A tension that emerges from any curriculum development activity is the extent to which the University infrastructure is able to support the vision of the course team for their course.
When we ask teams to innovate and think differently about the way they might want to teach we end up in a chicken or egg situation.
For example to what extent do we design and build learning and teaching spaces before developing our curriculum? In this scenario timetabling can often dictate what teaching takes places, where, when and how.
If we design our curriculum first then the chances are that the spaces might not be available to teach in, but surely we would want the vision of how we want to teach to influence the spaces we build?
For me this is about partnership and long term planning. Partnership between academic departments and central university departments. At a curriculum design stage we should allow course teams to set out their vision without restriction (even if the spaces or technology are not in place for it yet).
What’s important is that the curriculum vision be developed and established and whilst it may not be able to be immediately realised, plans are developed to transition to that vision over the short & long term.
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