Competitividad empresarial

As noted in Section 4.1, more than half of the participants started their curriculum design by thinking about course content and what they were going to teach, and all participants included course content as a major curriculum decision. Selecting course content involved decisions about how it will be structured and presented to students, which included both the structure of knowledge and the structure of teaching and learning events. Most participants structured course content as a series of topics that were presented in a weekly schedule of lectures, or seminars for smaller groups. The structure of teaching and learning events as weekly lectures was typically not reported as a specific decision, but seemed to be taken for granted as the only approach. Only one participant described an alternative structure, which was a two week intensive course in environmental sciences, with a lecture format in the mornings and practical sessions in the afternoons.

Participants described a range of approaches for selecting and sequencing of topics, which are reported below, and which suggest some disciplinary differences.

4.2.1 Important topics and themes

Most participants teaching in arts, law and environmental sciences courses reported that they selected course content based on the topics that students need to know, guided by their expertise in the subject matter. For some, the decision was implicit, based on the most important topics.

about that I know something about? So, that was really the basis of my selection. (Phillip, ARTS5/L2)

Other participants described their thoughtful seeking of a narrative or theme to link course topics and make them relevant and meaningful to students. Examples were given of decisions to make topics and learning activities relevant to students’ lived experience as university students, to their roles as citizens, and to future professional roles.

Values provide the philosophical framework for the course. We look at different law reform methods and their pros and cons, and looking for a satisfactory explanation about why it is a good thing for society. This includes examining questions such as ‘Why are you lawyering?’ (Nigel, LAWS2/L2)

4.2.2 The organisation of knowledge in the discipline

All science participants, from physics and biology, described the discipline as providing a conceptual framework for structuring course content.

Basically, the field can be divided into two, quite simply. Well, the first part, which I took as first two thirds, is much simpler to understand concepts and then there’s the last third, which is more research oriented. It’s still foundational concepts but they are a bit more tricky. So, I took that very general approach that there is this natural distinction in the field and it’s a distinction in terms of the hierarchical scheme of concepts, things that you build up. (Adam, PHYS1/Hons) The organising principles reported for structuring content included from basic to advanced concepts, and different sub-fields of knowledge, such as mechanics and electromagnetism in physics, and anatomy and physiology in biology.

Textbooks.

Textbooks were also commonly used in physics courses, except where participants were unable to find anything suitable. Textbooks also reinforced the accepted disciplinary conceptual framework for organising knowledge.

My approach to many things, including this, is don’t reinvent the wheel. So although I had my own ideas about how to teach and what should be taught, I recognised that other people had similar thoughts. … So I did a systematic study of the literature, which is quite extensive in physics education, of the available texts, and there was a clear outlier in terms of effectiveness, and that was this one [that we are using]. (Brian, PHYS4/L1)

In addition, two participants from business and environmental sciences, who had written their own textbooks, used these to structure course content.

4.2.3 Inquiry and experiential learning structures

Five participants teaching courses in the arts, environmental sciences, and law used an inquiry-based or experiential learning approach, which provided a unifying structure for integrating course topics.

Elaine, who was teaching a level 2 compulsory course in law, used a role play scenario to provide the structure for students to encounter legal problems and experience

applying knowledge and skills.

I wanted to create an evidence course in context and it had to do with creating the materials to provide a context for the evidence rules. And the problem is that in Australia, there are no cameras in the courtrooms and there are very few TV dramas that deal with Australian legal issues. So I said, if I want to be able to put the students in the shoes of the lawyer and use this material, I’ve got to create it myself. … And what I wanted was short clips that I could play in class and that would raise questions or problems for students to then engage with and talk about so they could learn something of the context from the clip itself but then have to work with it to come up with resolutions to the issues raised by the clip. (Elaine, LAWS4/L2)