Degrees That Matter by Natasha A. Jankowski & David W. Marshall

Author:Natasha A. Jankowski & David W. Marshall
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Stylus Publishing

Taking the time to consider learners and their experience of the learning environment in the curriculum mapping process can help identify where there may be tight alignment we are not aware of and where there is loose alignment in places that we may have assumed were more tightly aligned. Involving learners in the mapping process also serves as a means to broaden the consensus on learning outcomes and provides discussion points around unpacking implicit design of educational environments. Considering learners also ensures that the maps made are not idealistic representations of curriculum. Learner involvement also speaks to the need to ensure broad communication regarding the understandings developed—and intentionality documented—from the mapping process.

Communicated

Communication and collaboration with learners and other audiences through transparent discussions around outcomes and the overall educational system work to make the implicit explicit. Communication involves exploration and integration with advising, alternative transcripts, admissions, and employers. Instead of creating maps that stay within assessment management systems, are used for reporting, are never updated, and eventually disappear, ask what happens to the map. How are we sharing the information? Are learners aware of the map and do they recognize the links among outcomes, courses, and assignments? Do learners understand the rationale for program structures, prerequisites, and assignment sequences? Can students make connections between their learning elsewhere and the learning within the program—and vice versa?

Once maps are developed, they need to be shared widely and often. Without such communication, we are not likely to see any impact from the process of putting lenses to our learning environments. McMahon and O’Riordan (2006) found that in an aligned curriculum structure, students were able to make better informed curriculum choices, and they reported that knowing the intended outcomes for each course enabled better choices to be made between optional elements of the curriculum. Beyond the potential communication advantages for students, maps allow institutions a mechanism by which to communicate their educational intentions and design (Lancaster, 2015). They can provide an overview of the structure of the learning environment and help those working within it to see how they contribute to the shared learning outcomes of the degree. It allows a means to communicate the connections among various elements and address why learners should be engaging in the various activities as well as how each supports their learning. Curriculum maps can serve as advising tools that provide learners with an overview of the role of each course in the curriculum and why some experiences need to occur in a particular order.

Finally, from the shared consensus developed in the mapping process and collective understanding of the various parts of the learning environment, their relationships, and how learners experience the education they foster, faculty also have a means to communicate with each other. In orientation of new faculty for instance, the maps can be used to express the roles of specific courses within a larger structure. Further, as Liu (2015) indicates, the maps help instructors diversify their assessment approaches, create opportunities for integrated evaluation where two instructors

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