So you want to change your curriculum, you may even want to be innovative and change everything, assessment, course sequence, type of delivery, calendar, degree requirements. Everything.
Well, before you start dreaming, brainstorming with post-its, and drawing on a whiteboard with multiple colors, there are four gates, four checkpoints, four horsemen that will send your little innovative ideas to the apocalypse unless you keep them in mind. You may decide to fight each of them or you may just let them limit your possibilities, but you cannot ignore them.
They work as control checkpoints or valves. They slow down the process, sometimes for a good reason, because any significant change in the curriculum has a lasting impact to the institution and to the future of our students.
So here they are, Death, Famine, War, and Conquest
Horseman 1. Death: Admission requirements for graduate and professional schools.
Will your courses be accepted elsewhere? Will they transfer-in and transfer-out? The moment your courses do not have the name or the exact content or the prescribed number of credits, they may not be accepted elsewhere. It is not uncommon to not be transfer friendly among undergraduate degrees, specially for courses in the major. But it is a completely different set of problems if professional and graduate schools do not recognize our courses. This is specially problematic when many of our students pursue a post-graduate career. Not paying attention to this problem may undermine students career forever.
Advice
- Make a decision early and be aware of it. Unless your institution has a prestigious and recognized brand (Stanford courses will be accepted everywhere) there will be schools who will not recognize your courses.
- Usually not being transfer friendly lowers the number of applying students. Bring the “Admissions department” to the conversation, they may not be too happy. Give them information and materials to help them “sell” your innovative curriculum.
- Consult with student counselors and academic coaches. What do they think? Are we really undermining our students long-term careers?
- Talk to professional and graduate schools ahead of time. Possibly making minor changes to the curriculum (changing course names, or adding a pre-req) may make your courses more transfer friendly.
Horseman 2. Famine: Calendar and scheduling challenges
You may have thought about “block scheduling”, or limiting sections to 10 people, or perhaps starting your semester earlier or perhaps having all students take the same chemistry lab during the same week. While there may be a pedagogically justified reason for your innovation it may be hindered by the following realities 1. Financial Aid and calendar stiffness. 2. Number of staff skilled, available and willing to teach it. 3. Number of special rooms or labs available at a given time.
Advice
- These problems revolve around money. Just be aware of how much money you have for your innovations.
Horseman 3. War: Faculty buy in. Whip your votes.
The same way that it is not bad that there are systems in place to slow down any curriculum change, it is not bad either that faculty may be skeptical or may require convincing. That being said, it is also important to recognize that not everyone will be on board. Be always careful with members who will keep vocalizing opposition, if not by votes, by volume and repetition. The tyranny of the loudest usually undermines the morale of the many.
Advice
- Count your votes before putting a motion on the floor. Designate a whip. Listen and be ready to compromise
- Be transparent: Perhaps create a site or a FAQ answering the questions to all the worse case scenarios. Always control your message and do not let unanswered questions linger.
- It doesn’t matter how right you think you are, unless you are going to create a parallel department, do not think you can carry on without a significant buy-in of the faculty.
Horseman 4. Conquest: Know your students. How many are you willing to leave behind?
Often, curriculum innovations are motivated by pedagogy. You want your students to learn better, learn more, transfer, apply, do research, hands-on experience. In other words, you want your students to practice what is called “high-order cognitive skills” as early as possible. Problem solving is a high-order cognitive skill. Having taught first-years I learned that there’s a significant portion of our cohort who are not ready to engage in high-order activities, the cause may be many, as many as they may be described in the books about student success: mental health, socioeconomic pressures, studying skills, work ethics, academic preparation…
Advice
Unless you “play safe” and become a fairly exclusive institution by not admitting students under certain academic performance there are two possibilities ahead:
Maximizing the number of students on board which will minimize true problem-solving or any other high-order cognitive skill
Real experience, hands-on, true problem-solving which will leave some students behind.
This last option is specially delicate with internships in the community and private sector. Will they be carefully planned? Any placement process? Otherwise, putting an unprepared student in a “real” environment, will not only be detrimental to the student education, but to the relationship with the community partner.