EXPERIENCES WITH SELF-MAPPING CURRICULUM AGILITY

Abstract

Future-proof engineering curricula can cope with fast-changing circumstances, and the opportunities and threats these bring along in the context of the curriculum. Curriculum Agility (CA) is a concept aimed at helping higher education institutions analyse how responsive their programmes are to changes in society, industry, and student characteristics and needs. The CA model describes features needed to adapt curricular and organizational structures, learning content and outcomes, learning activities and pedagogies, staff development, and examination design in a timely and proactive manner. Based on the model, a CA Self-Mapping Protocol has been developed that aims to actively engage and simultaneously enable curriculum stakeholders in the self-mapping process. It was tested at five European universities and at different levels, i.e. university, department, and program level. Leading questions focused on the effects of the CA self-mapping process; and what that could mean for the set-up of the protocol. The aim of this paper is to present to what extent, and in which form, the self-mapping protocol, as a design-thinking, guided dialogue with multiple stakeholders, is valuable and feasible in different higher engineering education institutional contexts. All facilitators were able to adjust the protocol to local contexts. And although there were all kinds of differences (of use and process) between the institutes, what ‘stands firmly’ is the importance of the negotiating understanding of what CA is and what it means to the local context. The presence of the ten principles were instrumental to ‘guarantee’ that people were discussing and considering the themes that needed to be addressed.

Affiliations

Umeå University, Sweden

Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands

Delft University of Technology, Netherlands

Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden

Turku University of Applied Sciences, Turku, Finland

Authors

Suzanne Brink, Sonia M. Gomez Puente, Remon Rooij, Kristel Aalbers, Carl Johan Carlsson, Mikael Enelund, Liisa Lehtinen

Authors (new)

Suzanne Brink

Sonia M. Gómez Puente

Remon Rooij