Examples of Good Curricular Design

[spork]

I'm looking for examples of curricula that operate efficiently within an environment of finite resources. I have colleagues who insist on an undergraduate curriculum in which 1) many majors require 60-80+ credit hours but have low enrollments in upper-level courses, and 2) there is a checkbox system of gen ed requirements that funnels juniors and seniors into 100-level courses. The end result is an increasing number of overload/adjunct-taught course sections over time, which is driving the university toward insolvency.

I am not interested in examples of how so-and-so designed a great syllabus for Basketweaving 101 or why Major X requires Y credit hours (because it doesn't).

[Caracal]

I'm looking for examples of curricula that operate efficiently within an environment of finite resources. I have colleagues who insist on an undergraduate curriculum in which 1) many majors require 60-80+ credit hours but have low enrollments in upper-level courses, and 2) there is a checkbox system of gen ed requirements that funnels juniors and seniors into 100-level courses. The end result is an increasing number of overload/adjunct-taught course sections over time, which is driving the university toward insolvency.

I am not interested in examples of how so-and-so designed a great syllabus for Basketweaving 101 or why Major X requires Y credit hours (because it doesn't).

Probably worth defining the terms first. Low enrollment means different things for different disciplines and different places.

[marshwiggle]

I'm looking for examples of curricula that operate efficiently within an environment of finite resources.

Without knowing details about enrollment, student preparedness, etc., it's going to be hard to identify what programs would fit this. (Except for people saying, "In my program,.....")

[mamselle]

Four come to mind:

1) I went to a large state land-grant school (OSU) that had 2-course requirements in two fields (Sciences, broadly, was one; Humanities, broadly, was the other); there was also a 2-year English track of 3 courses each in sequence (we were on quarters, in those long-ago days); a 2-year language requirement; and a 2-year/3-quarter-per-year math track that varied depending on how you placed by SAT/ACT scores. (I placed out of first-year English and into calculus. I think the Philosophy Department's Logic courses could also satisfy at least one or two math requirements). For my sciences, I took Bio 101, and Paleontology; I took Econ 101 and 102 for my humanities requirements (that's how broadly they were defined). 

However, when I declared my major, it got even more fun: I did an independent study major in the liturgical arts that let me take U/G level art and architecture history classes, and also let me into courses usually only open to music, dance, and theater majors. I basically got freshman and sophomore music theory and conducting: dance fundamentals, choreography, and technique classes in both ballet and modern (I placed into sophomore ballet, so my last year I was in Jr/Sr. ballet); and got to do theater lighting and scene design as well as theater history, costuming, direction, and movement for actors.

Those all fit into the required independent study format, which had to be approved by a committee, and was reviewed more rigorously than some of my later grad work was (which was how I knew that program was so messed up).

2) Friends who went to places like Case Western, Carnegie-Mellon and MIT said they had a lockstep/"weed-out" Bio 100/Physics 100/Calculus 100 year-long program the first year, with some humanities options thrown in; their later years were fairly closely planned out as well. They were going for engineering degrees, seeking work as environmental engineers, geological engineers, or in computer science, so they didn't question those much: they were going to need to get certification to be employable, so they knew and understood the reasons for all the choices that had been pre-made for them and went along with it.

I do know some of those schools have revised those programs but I think the entry-level "weed-outs" are still there.

3) Friends in Germany, England and France already know what they're going to specialize in when they arrive at college because of the tracking systems in their earlier educational programs, so they don't spend much time at all with electives, although I gather they can explore a bit with one or two courses if they work it out around their other requirements. They also get done sooner, although the number of years can still vary.

4) And of course, after fulfilling basic humanities, sciences and languages, the students I've taught either have lots of studio art and design classes in the programs where I've taught art history. Those who want to be certified to teach, or have a major in the language, where I've taught French, likewise satisfy basic humanities, science, and math requirements and then do many more courses in history, advanced language studies, geography, and pedagogy.   
     
All of those probably have some variation on the "Core/Electives/Major/Minor" setups; I realize others are querying that arrangement but haven't been privy to such conversations as an adjunct.

M.

[Vkw10]

I'm looking for examples of curricula that operate efficiently within an environment of finite resources. I have colleagues who insist on an undergraduate curriculum in which 1) many majors require 60-80+ credit hours but have low enrollments in upper-level courses, and 2) there is a checkbox system of gen ed requirements that funnels juniors and seniors into 100-level courses.

Thirty years ago, my undergraduate SLAC addressed some of this with three rules, which were clearly repeated at the beginning of every registration/advising memo. First, students could only count eleven courses in their major department toward graduation requirements, even if some of those courses also fulfilled gen ed requirements. Second, freshmen and sophomores had registration priority for 100 and 200 level courses, while juniors and seniors had priority for 300 and 400 level courses. Students with registration priority could bump those without up until the day classes began. Third, sections would not be added to the schedule to meet demand from students who didn't have registration priority. I had to sign off that I'd read those rules and planned my schedule accordingly every semester.

Every year some not-graduating-after-all senior wrote an irate letter to the editor about how unfair it was that he couldn't get a batch of 100 level courses his last semester, because the freshmen had bumped him. The business majors complained about not being able to take business electives, because accounting, finance, marketing, etc, were all majors in the business department. Music offered both semester and year-long courses in performance, to meet demand from both non-majors and majors. My freshman year roommate majored in Latin because it only required eight courses, then took all electives in business, a known but unadvertised way to circumvent the eleven courses in the major department rule.

[marshwiggle]

Students with registration priority could bump those without up until the day classes began. Third, sections would not be added to the schedule to meet demand from students who didn't have registration priority. I had to sign off that I'd read those rules and planned my schedule accordingly every semester.

This sounds like it would be chaotic. The way it works here is that the date registration opens depends on the year a student is in; 1st year first, then 4th year, then 2nd, then 3rd. (If I recall correctly). There's no bumping so once you're in that's it.

[Vkw10]

Students with registration priority could bump those without up until the day classes began. Third, sections would not be added to the schedule to meet demand from students who didn't have registration priority. I had to sign off that I'd read those rules and planned my schedule accordingly every semester.

This sounds like it would be chaotic. The way it works here is that the date registration opens depends on the year a student is in; 1st year first, then 4th year, then 2nd, then 3rd. (If I recall correctly). There's no bumping so once you're in that's it.

Chaotic the first year, yes, especially since initial registration process was done without computers. Bumping wasn't a complete free-for-all though; you couldn't bump if there were spaces open in other sections and once your schedule was complete at pre-registration you needed advisor signature to make any changes. There were other quirks, but just having to do everything in person meant people weren't casually bumping others. I wouldn't implement the exact same system in an online registration environment, but I would look at how registration rules work to see if there are tweaks that could reduce seniors showing up in lower division courses.

[Ruralguy]

We start with the rule that anyone can get into any course with decreasing registration priority for seniors on down (but that only holds for the initial registration period). However, often for courses that can satisfy the core or a major, we put the restriction that the course is only for first and second year students except by permission of instructor. If we don't do that, seniors and junior non-majors would fill the course and we'd need to open up another section if we wanted more majors to take the course earlier (which is usually the case for these lower level core courses that also satisfy a major).

This instruction (limiting to only 1st or 2nd year) is usually implemented by the dept. once pressure to open multiple sections gets too high and someone is forced into an overload. Then they institute this rule, and total enrollment almost always goes down. The core folks find another course or take this one earlier.

Still other core courses have such rules as banning it from a major so that majors don't compete with non-majors (or so the home dept. says---my guess it that it would actually embarrass some of the majors!)

I am not sure if any of this answers the OP's question though. This is more dickering with registration management of the curriculum, and not so much the curriculum itself.

In some disciplines you just can't help upper levels having much lower enrollment than lower levels. for instance an intro physics or chem course taught to engineers and pre-meds. Most of them don't go on to take, say, Advanced E&M or Quantum (whether they be within upper levels of Chem or Physics).

Business might be closest to having even distribution in upper and lower levels, but that's because the major is popular, and though many take intro Bus courses to satisfy the core, its not the only such option out there, so its not like all core seekers take Bus 101. Therefore, more parity between lower and upper levels in this discipline.

[Aster]

The last few states where I've worked have (in the last 20 years) implemented Higher Education policies that restrict most bachelor's degrees to the bare minimum of 120 credits.

[polly_mer]

2) Friends who went to places like Case Western, Carnegie-Mellon and MIT said they had a lockstep/"weed-out" Bio 100/Physics 100/Calculus 100 year-long program the first year, with some humanities options thrown in; their later years were fairly closely planned out as well. They were going for engineering degrees, seeking work as environmental engineers, geological engineers, or in computer science, so they didn't question those much: they were going to need to get certification to be employable, so they knew and understood the reasons for all the choices that had been pre-made for them and went along with it.

This is what I've seen work for majors with large, specific requirements including nursing, education, and social work.  The weed-out part is unnecessary, but the idea of cohorts progressing in lock step through a standardized curriculum is workable.

At a small enough program at a small enough institution, the standardized four-year plan cannot simply have 40-50 credits marked electives.  For planning purposes, the slots have to be assigned, say, the junior accounting students will be taking a humanities course in the spring.   

The humanities division should be planning for 20 seats from accounting, 10 seats from social work, etc. and only offer the enough sections that can fill, count for the relevant gen ed requirements, and probably are not the same courses that the upper-division humanities majors need.  The level of coordination among departments goes way up with more major requirements, a large gen ed program with many choices for each requirement, and yet very few bodies each term looking for true electives. 

Offering many electives that don't fill is inefficient.

Having majors with many slots marked electives, but few to no electives those majors want to take is problematic.  Super Dinky ended up with nearly all graduates in CJ being double majors with one of two specific fields because that's where the good electives were and CJ had a ton of elective slots.  The humanities faculty were quite angry that most students took the absolute minimum gen ed requirements for humanities and then took social science electives like psychology's human sexuality (usually meeting in the auditorium with the strong argument of letting in everyone who wants it because it's nice to offer something students really want to learn).

The two-year rotation for certain major upper-divison courses is the scheduler's friend.  For example, 6 juniors and 8 sophomores make for a reasonable organic chemistry section every odd fall, much better than trying to get 10 enrollees of any level every fall to sign up. 

I remember ten years of data indicating we started with 30 first-year declarations that would result in a huge organic chemistry section the second fall, but 4-12 sophomores would should up and moving to junior year meant always being below 10 enrollees.  Occasionally, 8 + 12 would necessitate two organic lab sections, but that's an easy fix the times it happened.

[polly_mer]

The last few states where I've worked have (in the last 20 years) implemented Higher Education policies that restrict most bachelor's degrees to the bare minimum of 120 credits.

Which means engineers and nurses have zero free electives and will only have the minimum non-major gen ed requirements, usually met mostly through AP or dual credit taken in HS through the local CC.

Students do graduate faster if they stay on the path since middle school.

For those who need to explore in college or find themselves needing a different path, enforcing a 120 credit limit means extending the college years because there's much less room for individualization.

[Ruralguy]

My tuition driven college will never turn down anyone's wishes to stay a full four years and get almost 200 credits, including AP and DE credit.  Most of those folks leave at least a semester early, though some could leave in two years if they hustle and know what they are doing. Most can't quite get it together to do that.

Our engineering adjacent major requires about half the credits toward graduation, and most of the rest are in our large core. If we had an ABET version of the same thing, it would be at least 10 credits more, mostly in math and CS,
so, no electives for those students if we were ever able to  do that major.

[dr_codex]

2) Friends who went to places like Case Western, Carnegie-Mellon and MIT said they had a lockstep/"weed-out" Bio 100/Physics 100/Calculus 100 year-long program the first year, with some humanities options thrown in; their later years were fairly closely planned out as well. They were going for engineering degrees, seeking work as environmental engineers, geological engineers, or in computer science, so they didn't question those much: they were going to need to get certification to be employable, so they knew and understood the reasons for all the choices that had been pre-made for them and went along with it.

This is what I've seen work for majors with large, specific requirements including nursing, education, and social work.  The weed-out part is unnecessary, but the idea of cohorts progressing in lock step through a standardized curriculum is workable.

At a small enough program at a small enough institution, the standardized four-year plan cannot simply have 40-50 credits marked electives.  For planning purposes, the slots have to be assigned, say, the junior accounting students will be taking a humanities course in the spring.   

The humanities division should be planning for 20 seats from accounting, 10 seats from social work, etc. and only offer the enough sections that can fill, count for the relevant gen ed requirements, and probably are not the same courses that the upper-division humanities majors need.  The level of coordination among departments goes way up with more major requirements, a large gen ed program with many choices for each requirement, and yet very few bodies each term looking for true electives. 

Offering many electives that don't fill is inefficient.

Having majors with many slots marked electives, but few to no electives those majors want to take is problematic.  Super Dinky ended up with nearly all graduates in CJ being double majors with one of two specific fields because that's where the good electives were and CJ had a ton of elective slots.  The humanities faculty were quite angry that most students took the absolute minimum gen ed requirements for humanities and then took social science electives like psychology's human sexuality (usually meeting in the auditorium with the strong argument of letting in everyone who wants it because it's nice to offer something students really want to learn).

The two-year rotation for certain major upper-divison courses is the scheduler's friend.  For example, 6 juniors and 8 sophomores make for a reasonable organic chemistry section every odd fall, much better than trying to get 10 enrollees of any level every fall to sign up. 

I remember ten years of data indicating we started with 30 first-year declarations that would result in a huge organic chemistry section the second fall, but 4-12 sophomores would should up and moving to junior year meant always being below 10 enrollees.  Occasionally, 8 + 12 would necessitate two organic lab sections, but that's an easy fix the times it happened.

Boy, I wish I could invite you to the curriculum committee meeting that I'll be at in 18-24 months. My colleagues do not understand any of this, and will burn the place down in pursuit of "choice" that winds up being Henry Ford's black Model T all over again.

To Spork: I don't think there's an optimal design that can be exported, since so much depends upon the particular needs of every place. You can have the best model, but if a plurality of your students aren't able/willing/capable of following it, your model needs to be changed. I've been looking at some of the Ivies recently for ideas; I look longingly, and come to when I realize how little of it could be replicated at my place.

dc

[Caracal]

2) Friends who went to places like Case Western, Carnegie-Mellon and MIT said they had a lockstep/"weed-out" Bio 100/Physics 100/Calculus 100 year-long program the first year, with some humanities options thrown in; their later years were fairly closely planned out as well. They were going for engineering degrees, seeking work as environmental engineers, geological engineers, or in computer science, so they didn't question those much: they were going to need to get certification to be employable, so they knew and understood the reasons for all the choices that had been pre-made for them and went along with it.

This is what I've seen work for majors with large, specific requirements including nursing, education, and social work.  The weed-out part is unnecessary, but the idea of cohorts progressing in lock step through a standardized curriculum is workable.

At a small enough program at a small enough institution, the standardized four-year plan cannot simply have 40-50 credits marked electives.  For planning purposes, the slots have to be assigned, say, the junior accounting students will be taking a humanities course in the spring.   

The humanities division should be planning for 20 seats from accounting, 10 seats from social work, etc. and only offer the enough sections that can fill, count for the relevant gen ed requirements, and probably are not the same courses that the upper-division humanities majors need.  The level of coordination among departments goes way up with more major requirements, a large gen ed program with many choices for each requirement, and yet very few bodies each term looking for true electives. 

Offering many electives that don't fill is inefficient.

Having majors with many slots marked electives, but few to no electives those majors want to take is problematic.  Super Dinky ended up with nearly all graduates in CJ being double majors with one of two specific fields because that's where the good electives were and CJ had a ton of elective slots.  The humanities faculty were quite angry that most students took the absolute minimum gen ed requirements for humanities and then took social science electives like psychology's human sexuality (usually meeting in the auditorium with the strong argument of letting in everyone who wants it because it's nice to offer something students really want to learn).

The two-year rotation for certain major upper-divison courses is the scheduler's friend.  For example, 6 juniors and 8 sophomores make for a reasonable organic chemistry section every odd fall, much better than trying to get 10 enrollees of any level every fall to sign up. 

I remember ten years of data indicating we started with 30 first-year declarations that would result in a huge organic chemistry section the second fall, but 4-12 sophomores would should up and moving to junior year meant always being below 10 enrollees.  Occasionally, 8 + 12 would necessitate two organic lab sections, but that's an easy fix the times it happened.

Boy, I wish I could invite you to the curriculum committee meeting that I'll be at in 18-24 months. My colleagues do not understand any of this, and will burn the place down in pursuit of "choice" that winds up being Henry Ford's black Model T all over again.

To Spork: I don't think there's an optimal design that can be exported, since so much depends upon the particular needs of every place. You can have the best model, but if a plurality of your students aren't able/willing/capable of following it, your model needs to be changed. I've been looking at some of the Ivies recently for ideas; I look longingly, and come to when I realize how little of it could be replicated at my place.

dc

Meh, I think its back to the problem of terminology again. If don't fill means elective classes have 3 students in them, that's one thing. On the other hand, if there's a cap of 35 and a class gets 21 students, is that really a problem? For most of the classes I teach, the cap is higher than it really should be. I teach some courses that always get to the cap, but it isn't ideal for an upper level course.

[dr_codex]

2) Friends who went to places like Case Western, Carnegie-Mellon and MIT said they had a lockstep/"weed-out" Bio 100/Physics 100/Calculus 100 year-long program the first year, with some humanities options thrown in; their later years were fairly closely planned out as well. They were going for engineering degrees, seeking work as environmental engineers, geological engineers, or in computer science, so they didn't question those much: they were going to need to get certification to be employable, so they knew and understood the reasons for all the choices that had been pre-made for them and went along with it.

This is what I've seen work for majors with large, specific requirements including nursing, education, and social work.  The weed-out part is unnecessary, but the idea of cohorts progressing in lock step through a standardized curriculum is workable.

At a small enough program at a small enough institution, the standardized four-year plan cannot simply have 40-50 credits marked electives.  For planning purposes, the slots have to be assigned, say, the junior accounting students will be taking a humanities course in the spring.   

The humanities division should be planning for 20 seats from accounting, 10 seats from social work, etc. and only offer the enough sections that can fill, count for the relevant gen ed requirements, and probably are not the same courses that the upper-division humanities majors need.  The level of coordination among departments goes way up with more major requirements, a large gen ed program with many choices for each requirement, and yet very few bodies each term looking for true electives. 

Offering many electives that don't fill is inefficient.

Having majors with many slots marked electives, but few to no electives those majors want to take is problematic.  Super Dinky ended up with nearly all graduates in CJ being double majors with one of two specific fields because that's where the good electives were and CJ had a ton of elective slots.  The humanities faculty were quite angry that most students took the absolute minimum gen ed requirements for humanities and then took social science electives like psychology's human sexuality (usually meeting in the auditorium with the strong argument of letting in everyone who wants it because it's nice to offer something students really want to learn).

The two-year rotation for certain major upper-divison courses is the scheduler's friend.  For example, 6 juniors and 8 sophomores make for a reasonable organic chemistry section every odd fall, much better than trying to get 10 enrollees of any level every fall to sign up. 

I remember ten years of data indicating we started with 30 first-year declarations that would result in a huge organic chemistry section the second fall, but 4-12 sophomores would should up and moving to junior year meant always being below 10 enrollees.  Occasionally, 8 + 12 would necessitate two organic lab sections, but that's an easy fix the times it happened.

Boy, I wish I could invite you to the curriculum committee meeting that I'll be at in 18-24 months. My colleagues do not understand any of this, and will burn the place down in pursuit of "choice" that winds up being Henry Ford's black Model T all over again.

To Spork: I don't think there's an optimal design that can be exported, since so much depends upon the particular needs of every place. You can have the best model, but if a plurality of your students aren't able/willing/capable of following it, your model needs to be changed. I've been looking at some of the Ivies recently for ideas; I look longingly, and come to when I realize how little of it could be replicated at my place.

dc

Meh, I think its back to the problem of terminology again. If don't fill means elective classes have 3 students in them, that's one thing. On the other hand, if there's a cap of 35 and a class gets 21 students, is that really a problem? For most of the classes I teach, the cap is higher than it really should be. I teach some courses that always get to the cap, but it isn't ideal for an upper level course.

In my case, we're talking about the single-digit enrollment problem.

For adjuncts, we break even at about 10 undergraduates, and 8 grad students. Any course that doesn't hit those had better be mission critical, and consistently not hitting them means that the program is underwater.

The calculation for full-time faculty is harder, since salaries vary so much, but we really need to average at least 20 undergraduates per course, or we are in the red.

The math at your place may well be different, and it might vary by program. (Some programs really cannot scale up, so they need to consistently fill to be viable.) But if you don't have a good sense of the break points, it's very hard to defend courses and programs.

Polly and I disagree on many things, but not this.