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Chapter 1 builds a shared understanding of the definition and role of curriculum in learning. The attributes of a curriculum are presented and described with the research literature. The role and function of these attributes in the design of an effective learning experience are examined in detail.

As there are multiple meanings of the word “curriculum” in use, it is necessary to define this term as used in this work. This definition is not meant to suggest that this is the “one,” “true,” or “only” way to conceive of the term, but instead to suggest a useful and practical conceptual framework for curriculum as a multidimensional, dynamic, and causal component of the instructional system. This definition provides the conceptual framework for curriculum as used in this work.

The term derived from a Latin word (currere) denotes “a race course” (Etymology Online, 2018). Educators in the sixteenth century borrowed this denotation for what is now higher education to increase “order” in the learning processes and enhance learning (Hamilton, 2013). The term now describes the collection of learning experiences in a prescribed instructional unit of study, leading to a defined outcome.

The purpose and function of the curriculum in the learning process are to organize, order, and structure the learning process to facilitate learning. In this system of design, three global dimensions are differentiated to promote and enhance the learning of all individuals who pursue it. These global dimensions determine a learner’s ability to engage with, learn from, and demonstrate authentically the intended learning articulated in the curriculum.

The attributes of an effective curriculum are extracted from the educational literature and converted into criteria with which to evaluate a completed curriculum. These criteria include externally valid content, coherence, alignment, interconnectedness, complexity, and the inclusion of opportunities to demonstrate the expected outcomes. Additionally, the structure of the course groupings is evaluated by the criteria of structure, integration, sequence, and consistency. Each of these standards is discussed and explained as it applies to the design of effective curricula.

As universities grapple with the question of how to prepare students for increasingly uncertain futures, the development of evidence-based frameworks to guide academic program¹ design is critical. Here, we propose a strategic framework with a high impact on program design, implementation, and evaluation as well as mentoring and support for academic program leaders. High impact can be achieved when program leaders are enabled to embed key future-focused capabilities and skills across the curriculum in a program. In order to ensure that these capabilities are systematically and cohesively embedded in students’ learning journeys, we suggest that academic program leaders (e.g., Directors of Studies, Subject Area Coordinators, etc.) require strategic approaches to program design, implementation, and evaluation, as well as mentoring and support. Such approaches would ensure that high impact practices are consistently employed, rather than being the exception in isolated courses.² At Queensland University of Technology, we have developed a holistic model to support “whole-of-program” design for award programs across faculties and disciplines, in a coherent and strategic way. The model we use is based on a framework for curriculum design called the Future Focused Curriculum Design Framework (FFCF), and is an iterative model that places learners at the center of their learning to enable meaningful change to the design of programs. The adoption of the framework is supported by curriculum design studios situated within each discipline-specific faculty,³ which are made up of curriculum and learning designers, working closely with academics in different faculties. A key element of the process is that curriculum design studios enable relationships and communities to develop (Wenger et al., 2002), which in turn allows for contextualized practice. This holistic model supports whole-of-program design for award programs, in a coherent and strategic way and enables communities of practice to emerge in an iterative manner. In this chapter, we share our experiences with using this model and the impacts it has achieved, and we reflect on ways it be adapted for future use and in other contexts.

Curriculum design is an essential task that is complex, painstaking, thought provoking, and cognitively demanding. Often, educators leave curriculum design up to the “experts,” such as textbook makers, program directors, and curriculum leaders. Although deference to “experts” can be perceived as the more efficient way to approach curriculum design, it removes the power from the instructors to exert their expertise, content knowledge, pedagogical artistry, and ability to address the needs of their specific students. In turn, students’ learning and ultimate generalization and application of that learning may not be fully realized. This chapter seeks to challenge that deference of power and illustrate that curriculum design should be a fundamental component to any course design and implementation. This chapter will illustrate considerations that instructors must keep at the forefront of their thinking when designing curricula; specifically, the provision of relevant content that serves as a basis for sustained and successful employability and addressing diverse student learning needs. This chapter will also provide reasonable, practical frameworks for educators to use to embark on executing this critical component of teaching and learning.

Advancements and innovation in engineering design are based on learning from previous failures but students are encouraged to “succeed” first time and hence can avoid learning from failure in practice. The purpose of this paper is to design and evaluate a curriculum to help engineering design students to learn from failure.

A new curriculum design provided a case study for evaluating the effects of incorporating learning from failure within a civil engineering course. An analysis of the changes in course output was undertaken in relation to graduate destination data covering 2006 to 2016 and student satisfaction from 2012 to 2017 and a number of challenges and solutions for curriculum designers were identified.

The design and delivery of an innovative curriculum, within typical constraints, can provide opportunities for students to develop resilience to failure as an integral part of their learning in order to think creatively and develop novel engineering solutions. The key issues identified were: the selection of appropriate teaching methods, creating an environment for exploratory learning, group and team assessments with competitive elements where practicable and providing students with many different pedagogical approaches to produce a quality learning experience.

This case study demonstrates how to design and implement an innovative curriculum that can produce positive benefits of learning from failure. This model can be applied to other disciplines such as building surveying and construction management. This approach underpins the development of skills necessary in the educational experience to develop as a professional building pathologist.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the degree to which a compulsory induction program for Vietnamese higher education teachers influences participants’ perceptions of curriculum and course design.

This case study uses a qualitative, interpretive approach to data collection. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 15 program participants before they started the program and immediately after they completed the program. Five program presenters also were interviewed and documents related to the program were analyzed.

The findings reflect the influence of Biggs’ (2003) constructive alignment approach on participants’ curriculum perceptions, although this approach was not explicitly stated in the program guidelines. Upon the completion of the program, participants realized the importance of their voices in curriculum construction and course design, which was absent from the pre-program findings. However, students’ agency in co-constructing the curriculum and the “being” of curriculum were not perceived.

The paper adds to the growing literature on induction programs and their relation to curriculum perceptions.

The paper provides examples of the changes in participants’ perceptions of curriculum and accentuates, what is neglected in the construction of curriculum.

The paper invites reflection on the design and implementation of curriculum from academic developers, education practitioners and researchers in similar contexts.

Chapter 2 explains and demonstrates a systematic and science-based approach to the design of instructional systems. These design characteristics are related to the attributes of an effective curriculum discussed in Chapter 1. The consequences of the lack of a conceptual framework and its effects upon learning are discussed.

This curriculum design process employs a systematic approach in which each component of the curriculum is designed to reflect the optimal model for configuring the engagement, experience, and environment for the intended learning. Multiple sciences, theories, and research findings are used to inform and order each component into an effective and efficient learning process. As these components communicate the content and articulate the structure of learning, this approach optimizes the ability of the curriculum to capitalize upon the known or suspected qualities of the human perceptual system.

In this system of curriculum design, both the content and structure of the curriculum emerge from the collective intelligence of the discipline. The curriculum designer translates that disciplinary content and structure into learning objects (content) or events (structure) that drives and constrains the learner’s ability to achieve the learning, as conceived by the discipline. In this model of curriculum design, three dimensions of curriculum design differentiate the contribution to the learning processes of the learner. The dynamic interaction of three instructional dimensions enables the learner to engagement, participate in the learning, and benefit from the characteristics of the learning environment.

These three dimensions function as design variables and differentiate each dimension of the curriculum by the characteristics of the intended learning, the processes of instruction, and the consideration of the predispositions of the learners. The theories most concerned with the psychophysics of learning are used to organize and articulate the learning engagement components (learning outcomes and objectives) of the curriculum. The instructional theories plan the strategies that will be used to deliver the intended learning as identified and organized in the learning objectives to engineer a compelling learning experience. The sociological theories structure the learning activities to produce an efficient, consonant, and synergistic learning environment. Together, the use of these theories as design templates constitutes an evidence-based approach to the systematic design of the curriculum. These theories are transformed into design templates.

The design of the learning environment is also configured to engineer the learning environment to accommodate the cultural dispositions programmed into all learners. Cultural factors supply powerful drivers and constraints for human behavior and can be differentiated in the learning environment to promote and enhance learning. Cultural behaviors and mores are developed over hundreds of years and refined to ensure the continuation of a society and its “way of life.” These cultural traditions have effectively promoted and enhanced social behavior by programming each with cognitive strategies to ensure their success as a member of their social group. Individuals are unlikely or unable to discard these traditions when they enter a learning environment.

A study on new office technology and the consequences for curriculum design are described. In a preparatory study, information was collected about trends in the field of office automation, the actual and the desired job profiles of office personnel and the existing curricula. The aim of these activities was to have an empirical base for designing the curriculum. As expected, several discrepancies existed between the information obtained and the desired conditions of the ideal situation, which made it necessary to evaluate the findings of the preparatory study. This was done by a curriculum conference, a new approach to design curricula in groups, which has the characteristics of a carefully prepared workshop. At this conference, the design of the curriculum was validated and confirmed. The design of the curriculum embraces module descriptors for several components of office automation. The curriculum conference was evaluated and appeared to be a promising method to design job‐related curricula.

Curriculum development in higher education must be continuously evaluated in this dynamic business environment, where business needs change day‐to‐day. The literature on the application of quality function deployment (QFD) to curriculum design is increasing, with student opinion representing the sole voice of the customer. The purpose of this paper is to present an alternative approach to QFD curriculum design by using a survey of employers, not students, to represent the voice of the customer.

This paper applies the widely used quality management process of QFD to the curriculum development process of a major international business program.

The findings illustrate the application of QFD's house of quality in international business curriculum development and best practices benchmarking.

The results of this study are useful to any university to revise or design new academic programs. It presents a methodology to design curriculum based on the voice of the real customer: industry, without forgetting about the expertise of academicians.

This study is intended to be one of the first in defining the customer as the industry, instead of just students or academic experts. The combination of all stakeholders in the curriculum design of international business will help universities make better decisions regarding international business programs.

Certain researchers have expressed concerns about inequitable discipline representations in an integrated STEM/STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics) unit that may limit what students gain in terms of depth of knowledge and understanding. To address this concern, the authors investigate the stages of integrated teaching units to explore the ways in which STEAM programs can provide students with a deeper learning experience in mathematics. This paper addresses the following question: what learning stages promote a deeper understanding and more meaningful learning experience of mathematics in the context of STEAM education?

The authors carried out a qualitative case study and collected the following data: interviews, lesson observations and analyses of curriculum documents. The authors took a sample of four different STEAM programs in Ontario, Canada: two at nonprofit organizations and two at in-school research sites.

The findings contribute to a curriculum and instructional model which ensures that mathematics curriculum expectations are more explicit and targeted, in both the learning expectations and assessment criteria, and essential to the STEAM learning tasks. The findings have implications for planning and teaching STEAM programs.

The authors derived four stages of the STEAM Maker unit or lesson from the analysis of data collected from the four sites, which the authors present in this paper. These four stages offer a model for a more robust integrated curriculum focusing on a deeper understanding of mathematics curriculum content.