Curriculum Development

Overview

At this stage, your programme should have successfully undergone the approval process, whether for a new or redeveloped programme. This process would have resulted in a clear, shared vision for your programme, alongside formal documentation outlining its key components. These include the modules that constitute the programme, their aims, learning objectives, teaching strategies, and assessments. Once the programme has been approved, these elements should remain consistent to maintain the integrity of the design. Any changes should only be made after careful evaluation, such as through yearly review processes.

The focus should now shift to developing the content of the modules. This involves creating teaching and learning materials, including resources for the Canvas, while also planning for delivery and evaluation to ensure a successful implementation.

This section of the Toolkit provides ideas and suggestions for the development phase of your new or revised programme. The first two sections signpost ideas for module and content development. The latter sections focus on maintaining and articulating the student journey.

You may have already looked at some of these elements as part of Design, if so, use the prompts here to check that your design is enacted as modules are developed.

An overarching goal at the end of the development phase is to be able to communicate the programme journey to your students. 

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Module development

Storyboarding can provide an effective way to move from a Module Outline to a detailed week-by-week breakdown of topics and student learning activities. There are a number of storyboarding approaches - we have highlighted two options below: ABC and "four modes".

ABC Learning Design

UCL’s ABC Learning Design is an established module storyboarding method in UK HE. It provides an accessible and convenient structure for module design that helps educators design effective learning experiences. ABC can be used in a facilitated 90 minute workshop setting where module teams work together to refine their module prototype. It is based on Diana Laurillard’s conversational framework and centres on the use of activity cards (acquisition, discussion, collaboration, production, practice, exploration), that focus on what learners will do. It has dimensions that also support module teams to consider the mix of online and in-person modes of delivery.

Module development

Storyboarding based on “four modes of delivery”

More recently, we have been experimenting with a different storyboarding approach drawing on JISC’s Beyond Blended (2024) research and on Universal Design for Learning (UDL) principles. The approach centres on the four modes of delivery:

	Place
Timing	Online – synchronous (eg Teams / Zoom)	In Person – synchronous (Timetabled class/lecture)
	Online – asynchronous (eg self-paced resources, discussion board)	In Person – asynchronous Independent study using physical resources and locations

The "four modes" perspective helps us to think critically about our choices on timing and place.

Canvas Modules

Once module structures are planned the programme team will begin to build the week by week structure in Canvas.

Our Canvas Baseline lays out the minimum requirements on all University modules. Make sure you meet this baseline as you consider your Canvas modules from a student perspective.

Reflective questions

Looking at your Canvas modules:

• Do they meet the requirements of our Canvas Baseline?
• Do they reflect the conventions you agreed as a programme team?
• How do assessments link together across each stage?
• Are assessments presented and handled consistently? (i.e. the assessment submission method, feedback mechanism, grading scheme, rubric)

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Content Development

As a programme team and/or as a module team, you may identify places where self-paced digital resources will significantly enhance the student experience and support students in their learning of troublesome/threshold concepts.

Before creating new content, check if there are publicly licensed resources that you could use, or existing content shared by colleagues in your School, and from University services (Library, Careers, NUIT, FMS-TEL). Your School and the Library may have subscriptions to services and resources that are relevant.

Simple explainer videos produced using ReCap and PowerPoint can be as effective as higher quality media. However, there will be occasions where investment in high quality media and animations will be worthwhile. Media can be time consuming to produce, so it is important to focus initially on digital assets that have a long lifespan and will benefit large number of students.

Videos and animations are just one way to engage your audience; content development extends far beyond visual media. At Newcastle, we offer a diverse range of technologies to enhance your teaching. Tools like interactive quizzes in Canvas, real-time engagement with Vevox, or branching scenarios using H5P can make your content more interactive. These technologies not only boost student engagement but also support a degree of personalisation of learning and the development of digital skills. When creating content, adopt a pedagogy-first approach: start with clear learning goals, then explore how technology can best support those aims. Consider adding interactivities on Canvas, NUReflect for reflective practice, or H5P for creating rich interactive content, all designed to encourage engagement with module material.  

 

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Student Journey Mapping

As module designs become more detailed you can use a variety of lenses to consider your programme from a student perspective. This is best done on a stage-by-stage basis to identify stress points and opportunities to improve the student experience.

In a workshop setting, you can add Post-Its to a roll of paper that represents each stage, or annotate an online whiteboard or PowerPoint with a timeline for each semester.

At this point, it is useful to involve a wider group of colleagues: School PS colleagues, transition officers, technicians, Library Liaison, Careers, student reps.

Assessments

While assessment should be planned during the design phase and documented in the programme approval process, this stage involves clearly defining the assessment tasks and timings to ensure they are ready to be communicated to students.

Examples of effective practice

There are several ways to improve your assessment design across the programme. For example, you can:

• Collate all the assessment deadlines into a single place and publish this as part of the Canvas Community that students can access. Include this in your inductions/start-of-semester briefing.
• Agree on common assessment approaches – tools you are going to use across the stage/programme (rubrics, marking schemes, assignment types); so that students know how to access their feedback.
• As a programme team, agree on your approach to guiding students on their use of AI in assessed work. Plan when this will happen and how it will be reinforced.

Reflective Questions

Look at assessments over your programme

• Where do the assessment deadlines fall in each stage? How would these be experienced by students? Can deadlines be adjusted?
• Are some programme level outcomes being over-assessed? Can assessment workloads be reduced while keeping feedback high?
• How do assessments link together across each stage?
• How can students be supported to relate feedback to future assessments?
• Is there time for students to act on feedback between assessments?

Skills

Critically assess how students develop their skills throughout the stage, where new skills are introduced, and how these skills are further developed across both the current stage and the entire programme.

Priorities for skills will vary by discipline and stage. You may want to repeat this exercise with a variety of lenses eg: disciplinary skills; digital skills; Education for Life attributes; employability; professionalism; academic integrity; AI literacy, etc.

Feed any actions into your planning around induction/transitions and overall communications plan. You can also illustrate how students develop their skills across the stages as a poster or animation. For example, colleagues from the Learning and Teaching Development Service created student skills journey animations based on insights gained from student skills journey mapping workshops with SNES.

Equity

Creating an inclusive learning environment is essential for ensuring that all students can engage meaningfully with the curriculum. As you develop your programme, consider how your choices can support diverse learning needs. 

You can create a more equitable educational experience for everyone by:

• Providing written notes to accompany oral instructions and guidance to support international, deaf, and neurodivergent learners
• Ensuring that the examples used in the curriculum represent a variety of cultures and diverse perspectives.
• Checking all published digital resources for accessibility
• Offering flexible assessment options.

Reflective Questions

As you look over each stage in your programme:

• Does the design meet the needs of all student groups?
• Will any particular group be at a disadvantage? How could you plan to mitigate this?

Examples of effective practice:

• Written notes to accompany oral instructions and guidance will support international, deaf, and neurodivergent learners
• The range of examples used in the curriculum represents a variety of cultures and diversity of peoples
• Digital resources published are checked for accessibility

A student version of the Programme Journey

As a programme team you will have shared understanding of how the programme fits together and builds. Think about ways you can articulate this to help you communicate it to your students.  This could be a graphic, a short document, or a PowerPoint slide that you can refer back to across the stage and programme.

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Communication

During Student Journey Mapping, you may well have identified specific points in the academic year where you will need to highlight particular resources and additional sources of support.  You may already have a communications plan covering induction/transition, add elements you identify to this plan.

A communications plan can be a simple table:

Date	Communication	For	Channel	Person responsible	Draft text	Actioned date/initials
Dd/mm	What are office hours and how to use them	Stage 1 students	Notice in core lecture	Dr XX	Document link
Dd/mm	What are office hours and how to use them	All students	Announcement in school Canvas Community	Prof YY (DPD)	Document Link

By implementing your communications plan, you can ensure that students receive timely and relevant information throughout their academic journey.

Canvas Community

A well-structured Canvas community can help students find key information and cut down on email traffic.

Reflective Questions

Look over your Canvas community; ask your students for feedback

• Can students easily find key module and school contacts; office hours?
• Are Wellbeing, Careers and Academic Skills support signposted?
• Can they find information detailing assessment deadlines for the year?
• How could you partner with your students to redevelop the Community site?

 

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Evaluation Planning

As a programme team you will have put a great deal of effort into designing or redeveloping your programme. Before it launches, consider the ways you will gather feedback from students.  For example, think about:

• Specific agenda points at Staff-Student Committees (SSCs)
• How you can use Canvas/ReCap access data to evaluate student engagement
• Common questions you wish to ask as part of informal mid-module check-ins
• Schedule student focus groups to gain in depth feedback

Schedule check-in points for the programme team

Schedule time as a programme team to check in with each other on how the new programme is working (for students and colleagues). This could be as part of existing disciplinary engagement, or as separate short meetings, for example, at stage level. The goal of these is to capture learning, make adjustments if needed, and identify any additional communication needs.

• You might find it useful to add a new channel to your Teams site for conversations between check-ins
• You could use a Microsoft Planner to note feedback and observations for each module. 

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University policies

When planning evaluation, consider how you will give opportunities for student voice, and how their suggestions can feed into improving your module or programme. Think about how you close the loop and let them know about how you have responded to their feedback.

Insights from the planned evaluation should feed into informing your reflections as part of the Annual Monitoring and Review. and inform any changes to programmes and modules as part of the annual cycle.