Project Overview

The reality of curriculum design is that educational complexity affords what can be called a hidden curriculum.  However, in Australian higher education the focus is increasingly on the rigor and coherency of curriculum design and alignment particularly as accrediting bodies demand education providers to produce evidence of how the intended curriculum is enacted in the classroom. Acknowledging the potential for a gap between ideology and classroom reality provides the context for a project at the University of South Australia (UniSA) to support the Bachelor of Nursing program with design processes, while simultaneously providing a mechanism to surface the hidden curriculum and avoid curriculum creep.

Informed by the field of curricula design, a mapping alignment tool is devised and populated with institutional data. Program directors and course coordinators contribute to course-level design discussions covering implicit themes, health priorities and domains of nursing practice, that flow through the program, while simultaneously identifying pedagogical or technology enhancements made to the curriculum, such as Inquiry-Based Learning and Web2.0 technologies – wikis, blogs, YouTube, virtual classroom, lecture capture recordings, course web sites, and more. Adding this information into the tool permits tracking, analysis, and evaluation across the curriculum to support design intent with delivered reality.

In short, this project will 1) identify data that characterize the visible and the hidden curriculum for the Bachelor of Nursing program; 2) develop prototype tools and processes necessary to capture the data from the Bachelor of Nursing program; 3) capture similar data from a participating project partner to validate data characteristics; 4) analyze the comparative data characteristics for use with other disciplines; 5) identify necessary steps for generalizing process and tools for use in local and international applications; and 6) disseminate findings to audiences within UniSA, at the partnering university, and to national audiences.

University of South Australia Learning & Teaching grants

The purpose of the competitive UniSA Learning & Teaching Grants Scheme is to support the strategic objectives articulated in the University's Teaching and Learning Framework. Through innovation and the enhancement of educational practice and products, outcomes are disseminated for the purpose of adoption and embedding throughout the University, where appropriate. Development Grants are designed to promote small-scale innovation and to develop good practice in learning and teaching. "Clarifying Curriculum Design Requirements: A Curriculum Mapping Tool" is a development grant project.

The project team of George Bradford, Colleen Smith, Carol Grech (see Project Team inset for individual details) initiated the grant proposal in October of 2011 as a follow-up of a major re-design project for the Bachelor of Nursing program at the University of South Australia (UniSA). The prototype of the mapping tool was designed and developed in the preceding months and was tested during the curriculum writing phase. The award of the grant was given in January 2012.

About this site

The website is a multi-page site, where each page is designed to convey specific information regarding the progress and development of the project. This home page will contain up-to-date project details in brief, with the intent to quickly convey current activities. Please revisit this page, as there is sure to be changes. If you have questions, feel free to contact anyone on the team, however please keep in mind the principal applicant is George Bradford, who is responsible for the project, so use him as your principal contact.