Curriculum & Quality

3.0 Introduction

In this subpage, I expound my understanding of what curriculum is in higher education is, the various contextual perspectives that shape it and my involvement in curriculum development and renewal as a reflection of my command of the marketing field. I also tie in the aspect of curriculum - quality assurance and enhancement efforts and from institutional and individual perspectives.

3.2 Curriculum Development and Constructive Alignment

As outlined in subsection 2.1.1 under Teaching and Learning, the concept of constructive alignment (Biggs, 2003) makes teaching and learning an outcomes-based affair. It places the Intended Learning Outcomes, including the Critical Cross-Field Outcomes the engine of teaching and learning. In this section, my focus is on planned curriculum or curriculum as a document and the learning experiences for my students (Beauchamp, 1997). Thus, drawing from my constructivist-humanist worldviews, I regard curriculum development and design as one of the means to advance Biggs' (2003) concept of constructive alignment. That is, the curriculum must not be prescriptive but create opportunities for students to co-construct meaning/knowledge through the learning and assessment activities. For example, I allow my students to contribute to the development of the course outline (Student Guide). I create course outlines using the affordances of Google Docs which enable my students to ask questions and/or make suggestions on our planned curriculum. This allows them to draw from their context, thus assimilate marketing concepts to solve their life problems. I am also aware that my responsibility is "to set up a learning environment that supports the learning activities appropriate to achieving the desired learning outcomes" (Biggs, 2003). Thus through various learning and assessment tasks, I entrap students into a deep learning approach. For example, through Google Docs group tasks, group members are expected to collaborate with others and they know that there is a trail of evidence, hence all students do participate in these learning tasks.

3.3 Curriculum Development and Renewal as a Reflection on my Command of the Marketing/Business Field

It is noteworthy to declare that I grabbed the professional development opportunities offered by my employer (MUT) such as curriculum development, instructional design, instructional design short courses (see certificates) and ultimately doing the Postgraduate Diploma in Higher Education to build and buttress my curriculum development for both offline (traditional) and online courses. The knowledge and networks build from these opportunities opened up an opportunity for me as I have been appointed as an Independent Content Creator for the Student Hub. Unfortunately, due to intellectual property rights, I cannot share the work I have done so far for them. Over the last three years, I have taught the following courses for which I have developed or renewed the planned curriculum (learning material and planning lessons). These are Advertising and Sales Promotion I, Advanced Marketing IV and Advanced Marketing Research classes.

In 2018, I was appointed as the Acting HOD for the Department of Marketing and took over the responsibility of leading the department's curriculum development and renewal agenda. I had to instantly take charge of the development of a new programme, the Postgraduate Diploma in Marketing which had been stuck at CHE level. I used both my curriculum development knowledge to respond to CHE queries, and one of the queries called up for my domain knowledge (marketing field) where I had to remove one course (Managing Corporate Reputation) deemed by CHE as not a mainstream marketing course. I had to develop another course (Global Marketing) as a replacement. Even after the substantive HOD came back, he entrusted me to handle the SAQA queries on the same programme which has been approved and registered by SAQA ID #110929 and is due to be offered from 2022. I also together initiated the development of another new programme - the Diploma in Entrepreneurship and Small Business Operations (DIPESBO) which I pitched to the Department's Industry Advisory Board in December 2019. Unfortunately, as we all know, 2020 was disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic. We are working on starting its traction through the internal university process in 2022. Currently, I am leading the 2021 Programme Reviews which have been postponed to next year (see our Draft Self Evaluation Report).

As a sign of confidence in curriculum-related expertise across the university, in 2019, I was invited by the HOD of the Department of Biomedical Sciences (then Dr Kwitshana) to present to then the concept of constructive alignment (see my presentation). I was also requested by TLDC to present to MUT academic inductees on Evaluation of Teaching (see my presentation) and also to present to applicants for the 2019 VC Teaching Excellency Awards on 'Preparing a Philosophy Statement'. Unfortunately, I could not attend in person, hence I prepared a screencast for them.

3.4 Quality Assurance and Enhancement

The concept of quality has been the foci of various manufacturing and service industries. Of late, the concept has also become an increasingly critical matter for higher education institutions (Prisacariu, 2015), and for students, parents, employers, researchers, the academic staff, industry, taxpayers as well as governmental officials (Segers and Dochy, 1996). It is at the centre stage for public policy and debates on education, in particular with reference to teaching, learning and assessment of students. Despite such importance, there is a paucity in the literature about how the concept of quality interfaces with that of curriculum (or vice versa) in the South African higher education sector. Of late, there have been some concerns about the quality and relevance of higher education services (Brockerhoff, Huisman and Laufer, 2015), particularly by the government in pursuit of understanding graduate unemployment. Questions on academic (TLAs) standards insofar as the development of 21st- century graduates attributes has been raised by various higher education stakeholders.

Defining quality is no easy thing to do (Schindler et al., 2015). There is a school of thought that is against defining or quantifying quality while the other think of it as subjective and dependent upon individual perspectives (Bobby, 2014). Generally, quality can be defined as ‘fit for purpose’ or ‘conformance to requirements.' As a teacher, I always ensure that intended learning outcomes inform my TLAs (see Sections 2.2 and 2.3 of my outline) and I am equally aware that I need to guard against the "tail wagging the dog" scenario arising from chasing after ILOs, hence one needs to accommodate emergent learning outcomes should it be necessary. Also, since we live in a rapidly changing environment, it is crucial that our curriculum be responsive "to economic, environmental and social transformations – including technological advances, climate change and migration” (OECD 2019). In preparation for the changes, I use Google Docs and Slides which allow me and my students to co-create and co-curate our curriculum as and when there are necessary changes. Through this approach, we ensure that our TLAs (planned curriculum) is 'fit for purpose.' Unfortunately, due to the overwhelming disruption by the Covid-19 pandemic, we did not conduct the institutional student evaluation of teaching (SET) in 2020, hence I present 2019 SET reports for the courses I taught in 2019 (ADSA210, SALM130 and ADMR040) to corroborate my claims.