event description

1. The curriculum in general

There has been great improvement in the way departments are now putting together their proposals. Notwithstanding, we still have a very long way to go in preparing very good currilum. What I have observed is this:

(a) from the evidence I have, there isn’t much departmental consultation and collaboration in curriculum development. Often the work is done by the HoD alone or at best few with support from few lecturers.

(b) the curriculum development process of having departmental then faculty verification/validation before coming to the curriculum committee is not always followed.

(c) despite haven agreed on a standard templates, these are not always used.

However, I can say that we have had very well written curricula documents and we are making progress though slowly.

(d) Dean’s need to be more involved in curriculum developing in their faculties to ensure compliance to the processes.

2. New programmes/eLearning courses
Definitely proposals for new courses must go to through the University vetting process and TEC approval. We can’t do otherwise. I responded to Prof Allyson’s concerns last night (the one he sent to my private box). His post was actually triggered by a request I made for his the curriculum committee to spare time for a few more proposal documents. I had in mind programme evaluation and data analytics (department of population studies at FBC), project management and quality management systems (IPAM). As you can see, these are hot topics and highly demanding programmes. Prof Allyson and I agreed that any scope for these should be for 2022/23 academic year.

Let me address Prof Redwood-Sawyerr’s questions relating to curricula for eLearning courses.

(a) Due process – none of the proposed eLearning programmes are new. They are courses that have been in the admission system for years. However, I am aware that some of these programmes may not have been reviewed in line with the overall curricular review project launched over a year ago. Since we may now float these as online courses, there is a need to ensure that they meet the agreed standards especially so that the course descriptions will be on the USL website and in the portal. An item on “Curriculum” is on the eLearning retreat agenda for this reason.

(b) competent staff – haha! Well I would expect that all our academic staff are “competent” especially if they have remained in the system over the years and certified by our periodic and annual appraisal processes🙊.

Whatever the case, we are taking no chance with the eLearning implementation. Hence, a request has been made of all HoDs to submit lists of lecturers for the postgraduate course they have proposed for eLearning. There is no automatic guarantee that a course that has been proposed will be piloted for 2021/22. Staff capacity will be vetted for every programme proposed for an online pathway.

(c) Critical mass – this has been factored and for this reason I identified, approached HoDs, encouraged and supported certain departments to come onboard the eLearning train. However, some courses that may not fit very well into our description of critical mass have been accommodated. These are courses proposed by HoDs that have demonstrated great enthusiasm and ones who are likely to demonstrate commitment and support overall elearning capacity-building efforts.

I have hope I have provided the necessary clarifications and happy to answer further questiins. Surely, we are going to ensure quality and we have as a team in the eLearning/LMS projects mitigated identified risks significantly through defence and dedication. And this has been so largely because most of the members of the two teams have been carefully selected.

The Agile Framework is underlined by continuous refinement and courage to promote transparency and scrutiny all geared towards raising quality. And this is what I have found in the LMS and eLearning teams. By some divine coincidence, the team members are all AGILE. And definitely, my profs are very agile.

Happy Monday to all.

D Gbao