Curriculum Mapping

What is Curriculum Mapping?

Curriculum mapping is a process to map out a program’s curriculum to ensure all desired aspects are delivered and understand where these aspects are delivered (PharmD et al., 2007). By determining the program outcomes and mapping out which courses cover those outcomes it will be easier to ensure the program is effectively meeting its student learning goals and better understand implications of program changes.

What are the Benefits of Curriculum Mapping?

Curriculum mapping can:

Enhances the student learning and experience,
Be a foundational piece of a quality assurance process,
Examine an intended curriculum or a specific portion of a curriculum for multiple perspectives,
Provide learners with different models of assessment to reflect the broadness of a program's field and facilitate well-roundness in program graduates,
Increase collaboration between program instructors,
Identify the need for and assist with planning new courses,
Ensure coherent progression between levels and courses and allow for deliberate reiteration of key program learning rather than unintended repetition.
Assist with accessible design to easily facilitate pattern recognition within the program,
Assess students’ competencies are aligned to each difficulty level,
Assist graduating students on explaining their competencies in professional contexts like resumes and job interviews.

(PharmD et al., 2007; Rawle et al., 2017)

Best practice in curriculum development and implementation requires that both curricular and programme scopes and sequences embody discipline-based standards or requirements. Curriculum mapping is able to:

make the curriculum transparent and easily communicable in helping achieve and maintain program accreditation.
ensure alignment between the program objectives and its constituent courses.

(Al-Eyd et al., 2018; Arafeh, 2016)

Approaches and Considerations

A program's approach to curriculum mapping may take different forms throughout its process. Below is a brief description of some approaches a program may opt to employ and some considerations for the Review Lead embarking on the process.

Paper-based Approach

Paper based approaches, such as printed templates may be useful tools, primarily in the preliminary stages of curriculum mapping. Taking advantage of physical spaces and sticky notes to move and arrange program outcomes between courses and physically laying out the curriculum may help with orienting the curriculum map. Note that using paper-based approaches may limit how flexible processes may be for collaborating, for example limiting how easy it is for multiple people to edit the map, having multiple versions, etc.

Spreadsheet Tools

Programs like Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets can be used to create a digital map. These tools are widely available and enable easy online collaboration. However, they are generalist tools and will likely not be as efficient as specialty tools as well as lacking features these specialty programs provide. There may be some published templates for curriculum mapping that may help with the process of using these general tools.

Specialty Software

There is software programs dedicated to curriculum mapping. These tools will come with their own strengths and weaknesses along with a potential cost to use the tool itself. At present the UPEI Teaching and Learning Centre does not have a general recommendation for a specific curriculum mapping software platform.

Process

These are the main steps of curriculum mapping:

Establish clear program outcomes
- Program outcomes are defined or reviewed.
- Learning outcomes are defined and categorized using the program outcomes.
- The Instructional Resources Hub page on developing Learning Outcomes may be a useful resource.

Develop templates that correspond to the learning outcomes
- A basic program template from Carleton University
- Determine the scale to be used in mapping and define the terms of the scale.
- Each course’s learning outcomes are linked to implement a logical progression from level to level using the selected scale.

Gather information
- Instructors surveyed on instructional content.
- Content analyses of instructional materials.
- Alignment indices to describe the degree of overlap between content and standards or assessment.

4. Analyze and Share Results

The curriculum map is finalized and reviewed to evaluate gaps, overlap, and program alignment.

Considerations

Program outcomes need to be clearly defined before a program can be mapped, poorly defined or undefined course outcomes will hinder the mapping process.
Terminology or jargon can hamper collaboration.
Instructor support is a crucial part of the process and successful implementation of resulting goals from the curriculum mapping.
Clear and ongoing communication is critical.
Have the course instructor do the mapping if possible.
Discuss the mapping scale with the entire team prior to mapping so that people are using it in a consistent way.
Have a strategy for mapping support.
Identify who will be responsible for data representation and analysis.

(Rawle et al., 2017; Dyjur et al., 2019)

Curriculum Mapping Templates

Supports and Services to Help

The Teaching and Learning Center in UPEI

Curriculum Review: Curriculum Mapping - Taylor Institute for Teaching and Learning

Paper-based curriculum mapping templates

References:

PharmD, C. M. P., Draugalis, J. R., Slack, M. K., Skrepnek, G. H., & Sauer, K. A. (2007). Curriculum Mapping in Program Assessment and Evaluation. Am J Pharm Educ., 71(2). https://doi.org/10.5688/aj710220

Rawle, F., Bowen, T., Murck, B., & Hong, R. J. (2017). Curriculum Mapping Across the Disciplines: Differences, Approaches, and Strategies. Collected Essay on Learning and Teaching, 10. https://doi.org/10.22329/celt.v10i0.4765

Page updated

Google Sites

Report abuse