Engaging students in creating a curriculum framework – challenges and enablers

Abstract

This session reflects on the challenges of implementing a new curriculum framework during Covid 19, with a particular focus on student engagement. It asks what we have learned from experience and focus group data, as we begin to embed the framework, and how this is informing our future plans for ongoing engagement and cocreation with students.Curriculum enhancement frameworks have become common in universities in recent years. However, there is evidence that academic staff do not share the same understandings of curriculum and curriculum design, demonstrating the need to develop this (Fraser and Bosanquet, 2006; Bovill & Woolmer, 2019). The process of establishing a new curriculum enhancement framework at any time can face serious challenges (see eg. Bartholomew and Curran, 2017; Annala et al 2021) and many of these have been exacerbated by Covid-19. Here we explore one institution’s approach to implementing such a framework, focusing on student engagement.After contextualising the ENhance framework at Edinburgh Napier, which focuses on the themes of Employability, Inclusion, Global Focus, Sustainability, and Research and Practice Integration, we will reflect on its early implementation, including student and staff focusgroup data, to ask:What are the blockers and enablers to students’ engagement with the curriculum framework’s themes as currently articulated within the curriculum?What have we learned about students’ perspectives of the framework and its themes? What are the benefits of student-staff co-creation of the framework (Bovill and Woolmer, 2019)?How will our learning to date inform the framework’s future articulation of the student experience, and centering of student engagement?

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http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/Output/2891421