Preamble: My Senior Teaching Qualification (STQ) project at the University of Groningen is concerned with the topic of curriculum (re)design, and in particular with how to include students in this process in a productive and efficient manner. The document discussed below consistutes version 1.0 of one of the deliverables of this project. It will be updated in the following months as the best practices discussed below are shared with other programmes in the Faculty of Science and Engineering of the University.

Best practices for including students in curriculum (re)design

This document organizes the knowledge accumulated during the curriculum redesign process of the Computing Science (CS) programmes at the Faculty of Science and Engineering of the University of Groningen into efficient and reusable practices for other programmes within and outside of the Faculty. These practices can also be applied when working on the (re)design of learning lines within existing curricula and not necessarily of whole programmes or tracks. In this case all identified practices have to be scaled down as necessary in scope and effort.

Applying these practices does not necessarily lead to an optimally designed curriculum in terms of e.g. market satisfaction or coverage of the related disciplines. Instead, these practices aim to optimize the student involvement in the curriculum creation process, under the assumption that doing so leads to improving the overall quality of the programme for both students and teachers. The literature in the fields of Students as Partners (SaP) and Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) supports this assumption by connecting it with principles of good educational practices. Related works, however, focus on student engagement during individual course (re)design and there are very few examples of projects providing guidance on how to engage them at the level of programmes curricula.

The catalog of best practices listed in this document aims to fill this gap. This catalog is by no means complete and it is not meant to be prescriptive. It simply reflects on the lessons learned during the CS redesign process, and provides suggested solutions for other programmes to follow. It is also meant to be updated with feedback from the experiences of other programmes going through similar processes as we move forward.

Background: the CS curriculum redesign

The redesign process was initiated following the accreditation visitation of the programmes in 2019, in part as a reaction to the recommendations provided by the visitation panel, and in parts due to the need to update the programmes. Roughly speaking, it included the following steps:

• the categorization of courses in the programmes across two thematic areas based on their focus: Data, focusing on the processing of data i.e. algorithms in the abstract sense, and Systems, focusing on the building of systems using these algorithms; this allowed to coherently characterize the learning lines in the programmes
• the reorganization of courses throughout the Bachelor’s, including the introduction of new foundational courses such as Introduction to Machine Learning in Year 2, and the promotion of existing courses such Information Security to mandatory ones for the Bachelor’s; courses such as Problem Analysis and System Design were removed from the curriculum as their learning outcomes were sufficiently addressed in other courses and in order to create space for these new courses,
• the addition of more elective courses in the Minor space of the Bachelor’s (Year 3) acting as introduction to more advanced topics such as image processing in the Master’s,
• the renaming of two tracks in the Master’s to better reflect their content; this required a mandatory period of 2 years until the new track names are appropriately reflected in the programme,
• the reduction of mandatory courses in the Master’s to a minimum, with the concept of course packages as set of recommended elective courses on specific topics such as Software Engineering being added to the curriculum, and finally
• the addition of new courses in the Master’s reflecting the wider range of available expertise in the department following the changes in staffing in the last 5 years.

This process started at the end of 2019 and was implemented in staggered steps of deployment starting with the first two years of the Bachelor’s being rolled out for the 2022/23 academic year. It was considered finalized in the academic year 2025/26 with the complete rollout of the new curricula for both programmes.

Catalog of Best Practices

For each best practice (bp) in the catalog we provide:

• a summarizing title, encapsulating the intention behind each bp,
• a list of activities to be undertaken,
• an example implementation of these activities from the CS redesign,
• a list of risks that could arise by implementing these activities, and
• some mitigation measures with respect to these risks.

BP1: students as participants on equal terms in relevant committees

Activities

• Embedding of student representatives in all committees relevant for the redesign as the means to facilitate transfer of information between the committees, and to shorten the loop for problems identification and solution, while ensuring that both the Bachelor’s and Master’s programmes are represented in this embedding.
• Adding students with significant TA experience to the list of involved students in the redesign if the students already in the committees do not have this experience is an option, and it should be implemented when necessary.
• Developing a culture of treating student members as peers in these committees, emphasized by the equal sharing of responsibilities with staff members, and voting rights (if applicable).

Example

The CS has a standing Curriculum Committee (CC) advising the Programme Director(s) on matters related to the curriculum that fall outside of the purview of the Programme Committee (PC). The CC of CS consists of staff members, with two student members of the PC (one for Bachelor’s and one for Master’s) being seconded to the CC to facilitate communication between the two committees. This has helped significantly with the early spotting of structural problems with the curricula.

Risks

• Difficulty in separating issues due to course implementation (e.g. low quality of instruction) from structural issues with the curriculum that need addressing through redesign.
• An enlarged CC is more difficult to schedule for and manage as a chair and can produce additional bureaucratic load through the need to define agendas, minutes, etc. that the students are not familiar with.

Risks mitigation

Prepare clear guidelines to the student representatives to focus on structural issues and schedule regular meetings in advance using a decisions and actions list instead of the typical minutes and agendas.

BP2: students as active co-creators of the curriculum

Activities

• Having at least one student representative member in any focus group or subcommittee leading the curriculum redesign. Selecting students with sufficient maturity and clear sense of belonging to the programmes as ideal candidates for this role should be prioritized, provided that this is balanced out by the inclusion of more marginalized students in any other activities organized for the redesign.
• Positioning the representative student members as visible and prominent in the discussion of any (re)design activities to culminate the message of equal partnership.
• Supplementing the contributions of these student members through (informal or formal) polling of TAs involved in multiple courses for additional insights where necessary — TAs provide a valuable view of things from the ground level in a programme, and having received training on providing feedback they are also prone to be constructive and careful in their input.

Both the participation to committees and the TAs polling is to complement the involvement of students in any other data collection activities as discussed in the next practice.

Example

One of the student members of the CC was incorporated into the focus group that was tasked to lead the redesign process. The student was selected not only due to their service in the committees, but also because they were TAing for a number of critical and challenging courses in the curriculum and they could provide perspective on the pain points in various courses. They were also popular with other students, and had a clear opinion about what the ambitions of the programmes should be. During this process, the student representative both proposed specific interventions, e.g. the removal of a course as non-essential, and argued for or against design choices presented by the other members of the group. At many points, their direct experience in TAing for a course, or their reported feedback from TAs and students taking another course proved to be crucial for the resulting design.

Risks

Selected students’ lived experiences and personal opinions about the programme creates bias in the process and potentially skews decisions to specific directions e.g. designing a curriculum for the top 5% students rather than the majority of students.

Risks mitigation:

Avoid using input only from one student, no matter how well embedded they are in the programmes. Involve as many students as possible from example the TA pool but also from the student associations and the wider student body in the process.

BP3: students’ experiences as sources of data for decision making in the redesign

Activities

• Having informal talks with students and TAs concerning their experiences with the curriculum and its implementation as an essential first step to collect signals.
• Following up these signals through organizing different activities for the collection of triangulated evidence to define the (re)design process.

Special attention needs to be paid to:

1. who invites the students to participate in these activities, with a recommendation for the academic advisors to play this role since they are organically closer to students on a daily basis,
2. ensuring diversity of opinions and representation of different student groups and interests by combining students volunteering for these activities with ones explicitly invited to participate due to e.g. past issues with courses, and,
3. facilitating students to express their opinions freely and openly without fear of repercussions. For survey-based data collection a guarantee of anonymity is easy to be established; for focus groups or interviews, however, both anonymity and confidentiality has to be discussed and established even before the activity begins.
4. beyond involving organizational members for whom confidentiality is a standard way of operating (academic advisors), collecting of data at individual participant level should be avoided at all costs.

Example

In preparation for the redesign, combining course evaluations with informal polling of students and TAs concerning their perception of the CS programmes resulted in the identification of a number of possible structural issues with the existing curricula. Triangulation of these findings was established by means of a focus group activity with students from the Bachelor’s programme, combined with a questionnaire-based survey from the wider study body of the CS Master’s programme. The academic advisors were pivotal in identifying and inviting students to the focus group, and in disseminating the questionnaire to students.

Risks

Clear potential for sampling bias in e.g. the selection of students for the focus group and/or due to low level of student participation in the activities e.g. in the survey.

Risks mitigation

• Work together with the academic advisors to actively engage students in these activities, intentionally aiming to include students that have already expressed their concerns about the programme to the advisors balanced against personal invitations to student selected through purposeful sampling to e.g. represent specific student profiles.
• Engage course coordinators from popular courses to activate more participants to data collection activities.

BP4: students as sounding board for the redesign

Activities

• Using the evidence collection activities in order to collect early feedback on the students’ perception of the redesigned curriculum and potential issues with it; in this respect these activities can serve a dual purpose, with their first part focusing on collecting data about the existing curriculum and the second about the prospective one. This can be supplemented with informal polling of students through the academic advisors.
• Making the students aware of what is non-negotiable and immutable with respect to e.g. the constraints on the curriculum and its operation, while creating the space for receiving feedback on all other aspects. Ensuring that any received feedback is visibly taken into consideration, providing explicit links to this feedback in the curriculum design.

Example

Since the concept of course packages for the Master’s had already been put forward for consideration at Curriculum Committee level, a potential set of course packages was discussed with the focus group as topics delineating the new Master’s curriculum. The feedback in this case was overall positive, with clear preferences towards specific packages, which allowed us to fine tune the offered course packages further. The resulting packages were then incorporated into the questionnaire used for the survey activity. The results of this questionnaire reinforced the findings from the focus group.

Risks

(as above)

Risks mitigation

(as above)

BP5: engagement of teaching staff through transparency and inclusivity

Activities:

• Offering regular updates on the student involvement and the overall (re)design process in the relevant committee’s and/or staff meetings. Openly discussing findings from evidence collection activities during a dedicated event such as an educational retreat, and explaining the rationale of any design decisions with an open ear for feedback.
• Ensuring a wide representation of interests in the committee responsible for the redesign, ideally covering all research groups involved in education, creating the notion of co-ownership of the programme by all involved members, and empowering them to act as ambassadors for and in the respective groups.

Example

A summary of both the focus group and the questionnaire was presented to the teaching staff together with the proposed redesign of the Master’s that took into consideration the outcomes of these activities during an educational-oriented retreat organized by the programmes. The redesigned curriculum was also discussed at different opportunities with the external advisory panel for the programmes which consists of representatives from the local and national industry, and was also assessed positively.

Risks

Demotivation of staff when presented findings do not match their perception of the programme, leading to refusal to accept presented findings for various reasons, or creating the feeling of smaller stake in the process (“why didn’t you ask me?”).

Risks mitigation

Defining consultation period for the proposed redesign for the staff and creation of specific opportunities to discuss their concerns in a structured and constructive manner.