How to Design a College Level Curriculum

Curricula should be reviewed and revised on a regular basis to better serve the changing needs of both students and society. We are often urged to reassess the quality of our curricula, and faculties are responding to this challenge by turning their attention to long-neglected issues.

They are doing so as a practical means of both attracting and retaining more students, ensuring their success, and producing high-quality, fair outcomes for everyone.

Why Curriculum Design Matters

Effective college curriculum design is essential for educational institutions seeking to provide meaningful, relevant education that prepares students for success in their chosen fields while maintaining academic rigor and institutional integrity.

1
Philosophy

A curriculum should be founded on a carefully thought-out philosophy of education and should be clearly connected to an institution’s mission statement.

2
Purposes and Goals

A curricular mission statement and written curricular goals (intended student development outcomes or intended results) articulate curricular purpose – what graduates should know and be able to do and those attitudes and values a faculty believes are appropriate to well-educated individuals.

These goals and their objectives are specified in considerable detail and in behavioral language that will permit assessment of their degree of achievement (the curriculum’s actual outcomes).

3
Process

Student activities are chosen that are capable of developing the desired outcomes, as indicated by empirical research. Curriculum has its desired effect primarily through instruction.

Therefore, the choice of course experiences and the specific quality and efficacy of these experiences in producing the stated intended outcomes for all students is fundamental to the quality of any college curriculum.

4
Sequence

Educational activities are carefully ordered in a developmental sequence to form a coherent curriculum based on the stated intended outcomes of both the curriculum and its constituent courses.

5
Continuous Improvement

Valid and reliable assessment is preplanned to monitor on a continuing basis the effectiveness of the curriculum in fostering student development and also the actual achievement of defined institutional and curricular outcome goals.

In many or most institutions there can be said to exist two potentially quite different curricula: one, an array and sequence of courses offered by the institution and intended by the faculty to be taken and a second, the specific courses actually taken and sequence followed by each student.

6
Academic Advising

An effective college curriculum – one that produces the results it claims in all of a college’s diverse students – depends for its success upon a high-quality program of academic advising. Modern academic advising is developmental, starting with each student’s values and goals, and helps all students design curricular and non-curricular experiences that can help them achieve their own goals and the institution’s intended learning outcomes.

Clearly defined intended curricular outcomes enable a faculty to understand, communicate about, and control – manage – learning through the curriculum more effectively. Today, clearly stated, written outcomes are essential to good curriculum design, implementation, and assessment.

Specifically, curricular outcome goals and objectives:

Key Insight: The Two Curricula Challenge

The intent, content, educational experience, and thus outcomes of the intended curriculum and the actual student experience may be – and often are – quite different from each other.

Careful monitoring of actual student course-taking behavior through transcript analysis can reveal the degree to which students are experiencing the faculty’s intended educational process and achieving their intended outcomes, providing insight and support to ongoing curriculum review.
Originally by Lion F. Gardiner, Rutgers University