Designing and improving a specific course curriculum and syllabus in universities can turn into a dilemma. To make sure that the outcomes of a course, major or program are met and precise, academic planners need to assess whether teachers and students will be able to handle a particular academic workload.

In 21^st century education, where the academic planning is distributed both in the classroom and online platforms, scheduling has proven as a challenge. It may have been easier to calculate the amount of time of activity in class, the number of hours it would take a student to skim through a workbook at the school library, or for a teacher to prepare a comprehensive seminar. But when the model of education is increasingly turning into skill development and online activities that have an active role in learning outcomes, assessing this can be a challenge. Improving the curriculum includes evaluating the outcomes both in the classroom and the activities that students work online.

How to use data science analytics and software to assess this?

1. Colleges need to have a collective approach to curriculum design

There’re two issues in executing a curriculum that is no longer acceptable:

• A faculty presents a curriculum for teachers to implement, with no feedback on how it is working out in the classroom.
• A teacher develops the syllabi his own way, without accounting properly on how the program was matching learning outcomes.

Educause explains that with the increasing power of computing and student data available, universities can affect student outcomes with more efficient methods of integrated planning and advising services (IPAS), “an approach to student success that promotes shared ownership for educational progress among students, faculty and staff through holistic information and services.”

For instance, the University of Sydney, U-Planner partner, has an academic workload monitoring committee, to “oversee and support the implementation and monitoring of the institutional workload allocation policy.” 

This committee:

• Reviews the workload allocation policy for each academic work unit annually.
• Ensures that their location policy provides “a reasonable basis for determining comparison of workload quantum across the University.”

The University’s workload policy encourages principles of equity, transparency and flexibility for staff to manage their workload.  

“The local workload allocation arrangements for a school or faculty should be generally understood and supported by the majority of academic staff within the unit.”

The departments at the university are in constant consultation, and the head of the faculty monitors changes in workload and evaluates its impact, while the staff discusses concerning workloads and reports any difficulties and variations.

That is why the workload of teachers is constantly revised and recorded to ensure that the staff is neither over nor underworked. It is important for universities to run curriculum and syllabi consultation processes with permanent and non-permanent faculty members, to assess both the student and the teacher’s workload.

The Higher Education Funding Council for England funded a study on improving managing academic workloads. They concluded that consensual agreed initiatives improve the process both for the academic staff and the heads of school in several ways:

• It gave academics an opportunity to “influence the use of the model to change allocation of school resources, such as on patterns and distribution of work at times of peak.”
• It created greater awareness of overall workload situation.
• It provided documentary evidence of workloads.
• It encouraged prioritizing activities.
• It became easier to link work planning discussions to review processes.

2. Faculties must make the most of the information collected through big data

Both Enterprise Resource Planning software (ERP) and Course Management Systems (CMS) gathers an immense amount of information on student performance. We’re not talking just about the student scores or GPA, but:

• The amount of time it took a student to answer a particular test.
• The days and times that groups of students log in a given course.
• The amount of time it takes a student to write a comment or an online-based assignment.
• The number of requests – and gaps – in the access of specific course documents.

Generally, teachers can account for this to adjust their tactics in the classroom during a semester but, ¿is the university using that information to improve the learning experience and the academic planning?

Often, these information systems don’t communicate, and academics need to go through a lengthy evidence report process at the end of the semester, to discuss issues that an ERP or CMS data based report can help them back up with evidence in minutes.

For this to happen, having an ERP or CMS is not enough. Faculties need to find solutions that can take the insights hidden in these applications to provide a comprehensive and easy to interpret feedback that can nurture this collective curriculum design process.

Do you have issues promoting an academic planning and curricular design process? How do you gather your information to improve syllabi?