. D. Are students able to enroll in both required and elective courses as needed?