Curriculum Renewal
This message sent and approved by Prof Judyth Sachs, DVC (Provost)
Colleagues and Students
I am inviting your participation in the important project of Curriculum Renewal.
At the time of the review of academic structure, it was foreshadowed that the review would be followed by a university-wide examination and renewal of our curriculum. It is now necessary to ensure that our curriculum serves to position us to achieve the goals for excellence in teaching and research as set out in Macquarie@50. We need to refresh our approach to Learning and Teaching to attract high quality students.
While there is significant awareness in the university sector of Melbourne University’s development of its new “Melbourne model” curriculum, and the subsequent steps taken by the University of WA in that direction, it is not intended that our curriculum renewal project should in any way be “me too” in its approach or outcomes. Rather it is intended that this is both an opportunity to re-visit and honour our roots, and an opportunity to look forward, to be future oriented: to grapple with what it is that students, and future generations of students, will require to be successful global citizens.
We are working in a highly competitive environment locally, nationally and internationally, and we need to find ways of increasing the number of students selecting Macquarie as their first choice. It is an opportunity to re-invent and re-position ourselves.
Undergraduate education represents the core educational mission for a public research university. Ensuring the best possible quality of academic experience for our students is the highest single priority, yet while we have regular programme reviews it appears that there has not been a comprehensive university wide examination of the curriculum. Our quality enhancement framework requires a systematic assessment of curriculum.
From our initial, and revolutionary, single degree, Macquarie now has a confusing multiplicity of courses and degrees. The curriculum has evolved since 1964 largely by adding and only occasionally by subtracting courses and programs. In all we have 142 undergraduate degrees and their associated units of study. Although Macquarie can still claim to be more flexible than many other universities, there has been a hardening of the arteries over time: a degree of rigidity has crept in. Different definitions of load and complexity of requirements now limit transparency and ease of movement for students. We need to reduce and simplify the number of courses and degrees and progression requirements.
While our curriculum has been evolving, there have been major changes within the university and the external environment. Internally, Macquarie is making significant progress in developing as a research intensive university: we need to ensure that the research-teaching nexus is systematically addressed within the curriculum. How do we achieve greater access to research activities and findings for our students? How do we integrate research experiences?
Our student population is itself enormously diverse, with some 27% of undergraduate students coming to Macquarie from overseas, and a steady increase in the number of domestic students coming from non-English speaking backgrounds, reflecting the changing face of the Australian population. Yet we have not systematically addressed the curriculum challenges, or examined the opportunities implicit in this.
Students are now increasingly required to pay or contribute to the cost of their education. For many students there is an attendant need to work part time, and/or a desire to compress their studies in order to move rapidly into the workforce. How do we best address these pressures? What are the implications of this for the curriculum?
Globalization is only one of the major new challenges facing today’s graduates. What do students require to be successful global citizens? In common with many other universities we have in place a framework to encourage students to include international experiences as part of their studies - but what part should international experience play in our curriculum and how do we achieve greater access to that experience for more of our students? What does it really mean to “internationalise” the curriculum?
These are some of the major issues that we need to ensure we address in a systematic rather than piecemeal way, and which mean that we need to undertake a university-wide renewal project rather than relying on individual programme reviews to move us forward.
Please go to: http://www.mq.edu.au/provost/reports/curriculum_review.html for full information on the Process to be used and Guiding Principles to be applied.
Publish Date: 11 Feb 2008
