Redesigning the curriculum: 360-degree interactions

1. Redesigning the curriculum: 360-degree interactions Dr Paula Hodgson Dr Eva Lui City University of Hong Kong

2. Outline of the study • Background of the study • Managing change in the new curriculum • Actions from the central offices • Actions from colleges, schools and departments • Actions from programme and course leaders • Review of actions • Conclusion

3. Background of the study

4. Educational reform in universities in Hong Kong • All universities in Hong Kong have changed from three years to four years since September 2012. An unusual opportunity through the structural reform in universities in Hong Kong has brought forth an unprecedented new curriculum to the universities. • The Outcomes-based Teaching and Learning (OBTL) approach focuses on the constructive alignment of teaching, learning and assessment, and students are to construct meaning in learning when they experience through related learning and assessment tasks (Biggs 2003). • The senior management in City University of Hong Kong has made a renewal of framework of the outcome-based approach to teaching and learning (OBTL) adopted since 2005, and adopted the revised Bloom’s taxonomy into the new four-year curriculum (Anderson et al. 2001).

5. New curriculum in the university • To promote a culture of innovation, discovery‐enriched curriculum (DEC) advocates strongly on student-directedness in the learning journey. • While it is paramount for students to acquire skills in both learning and research to university study, learning for creativity redefines the boundary between learning and research at the university. • Students are aspired to make original discovery and are given multiple opportunities to create when they master research skills such that they can produce innovative solutions in disciplines and betterment for communities. • It is a challenge to academic faculty to facilitate students to build capacity to make inquiry and engender a learning culture with a creative mindset in the disciplinary programmes.

6. Managing change in the new curriculum

7. Change: planned, emerged or incremental? [1] • Burns (2004) described the three steps model of change embarked by Kurt Lewin: unfreezing (unlearn old behavior), moving (motivated to learn)and refreezing (new behaviour established). • The planned change on undergraduate programme structure from the government has brought forth change in the whole university. First, it relates to courses offered in colleges in the university in the first year and how students make selection of programme in the second year. The planned change has been formalized and reached the step of refreezing, although it requires fine-tuning on academic advising when students make decision on the path of declaring the host programme.

8. Change: planned, emerged or incremental? [2] • The complexity comes from the emergent change of the strategic direction for the new curriculum with the DEC-OBTL framework; this has brought a review to all programmes to ensure that the learning culture that embraces an attitude of curiosity towards learning permeated in every course and capacity building to discover and innovate has been inculcated into courses across the years of university study. • Building on the OBTL framework, the DEC-OBTL involves incremental change because all teaching staff members take on different perceptions on how they embrace DEC collectively in different programmes.

9. Actions from central offices

10. Actions from the central offices [1] • Developing a clear enhanced vision is highly crucial in driving the need for change from senior management (Kanter 1989). Senior management from the University communicated the actions to be taken at various levels and provided support in capacity building and ad hoc resources. • A concerted support was closely provided through Office of Education Development and Gateway Education* (EDGE) to the teaching faculty such that the unfreeze process can be illuminated with appropriate procedures and actions needed to be taken by staff in colleges, schools and in departments. • The best practice model for an effective consultation was exemplified by the multi-disciplinary efforts and the expert collaboration among colleagues from the Office of the Provost (PRVT), EDGE and two visiting Fulbright Scholars to provide a series of mass sharing sessions followed with in-department talks. *EDGE is a central office with part of its mission being strengthening the teaching and learning environment of the University.

11. Actions from the central offices [2] • In the first 12 months, a variety of activities was organized to communicate with faculty in colleges, schools and departments by educational development staff from EDGE. The activities included institution-wide workshops, institution-wide sharing sessions, college-level talks/open forum/sharing session, departmental talks and consultation meetings to programme leaders and individual faculty members when they planned and worked through the first phase. • The pedagogical value of the activities was to provide a conversation to all staff the new wave of educational practice in the unfreezing step. The staff from EDGE was to suggest various teaching methods tailored for different disciplines in themoving step. Second, international practices were shared by the Fulbright scholars based on their own experience practised in their institutions.

12. Actions from the central offices [3] • Building of shared value, teaching faculty were highly encouraged to take the opportunity to discuss among teaching staff who were teaching in programmes in their departments in terms of expectations and outcomes in these activities. • Through the various activities, the need to provide a virtual discussion point surfaced. PRVT led the launch of a sharepoint platform for the sharing of good practices and the compilation of FAQs to address common issues.

13. Actions from colleges, schools and departments

14. Actions from college, schools and departments [1] • At college and school levels, Deans or Associate Deans oversaw the implementation process on aspects such as overarching standards and practices across departments within a college or school. • At departmental level, DEC-OBTL teams or working groups and a DEC-OBTL coordinator were designated to monitor the implementation process. They acted as the internal leaders in providing support to staff in their departments. The strong OBTL infrastructure expedited the institution‐wide DEC-OBTL integration exercise.

15. Actions from college, schools and departments [2] • Apart from capacity building support from EDGE and the Fulbright scholars, departments could apply for funding to have additional resource to support the revision exercise, and the allocation of DEC-OBTL integration funding served to match needs in departments (Hodgson 2013). • Each department proposed the best support for their needs. Some employed short term project staff; some invited professionals from their disciplines; some organized unit-wide activities to discuss actions for DEC implementation.

16. Actions from college, schools and departments [3] • For capacity building activities like retreats, workshops and seminars in departments, schools and colleges, there was a full scale of communication among staff members in which the step of unfreezing and movingtook place. In a few occasions with tensions of resistance of change during the discussion, faculty members would generally go through a deeper discussion to communicate in greater details issues and concerns specifically related to the requirements in meeting accreditation bodies and the periodical review from external examination advisors in this type of activities. • Some departments invited visiting professors in departments to share both their professional experiences and international best practice. Some departments recruited external consultants in their disciplines with good experience and knowledge of the programmes. They could then lead internal discussions and provide their professional input in the revision of programme intended learning outcomes and assessment rubrics to reflect the achievement of the ‘creative’ level.

17. Actions from college, schools and departments [4] • To supplement the lack of adequate academic and education experience to provide professional support among the newly recruited project staff members housed in departments, professional staff from EDGE provided customisededucational advice. • Capacity building activities include showcasing relevant examples, the discussion of the Bloom’s revised taxonomy and the concept of constructive alignment of intended learning outcomes in teaching, learning and assessment activities. The EDGE staff also took part in some departmental or college level discussions. • As there was no major revision in the programme structure, the revision of programme intended learning outcomes could then be audited by respective colleges.

18. Actions from programme and course leaders

19. Actions from programme and course leaders [1] • In the DEC‐OBTL integration projects, all departments completed the revision of their curricula by embedding DEC elements in their programmes. Programme leaders appreciated this iteration of DEC-OBTL through which they reviewed their programme from the alignment with reference to revision made in courses. • With the revised Bloom’s taxonomy, the programme leaders needed to ensure that creativity and innovation elements are embedded in the revised programme intended learning outcomes (PILOs). Second, a mapping matrix was expected from each programme to indicate the mapping between the revised PILOs and the University Graduate Outcomes, and which PILOs will be covered in each of the courses offered. • As all programmes went through the initial OBTL exercise, this round of mapping appeared to be smoothly conducted.

20. Actions from programme and course leaders [2] • Across the board actions happened in all courses. • Project staff, after completing the full orientation of their core duty, assisted in arranging meetings among faculty members. They helped promote the buy‐in from other faculty members in the same unit by holding staff meetings and informal meetings among staff members. Other actions include helping faculty to understand the DEC approach and how to achieve constructive alignment of the DEC‐integrated course intended learning outcomes (CILOs), teaching and learning activities (TLAs) and assessment tasks (ATs) in individual courses in the programme. • Revisions were collaboratively done by faculty members and the project staff provided clerical support and helped assure consistency and report alignment issues. Course leaders were the ones to consider assessment tasks and revise rubrics to demonstrate creativity and innovation.

21. Review of actions

22. Review of actions [1] • The DEC‐OBTL integration exercise required programme and course leaders to review and revisit their curricula and in particular, the assessment tasks and assessment rubrics. It took several rounds of institutional‐level as well as college- and departmental level discussions before final deliberations. Through such interactions, a common understanding and interpretation of important shared values related to the DEC was established. Reports from departments confirmed that the DEC‐OBTL integration exercise helped front‐line staff to understand the targets of the DEC, and this institution‐wide revision of all the programmes facilitated the implementation of a coherent curriculum in all programmes across disciplines.

23. Review of actions [2] • Incorporating institutional-wide change requires both top-down and bottom-up approaches if a smooth transition was to be expected. • Documenting programme revisions in programme outlines was only the first phase. Dialogues among faculty members on implementing DEC in classes are crucial, such that the best practices in class actions across disciplines could be observed in the second phase in the moving step. • To build a culture of discovery learning, the central offices will fund some programme leaders in different disciplines to measure the impact of DEC implementation in teaching practices to ascertain whether DEC is rooted in disciplines through systematic, valid and reliable longitudinal studies.

24. Conclusion

25. Conclusion [1] • All universities in Hong Kong have gone through the first year of the new four-year curriculum. The integration of Discovery-enriched Curriculum (DEC) into OBTL has become the current wave of educational protocol at the university. Its implementation has been expedited in time for the 4‐year programme launched in the past 12 months. While the objective of DEC was for every student to have a chance to make an original discovery through the curriculum, it was to motivate students with a passion for knowledge and discovery in learning. There was a clear emphasis on active learning and student‐centred approaches. As students will be given more opportunities to engage in inquiry together with the faculty and identify effective innovative solutions to problems, they will be expected to demonstrate their creative capabilities in varied assessment tasks.

26. Conclusion [2] • Effective diffusion of change management requires fostering synchronised a top-down policy, effective leadership with bottom-up appropriate actions (Cook and Giardina 2011, Davis and Eales 2007; Stein, Shephard and Harris 2011). The staff from central units and designated dedicated staff for DEC-OBTL exercise in departments with diverse expertise and attributes had made each interaction a beneficial experience, where colleagues would walk away more ready for the DEC integration work. When implemented effectively, DEC would result in students adopting a more independent and active approach toward learning, and graduates practising professionally at and beyond the level of international standards. The university continued to monitoring the effectiveness of the curriculum and programmes by measuring students’ attainment of the ILOs at institutional, programme and course levels.

27. References • Anderson, Lorin W., Benjamin Samuel Bloom, and David R. Krathwohl. (2001). A taxonomy for learning, teaching, and assessing: a revision of Bloom's taxonomy of educational objectives. Abridg ed. New York: Longman. • Biggs, John. (2003). "Aligning Teaching for Constructing Learning." Higher Education Academy. • Bloom, Benjamin Samuel. 1956. Taxonomy of educational objectives: the classification of educational goals. New York: David McKay. • Burnes, Bernard. (2004). Kurt Lewin and complexity theories: back to the future? Journal of Change Management 4 (4):309-325. • Cook, J. Holley, D. & Andrew, D. (2007). A stakeholder approach to implementing e-learning in a university. British Journal of Educational Technology, 38(5), 784-794. • Davis, H. & Eales, S. (2007). Editorial introduction: BJET special issue on critical success factors in institutional change. British Journal of Educational Technology, 38(5), 769-772. • Hodgson, Paula. (2013). Amplifying a discovery-enriched curriculum: process and outcomes. The International Journal of Pedagogy and Curriculum 19(1): 97-103. • Kanter, Moss Rosabeth. (1989). When giants learn to dance: mastering the challenges of strategy, management and careers. London: Unwin. • Stein, Sarah J, Kerry Shephard, and Irene Harris. (2011). Conceptions of E-Learning and Professional Development for E-Learning Held by Tertiary Educators in New Zealand.’ British Journal of Educational Technology, 42(1), 145-65.

28. Paula Hodgson • ed.paula@cityu.edu.hk THANK YOU Contacts Eva Lui eva.lui@cityu.edu.hk