How do institutional practices for course design and review address areas of need in higher education

ABSTRACT

Universities are under stress and pressures to critically evaluate and reform curriculum and the way learning and teaching are implemented. Tensions appear to exist among the external pressures, the organisational structure of universities and their daily operations that are often conflicted and appear to work against coherence and depth in courses. In this study, the course design and approval process of Regional University was examined in light of four areas of need identified in the higher education literature to determine the extent to which the organisational structures (policies, regulations and guidance to course developers) reflect these. It is argued that knowledge about such a process is of considerable value for quality institutional practice in the sector.

KEYWORDS:

• Collaboration
• course design
• higher education
• institutional practice
• theory

Acknowledgments

The corresponding author acknowledges the support received from the Charles Sturt University Writing-Up Award to enable work on this publication to be undertaken.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.