Connected Curriculum:
Research-based education,
programme design and
student transition.
Dr Dilly Fung
Director, UCL Centre for the Advancement
of Learning and Teaching
@UCLConnectedC
@DevonDilly
Overview
1. Higher education: values and purposes
2. Programme Leaders’ Stories
3. The Connected Curriculum framework
4. Over to you
1. Higher Education: values and purposes
What is higher education for?
- Research
- Education
- Professional practice
Separate endeavours –
in competition?
Or necessarily interdependent?
Re-visiting education’s relationship with research,
practice, and leadership can help the sector create
parity of esteem and enrich all areas.
1. Higher Education: values and purposes
The ‘ecological’ university
Recognising the true interconnectedness of
our activities can help us to build a new
‘feasible utopia’ (Barnett, 2011)
2. Programme Leaders’ Study
Research questions
1.How do university programme leaders conceive of the
aims and ethos of the programmes for which they are
responsible?
2.How are the programmes designed (for example, in
terms of modularity, optionality and assessment strategies),
and what do the leaders perceive to be the benefits and
challenges of those design structures?
3.What do program leaders perceive to be the purposes,
opportunities and challenges of the programme leader role
itself?
4.How do programme leaders working within different
national settings and in diverse subject disciplines
conceptualize ‘good’ higher education curriculum?
2. Programme Leaders’ Study
Theoretical framing (1)
Education defined as Bildung,
from the field of philosophical
hermeneutics (Gadamer, 2004):
•‘self-formation’ through dialogue
•the widening of horizons
The human mind needs to remain
‘unsatisfied with what it imagines it
knows’ (Fairfield 2010, 3).
2. Programme Leaders’ Study
Theoretical framing (2)
In William Pinar’s ‘curriculum’, teachers are
‘confirmed not as facilitators of learning but as
individuated communicants in a
complicated conversation that is informed by
academic knowledge, subjectivity and the
historical moment.’ (Pinar, 2012, 25-26)
‘Expressing one’s subjectivity through
academic knowledge is how one links the
lived curriculum to the planned one, how
one demonstrates to students that scholarship
can speak to them, how in fact scholarship
can enable them to speak.’ (Pinar, 2012, 22)
2. Programme Leaders’ Study
22
Programme
Leaders
interviewed
In Australia, Bangladesh,
Chile, China, France,
New Zealand, Nigeria,
Qatar, Republic of Ireland,
UK (England & NI),
United States
Wide range of subjects:
traditionally academic;
professional;
interdisciplinary.
2. Programme Leaders’ Study
Key findings are that curriculum is valued for being
Research
connected
Students develop through gathering and
interrogating evidence and through engaging with
research and researchers.
Conceptually
connected
Students build explicit conceptual connections,
making critical and creative connections between
apparently disparate elements of learning.
Personally
and socially
connected
Students build relationships with faculty and one
another to develop their personal identity and
voice, and develop their public identity through
connecting with the workplace/wider community.
2. Programme Leaders’ Study
Research-connected
• Leaders want students who ‘ask probing
intelligent questions, play the devil’s
advocate, hold people to account’
(George, Interdisciplinary, UK), and who
can engage with ‘questions of evidence’
(Alastair, Interdisciplinary, UK).
• Dislike expressed for curriculum where
there is ‘an over-emphasis on the
transmission of knowledge, and there is
little emphasis on developing students’
abilities of identifying researchable
questions’ (Hung, Sciences, China).
2. Programme Leaders’ Study
Research-connected
Is ‘case-based’ and relevant to
real-world complexity
(Susan, Sciences, Australia).
Does not make students wait
until their final year to engage
with research: ‘We’re probably
weaker because they haven’t
had that grounding over the first
three years and we’re trying to
cram it all in one year’.
(Simon, Humanities, NZ)
2. Programme Leaders’ Study
Research and enquiry
Chinua (Sciences, Nigeria) speaks of how he has ‘a
passion for research’, and has ‘always built in curriculum
that will include research methodology, even at the
undergraduate level’.
Maya (Arts, Bangladesh): students apply to participate in
funded research projects and do ‘senior research
projects’ in final year, presenting at research
conferences. Students can co-publish with faculty.
2. Programme Leaders’ Study
Questions arising
What is ‘research’?
The term is a complex signifier,
constructed differently in different subject
fields and even sometimes within the
same field. It involves different objectives,
methodologies and practices, and
different kinds of outputs.
What (or who) is research for?
For whose benefit, in an unequal society?
What might we mean by ‘research
integrity’?
2. Programme Leaders’ Study
Conceptually connected
Program Leaders want student to
make conceptual connections
between apparently disparate
elements of the curriculum. Modular
system is criticised:
‘Too many students view it as, you
take something, you learn it, you
memorize it, you pass the exam and
then it’s discarded. So from a
pedagogical perspective, I don’t think
it’s as optimal as it could be.’
(Leonardo, Sciences, NI)
2. Programme Leaders’ Study
Conceptually connected
Simon (Humanities, NZ) refers to his
own curriculum as ’very much a
smorgasbord in the first three years –
you can pick and choose’.
He calls this a ‘pick and mix’
approach, which he regrets:
‘When I get them in their final year I
can’t guarantee that any of them
have done theory, or any of them
have done practical applications’,
and wants ‘much more scaffolding’.
2. Programme Leaders’ Study
Building connections
Maria (Sciences, Northern Ireland) talks of a focus
on
‘reinforcement of themes; we move from simple to
complex. There’s integration across modules, and
we hope that there’s a logical sequence. And we
hope that it moves on to higher learning objectives
… and the assessment very much mirrors this.’
2. Programme Leaders’ Study
Conceptually connected
Alastair (Interdisciplinary, UK)
describes a ‘strand of activity’ that
runs from the beginning to the
end of his program, and connects
into all other elements, which may
otherwise appear disparate.
His aim is ‘to constantly reinforce
core values and concepts’.
2. Programme Leaders’ Study
But not just a single disciplinary connection?
Alastair (Interdisciplinary, UK) requires
students to take
‘a rigorous, interdisciplinary approach’,
having gone on
‘an intellectual raiding party for the best
bits of different disciplines’,
and thereby to develop
‘a coherent body of knowledge’.
2. Programme Leaders’ Study
Possible ‘programme design’ solutions?
• A chronological sequence of
compulsory modules, or a single
vertical module, through which
the learning narrative can be
anchored. Here students can
explicitly interrogate their own
approaches and skills as
researchers and learners.
• ‘Wisdom of the phases’: setting up
cross-cohort mentoring
2. Programme Leaders’ Study
Personally and socially connected
Programme Leaders value:
• peer assisted learning and peer
mentoring schemes
• peer study groups
• extra-curricular journal clubs
• research conferences (even for
undergraduates)
• collaborative assessments
2. Programme Leaders’ Study
Learning together
Collaborative activities
are seen as a means of
‘structuring students’
thinking about what
multiple perspectives
mean, and how they
can be valuable’
(Diane, Humanities, UK)
Questions arising
What power relations are at work in our
curriculum design and delivery? And do
we challenges students to consider
this?
Alison (Sciences, France) speaks of a
kind of a holdover from the era of the
all-powerful professor who decides
who’s going to do what and everyone
says, ‘Yes sir, that’s what we’ll do’.
2. Programme Leaders’ Study: review
Key findings, then, are that curriculum needs to be:
Research
connected
Conceptually
connected
Personally
and socially
connected
2. Programme Leaders’ Study: conclusions
‘Good’ curriculum enables all students to
develop, through research and critical
enquiry, deep conceptual connections.
Through these activities they develop not
only new understandings and skills, but
also dispositions for openness to critique
and wider horizons. This in turn can
develop confidence and ‘voice’.
These attributes are needed for a complex,
digitally mediated, divided, rapidly changing
world.
3. The Connected Curriculum framework
UCL’s Connected Curriculum initiative
‘At University College London,
our top strategic priority for the
next 20 years is to close the
divide between teaching and
research.
We want to integrate research
into every stage of an
undergraduate degree,
moving from research-led to
research-based teaching.’
UCL President and Provost,
Professor Michael Arthur
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/ucl-2034
www.ucl.ac.uk/connectedcurriculum
The
Connected
Curriculum
Framework
(Fung, 2015)
@UCLConnectedC
Student transitions (1)
Roll out of a research-based
induction activity:
‘Meet Your Researcher’
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/teachinglearning/connectedcurriculum/Meet_your_resear
cher
Student transitions (2) – in development,
including:
• Cross-phase activities resulting from
‘assessments as research outputs’ approach, for
example 3rd years inspiring 2nd years with
research presentations, and Masters students
engaging with PhD research conferences
• ‘Year abroad’ students presenting to students
preparing to study overseas
• Peer mentoring – across phases
• Bringing in alumni to inform and inspire
www.ucl.ac.uk/connectedcurriculum
The
Connected
Curriculum
Framework
(Fung, 2015)
@UCLConnectedC
Group discussions
For each dimension (1-6) of the CC Framework,
discuss:
a) Examples of good practice in this area you know
of already, and/or creative possibilities for the
future, which would suit your subject discipline
b) Its relation to student transition (into the
programme; across years/phases; and from the
programme into further study or employment).
‘Rare are those
who dare even to
dream utopian
dreams about
possible
alternatives.’
(Zizek, 2009)
Stay in touch:
ConnectedCurriculum@ucl.ac.uk
@UCLConnectedC
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/connectedcurriculum
References
Barnett, R. (2011) Being a University Routledge, Oxford and New
York
Fairfield, P. ed. (2011). Education, Dialogue and Hermeneutics.
London: Continuum.
Fung, D (2014) Connected Curriculum:
www.ucl.ac.uk/connectedcurriculum Accessed 01 Feb 2015
Gadamer, H.-G. (2004). Truth and Method (Second, Revised
ed.). (J. W. Marshall, Trans.) London and New York: Continuum.
Pinar, W. F. (2012). What is Curriculum Theory? (Second ed.).
New York, US: Routledge.
Zizek, S (2009) First as Tragedy, Then as Farce (p.77), cited in
Barnett’s Being a University (2011, p.16)