Curriculum Innovation at the University of Southampton: Curriculum design for a post-Browne world

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Curriculum Innovation at the University of
Southampton Curriculum design for a post-Browne
world
Dr Peter SmithAssociate Dean (Education
Student Experience)Faculty of Social Human
SciencesAssociate, Economics Network September
2011

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The HE environment from 2012

• A more competitive market for higher education?
• Market intervention creates market distortions
• Changing student expectations
• Impact on the pattern of demand?
• Enhanced focus on future earnings potential?

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Curriculum design 2011

• Radical reform or inertia?
• Periodic programme review
• Research and teaching
• Research-led teaching
• Teaching for research
• Producing professional economists
• Graduate destinations
• equipping our graduates for life after Uni

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Curriculum design 2012

• QAA Economics subject benchmarks
• provide a foundation
• but can be achieved in a subset of modules in a
  programme
• Student choice and opportunity
• maintaining disciplinary coverage and rigour
• broadening horizons

http//www.qaa.ac.uk/Publications/InformationAndGu
idance/Documents/Economics.pdf
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Curriculum innovation at Southampton

• to build a curriculum for our students that
• delivers a high quality educational experience
• prepares them for their life as a graduate
• reflects and preserves the strengths of the
  university
• recognises the internal and external constraints

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Curriculum design for choice and opportunity
Laying the disciplinary foundations
Part 1 (NQF level 4)
Build on disciplinary knowledge and
understanding opportunity to choose to
deepen further or expand perspectives
Part 2 (NQF level 5)
Graduate Passport
Continue to build within discipline opportunities
for independent study via research in
discipline or interdisciplinary
Part 3 (NQF level 6) Part 4 where applicable
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Broadening horizons

• Enabling our students to look beyond their
  disciplinary boundaries
• if they wish to do so
• in a managed way
• so we do not raise expectations beyond what can
  be delivered
• need to work within available resources
• and to recognise the internal and external
  constraints
• Rooms/timetable, IT, staff
• QA infrastructure, fees, accreditation
  regulation

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Modules under development

• Expected for 2011/12 S2
• Communicating with web-based maps
• Education for health wellbeing
• Global Health
• Living with environmental change
• Total enterprise simulation
• Work futures in a global context

• Also under development
• Crime and security beyond the state
• Global challenges
• Health care ethics
• The human brain and society
• Jekyll or Hyde
• Managing risk and uncertainty
• The pathology of human disease
• Sink or swim
• Sustainability in the local and global
  environment

Further call for new module ideas to be
developed ready for 2012/13
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Example Living with Environmental Change

• Emanates from a multidisciplinary research group
• Lectures from specialists in a range of
  disciplines
• Backed up by interactive facilitated workshops
• with online multidisciplinary support materials
  on edshare
• including podcasts, journal articles, datasets,
  web links
• Students will become part of a learning community
  to help shape the content by identifying key
  topics
• Assessment
• online quizzes (40), group oral presentation at
  an end-of-module conference (30), online
  resource package designed for a lay audience
  (30)

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Other modules available in 2011/12

• Languages
• Arabic Latin
• Chinese Russian
• French Spanish
• German Portuguese
• Italian Perhaps Polish
• Japanese

• Other modules include
• The search for life in the cosmos
• Gender and society
• Introduction to social cultural archaeology
• The living earth
• Biology, behaviour and learning
• Perception
• Knowledge and mind
• Introduction to political philosophy

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CIP in 2011/12 (semester 2)

• Programmes involved
• Applied Social Sciences
• Archaeology
• Economics
• Educational Studies
• History
• Mathematics
• Music
• Philosophy
• Politics International Relations
• Population Geography
• Sociology Social Policy