The curriculum mapping tool is a prototype of a web-based visualization tool designed to help educators and decision makers analyze how a programme at their faculty is structured, and whether changes should be made to the programme.
To ensure that the structure of a curriculum and its components are in line with the aims and intentions of an institution, curriculum mapping can be done. Curriculum mapping involves having the learning outcomes of courses be compared with the intended learning outcomes. This can be done by analyzing the learning outcomes of each course in a programme, as well as analyzing the level of how such a learning outcome is taught in a course (Arafeh, 2016).
The aim of the Curriculum Mapping project at SLATE was to develop a web-based visualization tool that aids both educators and decision makers (the faculty board, department heads and so on) in analyzing how and at which levels the programme learning outcomes (PLOs) are taught in the Professional Studies in Psychology programme at the University of Bergen.
Developing the Curriculum Mapping Tool
The curriculum mapping tool prototype was mainly developed by SLATE intern Geerte Koster. She has studied Biomedical Sciences in Utrecht, the Netherlands, and has a master’s degree in Bioinformatics from the University of Amsterdam and the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. The Curriculum Mapping project was part of her master’s degree.
Geerte Koster had a four-month internship stay at SLATE in May - September of 2022. During this time, Koster collaborated with Yael Harlap, the Vice-Dean for Education at the Faculty of Psychology at the University of Bergen to build the prototype of the analytics tool for curriculum planning at the programme level. Koster was supervised by SLATE Director Professor Barbara Wasson (project supervisor) and Mohammad Khalil, Senior Researcher at SLATE.
The curriculum mapping tool should help faculty members and decision makers see patterns in how a programme is currently structured, and to help them decide whether changes should be made to the programme. Within the scope of this project, a second version of a web-based visualization tool was developed. Decision makers will use the tool to see if all programme learning outcomes are well-covered and developed from a beginner to an advanced level. The tool will be used as a starting point for discussions with teachers about how their course learning outcomes (CLOs) are defined, and how this tool might be used in the future to gain more insight into both the programme as a whole and the role of individual courses in the programme.
The data used for this curriculum mapping was the syllabi of the different courses in the psychology programme at the University of Bergen. Based on those syllabi and discussions with teachers, the learning outcomes of the course were determined on three levels, beginner, intermediate or advanced, and an easy-to-use visualization tool was developed for the data. The tool can be used to show the current structure of the curriculum, and that can be used by teachers to see how their course fits in the curriculum.
The Curriculum Mapping Tool
News about the Curriculum Mapping Project
Geerte Koster: Curriculum Mapping and DALI Mini Project
