Interdisciplinary Education and CS+X Programs

Most degree programs are aligned to disciplines – you get a bachelor or a masters in some discipline like computer science, electrical engineering, economics, mathematics, etc. As discussed in the previous post, the overall curriculum of a UG program will generally ensure some amount of breadth and general foundations for development of general attributes, while the bulk of the program focuses around building competencies and knowledge in the discipline of study. So, a mathematics program will have many Maths courses, but also general courses on communication, writing, sciences, computing, etc., an electrical engineering program will have many courses in the various sub-areas of the discipline, and also general courses in Maths, computing, sciences, communication, etc.

This focus on discipline has emerged as response to the increase in the breadth and complexity of knowledge. It simply is not possible for a student to acquire a decent understanding and knowledge of multiple disciplines. However, over the years, the expertise has tended to become too narrow, and understanding and appreciation of related disciplines, which is needed for effectively working in multi-disciplinary teams, has declined. And while research and development problems in each discipline remain, the big problems that face societies, nations, and the world clearly do not align with discipline boundaries and whose addressing need expertise from multiple disciplines. To develop manpower which can help address these problems and in general have capability to work on innovations and complex problems which rarely fall within discipline boundaries, there is a need for developing manpower that has multi-disciplinary capabilities. (Though the terms multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary have different technical meanings, we use these terms interchangeably, as they often are.)

Some Approaches for Interdisciplinary Education

One approach for providing interdisciplinary education is the T model of education – a broad and thick foundation program which builds general capabilities (like critical thinking, communication, team work, etc.) but which also builds decent knowledge and vocabulary in disciplines that are also horizontal, i.e. which are applicable to multiple disciplines in practice today. These include computing capabilities, math capabilities, data science capabilities, use of common technologies like mobile, sensors, etc. To build a thick foundation of the T model, a good portion of the program then is used to develop these skills, vocabulary, and capabilities in many key disciplines. The rest of the program in T model is used to support disciplinary depth. In such a program less than half of the credits in a UG program may be disciplinary courses.

This model has been used widely, particularly in US universities, and in some institutions in India as well – where in a program for a degree in some discipline, still a majority of the credits may be used for courses outside the discipline.

While this approach helps develop capabilities and vocabulary for graduates of different disciplines to potentially be able to communicate and interact and work together in teams, it is not sufficient to develop graduates where a graduate of one discipline can meaningfully engage with issues and knowledge of another discipline.

It is clearly not possible for someone to have expertise in many areas. However, it is possible to develop a limited expertise in another field, while developing expertise in one field. This leads to the pi model – a broad based foundations with depth in two fields. This leads interdisciplinary programs and degrees – where expertise in two fields is developed.

Even with two disciplines, given that each discipline is vast and intricate in itself, there is a challenge that such a program may end up developing shallow capabilities in both disciplines. This is undesirable in the world where deep knowledge and expertise is valued and needed. To avoid this problem, the goal of an interdisciplinary program should be not to develop equal strengths in two disciplines, but follow the 80-20 rule, i.e. have strong depth (say 80% of what a graduate with only that discipline will have) in one discipline, and 20% in the other. This provides depth in one discipline, and foundations and knowledge of the second discipline which can allow a person to meanifully engage with experts of the other discipline and also develop depth later, if desired.

One standard approach to allow students to develop pi type capabilities is to allow the student option of doing a minor in another discipline. A minor requires the student to do a small number of courses in the minor discipline, which the students can often do using their open elective credits for them. A minor provides a decent understanding and capabilities in the minor discipline, as well as a basic vocabulary of the discipline. It is a common way to allow the student to develop some capabilities in another discipline, without having to spend extra time in the education program. Most universities provide for Minors.

Another standard approach is to allow students the option for a second major. Generally, requirements for both the majors will have to be satisfied. Usually, credits for a course can be counted towards requirements for both majors, if the course is permitted in both the majors. As there may be many common requirements, or courses that can be included in both majors, the additional credits required to complete the second major may not be too large, particularly if the two majors have many courses in common. So, generally second major will require the student to do only some additional credits to complete the requirements for the second major, particularly if the two majors are such that there are commonalities leading to cross-listed courses.

These two are flexible approaches which leave it entirely to the student to decide what type of interdisciplinarity he / she wishes. But each program is designed independently of other – and hence has at best follows the T model with focus on the discipline. In such an approach, while a student does courses from different disciplines, most courses remain discipline oriented, thereby requiring the student to connect the knowledge from two disciplines herself. In other words, in these approaches, there may not be any genuine interdisciplinary course, i.e. a course that will be considered as a valid disciplinary course in multiple disciplines.

Truly Interdisciplinary Programs – CS+X Programs

Another way to approach interdisciplinary education can be to provide actual interdisciplinary programs, which are designed as such. In this, the programs are designed and curated properly and a student may choose to enroll in them – so philosophically they are quite different in approach than the concept of double major or minor. Interdisciplinary programs have been increasing in the recent past.

The big challenge in having multi-disciplinary programs is, of course, that the size and duration of such a program may become too large if a simplistic view is taken that such a program should be a combination of two majors. If the design of this interdisciplinary program has to fit in the overall credit requirements of programs (as discussed above), then the key challenge is how to balance the need to complete the program in the defined time (or credits), and provide multi-disciplinary capability, without diluting the capabilities of the disciplines. There are many different types of interdisciplinary programs possible depending on how the curriculum is structured and taught. Here we discuss the approach taken at IIIT-Delhi.

Clearly for such programs, the disciplines being combined have to be chosen carefully. When considering which two disciplines to combine for such a program (more than two is clearly not feasible), the disciplines should be such that they develop complimentary skill sets which collectively will be more valuable and sought after than only skills of one discipline for a range of jobs and careers. Further, the disciplines should also be such that each is not so “vast” that combining them into one program is simply not feasible. At least one discipline should be such that even with a small set of courses, reasonable skills and knowledge can be developed and which can help in improving the capabilities of other discipline also. Few disciplines will satisfy this – computing is one of them.

Computer Science (CS) is a young discipline. However, with easy and cheap availability computing power, its use has become ubiquitous – there is hardly any discipline or any sphere of life which is not directly affected by IT. That is why computing is sometimes considered as the “new physics” – it is useful in all disciplines and its basic knowledge is essential. Today, in every discipline, knowledge of computing is an asset, and there is a demand for professionals in various disciplines who also have decent knowledge of computing.

CS is in some ways a simpler discipline. It is fundamentally about algorithms, software, and systems. Hence, education programs in CS focus on these – for software, there are courses like programming, data structures, software engineering, etc; for algorithms there are courses on data structures, algorithm design, theory of these, etc; and for systems, there are courses like architecture, operating systems, networks, etc. Generally, a subset of these topics forms the core (or compulsory) part of an undergraduate program, allowing for a relatively small CS core. And these core courses, along with a few specialized courses, can provide a strong knowledge and skills to students to apply computational techniques.

This ability to have a small core to teach decent amount of computing to a student which he/she can apply, renders CS for interdisciplinary programs which combine CS basics with knowledge of other disciplines. And given the need for knowledge of computing in many disciplines, having an interdisciplinary program with computing makes a lot of sense, particularly since further progress in many disciplines is highly dependent on application of computing. A good example is biology – earlier it was considered an experimental discipline. But now, without the use of computing, many aspects can simply not be done (e.g. anything to do with genomics requires huge amounts of computing.)

In fact, many senior computing academics have argued that while computing as a discipline must evolve, computing must get more tightly integrated with some disciplines to have more impact of computing for society and other sciences. This is another reason for having interdisciplinary programs with CS. So, there are interdisciplinary programs being launched with CS and other disciplines – these are sometimes called “CS+X Programs”. IIIT-Delhi has launched a series of such programs. UIUC and Stanford have their own such programs. The discussion here is based on the thinking and experience of IIIT-Delhi.

One such program is CS and Applied Maths. The basic motivation behind this program is that for solving problems for complex systems as well as for big data, both mathematics and computing tools and techniques need to be applied. Hence, an engineer with training in both will be better prepared to handle such problems. Another program is CS and Design, which aims to develop graduates that are not only well versed with computing approaches, tools, and technologies, but are also experienced with design approaches and new media technologies and uses and prepare students to work in the IT industry as well as digital media industry like gaming, animation, virtual/augmented reality, etc. CS and Social Sciences is another program which aims to develop IT engineers with strong understanding of relevant social science disciplines as well as their methodologies. There is also the program in CS and Biosciences – need for this is easier to establish, as there are many masters and PhD programs already in the field of computational biology and the need for knowledge of the two disciplines for solving problems in biosciences is well established.

There are some guiding principles while designing such programs. First, the set of core courses for the disciplines chosen for the interdisciplinary program should be minimal, i.e. have the core as small as possible. Interestingly, it is possible to do so – as what constitutes a core is subjective and when the program is not for one discipline but tied to another, the core can be reduced considerably. Second, for electives for this program – courses from both the disciplines should be permitted, and a balance should be achieved. Third, some of the courses taught in the program should be interdisciplinary in nature.

Typically, in IIIT-Delhi, in any such an interdisciplinary program, a student will do the basic foundation courses in first year, most of which are common for all programs. These include courses on communication, critical thinking, programming, mathematics, systems, etc. Then in the next few semesters, the student will do a small set of (about 6) core or compulsory courses in each of the two disciplines, which will provide the grounding in the two disciplines. In the last few semesters, the student will choose a few electives (4 to 6) from each of the disciplines. Broadly, such an interdisciplinary program can satisfy the requirements of a BTech in CS, as well as requirements of a 3-year BA/BSc program in the second discipline.

Such programs allow a student to pursue an exciting career in the intersection of the two disciplines, but also prepares the student to pursue higher studies and career in one of the two disciplines, as decent knowledge of both disciplines is provided in these programs. Many thinkers believe that interdisciplinary approaches for problem solving is where the future lies, as siloed approaches of individual disciplines are limiting and often unable to take a broader view of the problem and its context. Such interdisciplinary programs should help develop manpower which has the capabilities of at least two disciplines for problem solving. The NEP also encourages interdisciplinary programs, and explicitly allows programs to have a common core for general attributes, and have one or two areas of specialisation – thereby allowing disciplinary programs as well as interdisciplinary programs.

Designing the Curriculum for a Degree Program

After the long covid break, I hope to start sharing some ideas in this blog. Starting with this article, will focus on education for a few articles – how to provide high quality education, i.e. delivering high quality learning to students.

Higher education was the original mission of universities, and remains as the primary mission today and manpower development through education is still the most significant and impactful contribution to society of universities, including research universities. The importance of higher education is also increasing – as the world becomes more complex and more dynamic & rapidly changing, businesses and societies are expecting universities to produce manpower that is adept at working with modern and fast changing technologies in an increasingly complicated world.

While access to higher education has increased in India over the years, particularly with the large presence of private players running affiliated colleges, the quality of education has declined. There are various reports regarding the poor quality of education being imparted in most of the HEIs leading to only a fraction of the graduates being employable. There are many reasons for the decline in quality, including narrow focus, lack of culture of research, old and outdated curriculum and teaching methods, uninspiring teachers, lack of quality governance and leadership, poor quality of faculty, etc..

 In this post we discuss we will discuss program design, i.e. designing of a high quality curriculum for a UG program like a BTech program (the focus of the note is on designing UG program – though the principles apply to Masters also.)

I will later post an article on how a committee that I am chairing applied these concepts for design of AICTE model curriculum for CSE. I will also share some observations on curriculum design exercise of AICTE and the curriculum design exercise by the ACM – I happen to be in the steering committee of that as well.

Design of an education program should start from the objectives of the program – what are we designing the program for. We start the discussion with this.

Program Objectives

Design of the curriculum of a program starts with what types of careers or roles it is trying to prepare its students for through the program. We will refer to these as objectives of the program. Often these objectives may be common for a class of similar programs – e.g. BTech programs may have similar objectives, while BA programs (in social Science & humanities) may have different objectives. These objectives may be stated in terms of what careers a graduate may be pursuing immediately or a few years after graduation, and hence are influenced by the education the student receives. Long term career possibilities, while influenced by education, are perhaps much more affected by opportunities that a person sees during the early years of his/her career after graduating. The objectives of programs are influenced by the mission and vision of the HEI.

As an example, let us consider the BTech programs in IIIT-Delhi. The Institute has stated that its programs are preparing the students for careers in:

• Engineering
• Research
• Entrepreneurship

Stating the education objectives as these careers has some clear implications on the program design. A traditional BTech program is often designed for engineering careers, and hence may focus mostly on developing engineering skills and foundations. With research and entrepreneurship careers also as the education objectives necessarily requires that the programs should have opportunities for students to develop capabilities for these careers also. That is, there needs to be courses, projects, industry interaction opportunities, etc. to support these objectives. Also, stating these as education objectives does not mean that students cannot choose to go later in other careers like finance or management (eg. by doing an MBA) – it only states that the education programs will be designed to support these stated objectives.
With the overall objectives, specific learning outcomes for each of the BTech programs in different disciplines have to be defined – the outcomes should support these objectives. The learning outcomes of a program essentially define the attributes the graduates of the specific BTech program possess at the time of completion of the program, i.e. statements about the student’s capabilities at the time of graduation. They are commonly called program outcomes or graduate attributes. Let us now discuss these –  clearly these attributes for a particular program should align with the objectives.

Graduate Attributes (Program Outcomes)

Clearly, program outcomes will depend on the nature of the program – so a BS in psychology will have different outcomes than a BTech in computer science which will be different from outcomes for a BTech in Electrical Engineering. However, universities aim to develop some common attributes or capabilities in all their programs, so graduates across different disciplines are expected to have some attributes that are common. These are sometimes called generic graduate attributes. These are skills and capabilities of graduates which are beyond disciplinary knowledge and often aim to develop the individual for being a responsible member of the society and develop skills that are transferable to different contexts.

With general graduate attributes, program outcomes can be divided in two groups: a general set of outcomes that apply to a family of programs, and a specific set of outcomes, one for each program. For many professional fields, professional bodies also specify graduate attributes, which they expect the degree programs to support. Often, having these attributes may be necessary for accreditation of the programs. As can be expected, these graduates’ attributes should be such that they will help in achieving the education objectives established by the university.

One common method of specifying the general attributes is to enumerate them as assertions about the graduates of the programs. For example, in IIIT-Delhi some of the general attributes for BTech programs are:

• Ability to function effectively in teams to accomplish a common goal.
• An understanding of professional and ethical responsibility.
• Ability to communicate effectively with a wide range of audience.
• Ability to self-learn and engage in life-long learning.
• Ability to undertake small research tasks and projects.
• Ability to take an idea and develop into a business plan for an entrepreneurial venture.
• An understanding of impact of solutions on economic, societal, and environment context.

The general attributes play an important role in the holistic development of the student. Due to its wider and foundational importance, most good universities give careful attention to these outcomes. In India, often the education is too narrow with early specialisation thereby graduating students sometimes dont have strong general attributes needed for a good citizen. The new National Education Policy (NEP) of the government of India has articulated the importance for education programs to move from narrow discipline-based education only to one which is based on broader, more liberal education. The NEP envisages broad-based and multidisciplinary foundations to be provided beyond the disciplinary knowledge to develop well rounded students who have good values and cultural literacy, and general capabilities like critical thinking, problem solving, data analysis, communication, teamwork, social responsibility, etc.

While the general attributes are largely aligned to the broad goals of education, for a program in a discipline a fundamental goal is to develop competencies related to the discipline, which can lead to gaining productive employment.  Typically, these discipline specific attributes are evolved by experts in the discipline with inputs from the end employers/users of the graduates. Most universities that have explicitly stated the program outcomes will state these on their websites. For example, some of the attributes the Computer Science program at IIIT-Delhi aims to develop are (in addition to the general attributes mentioned above):

• Understanding of theoretical foundations and limits of computing.
• Understanding of computing at different levels of abstraction including circuits and computer architecture, operating systems, algorithms, and applications.
• Ability to adapt established models, techniques, algorithms, data structures, etc. for efficiently solving new problems.
• Ability to design, implement, and evaluate computer-based system or application to meet the desired needs using modern tools and methodologies.
• Understanding and ability to use advanced techniques and tools in different areas of computing.

As can be seen, these outcomes are stated mostly in terms of the discipline, and so are different for different disciplines.

Program Design

Once the program outcomes are specified, the overall program has to be designed for a degree program. This is a challenging exercise, as for many practical and educational reasons, each program is not designed in a stand-alone manner. Most programs are designed within some overall constraints imposed by the University, which are influenced by the mission, vision, and values of the university, as well as constraints of the college or the school to which the program belongs, which will generally require some common features in all the programs. Within the constraints, program design often comes down to decisions regarding:

• General requirements. These are courses that all students in all programs need to take. These are largely driven by the general graduate attributes. They may be grouped in different sub-categories, and may even be divided among university-wide and school-wide general requirements. But the essence of these requirements is that they provide a common foundation to all students, based on which they can essentially do any program (and so program switching is easier), and which help develop some of the general attributes.
• Program Specific requirements. These are what the specific programs, which are mostly discipline based, require. Some of the courses in these are mandatory for students enrolled in the program, whose goal is to deliver the core or foundational knowledge about the discipline, which form the basis for advanced topics in the discipline. These are often called program compulsory or core courses. Other courses are program electives, i.e., the student chooses courses on advanced topics in the discipline from the set of courses being offered (subject to the satisfaction of the pre-requisites for the course). These courses may also be grouped in different buckets with some requirements that students must take some number of courses from some number of buckets. Collectively, the program requirements of core course credits and elective credits, aim to deliver the program specific learning outcomes.
• Open Credits. These credits allow the student an opportunity to take any (with some restrictions sometimes on some of the credits) of the courses in the university. This allows for students to gain a deeper understanding of topics of interest, which may not be from within the discipline of her program. It also encourages a broader development of student providing her with a breadth which disciplines, by definition, do not provide. And in limited ways, it allows a student to customize parts of her program as she wishes. These credits may also be used for having a minor in another discipline or doing another major. Due to these credits and discipline electives, most students will graduate with a transcript different from others depending on the set of courses they have done.

There are generally some constraints on the program design. First are the total credits for a program and credits a student can enroll for in a semester. Let us take a typical undergraduate program which can be completed by a full-time student in 4 years or 8 semesters. During a semester, a full-time student can be expected to spend a total of about 40 to 50 hours per week. This total effort puts a limit on the total number of credits a student can do in a semester, which in turn, puts a limit on the total number of credits in a program.
While often no clear definition of credit is provided by universities, broadly credits are understood to have a relationship with the total effort the student is expected to spend. In other words, one credit should translate to some overall effort, including the time spent in lectures as well as tutorials and labs.  This effort may be thought of as average in a week, or total in a semester, but should include all effort a student is required to put, including effort outside the class, which in many ways is more important for learning than the time spent in the lectures. Many universities have a standard credit for regular courses, with an understanding of total hours and lectures per week that are expected in a course. For example, most regular semester courses in many US universities are of 3 credits. In IIIT-Delhi, a regular course is 4 credits. Such courses are expected to have three lecture hours every week and an average total workload of 8 to 10 hours per week. This means that a full-time student can effectively take 4 to 6 such courses.

The above discussion indicates what is the maximum credit or load a student can take in a semester. Programs often assume that most students, if they study full-time, have the learning capability to finish an undergraduate program in 8 semesters. But, it is well known, that academic preparedness and learning abilities of students who enroll in a university in a program may be quite different. And while many students can handle this load, there are others who may find this level of full-time load hard to handle and hard to learn at the required pace for it. The approach in many countries, particularly in the west, for addressing this is to allow the student to take more than 4 years to graduate and take a load he may be comfortable with.

This approach, however, is unacceptable in countries like India where there is a strong desire to finish the academic program in the stipulated period. In such situations, by having fixed number of credits for graduation is tantamount to having a one-size-fits all approach. Such a model can indirectly encourage the university to pitch its courses at a lower level so all students can complete, or have to face the problem of large number of backlogs, which pose another set of problems. Hence, some flexibility in credits can be desirable, without violating the integrity or value of the degree.

One approach, that is used by IIIT-Delhi, is to pitch the main program for the regular student admitted to the Institute, and provide a “honors” option to those who are more motivated and can have higher levels of learning in their time in the program. With this approach, the credit requirement is such that for a couple of semesters a student can work with a slightly reduced load, which also allows a student to make up some courses he may not cleared earlier, and still graduate in the desired 4 years. At the same time, the “honors” student is required to do a few more courses and a thesis, and must have the graduating CGPA (cumulative grade point average) above a respectable threshold. Given the CGPA requirement, the option is made available to only those who have shown through their performance in first few years that they can cope with the course load, and are ready to take more learning challenges.

Within these overall parameters, the program for a degree in a university has to be designed. There are no rules for how many credits should be in each of the course categories, or which courses should be taught when. This is generally achieved through a process of discussion and iteration – often program design (or program refinement) may take over a year with different committees spending a considerable amount of time discussing and thinking and examining programs of other universities. Often workshops may be held in which external experts from other universities as well as relevant industry may also be invited to give inputs. Finally, the main academic body of the university discusses and approves the program.

A broad principle that is followed in many universities for their programs now is to keep the compulsory portion of the program as small as possible and allow a student more choices. This generally implies fewer credits for general requirements and fewer credits for core courses of the discipline, with more credits left for discipline electives, and open electives. It should also be pointed out that with more room for credits in the elective and open categories, possibility of providing for minors and second majors increase as often these credits are utilized to complete the requirements of minor or the second major.

How do we know that the program design is sound? The main test of the soundness of a program design is that it should, at a minimum, achieve the program outcomes and the graduates should have the established graduate attributes in them at completion of the program. As the program outcomes are qualitative statements on what the student has learned in the program and what capabilities she has developed, the assessment that the program delivers them also has to be done qualitatively. Generally, given the learning outcomes of each of the courses (discussed below), and the network of courses a student has to do in the program, it can be demonstrated that by achieving the learning outcomes of each of the courses the student takes, it will lead to the student achieving the program outcomes. Indeed, the course design is often influenced by the program outcomes in that the learning outcomes of a course are decided so as to contribute towards the program outcomes. How the network of courses satisfies the program outcomes may be shown in terms of tables showing which course contributes to which of the learning outcomes, and how collectively the set of courses deliver a program outcome.

Course Design and Learning Outcomes

Course design is a widely discussed topic in teaching and learning literature, as finally education for a program boils down to teaching in courses, as a course is the basic unit for learning in an academic program. Teaching of courses is also what teachers do – hence for improving education, the focus is often on teaching of courses. Due to the importance of courses in teaching, most books on effective teaching place strong emphasis on course design, as without a good course design, high quality teaching and learning is not likely in the course.

Often a course is designed by enumerating a list of topics that should be covered in the course – generally called the course syllabus. This is a very teaching focused approach, as the list of courses are often selected by the instructors based on their judgement regarding the importance of the topics. It is widely agreed that this approach, which is still quite prevalent, is not a sound approach for design of courses. To help ensure good learning in a course, the course design should be learning driven by first articulating the learning outcomes of the course, and then designing the syllabus and its teaching. Besides the learning objectives and teaching plan to achieve them, another basic aspect of course design is assessment planning without which the level of learning cannot be ascertained. An integrated course design then has three main elements, as shown below (adaptation from book by Fink):

Integrated Course Design

These three elements are strongly dependent on each other and reinforce each other. Weakness in one will compromise the eventual goal of the course – to ensure that the learning outcomes are satisfied by most of the students. For example, if the course delivery plan is not aligned to the learning outcomes (for example, does not cover all the necessary topics), then the student cannot achieve the stated learning outcomes. If the assessment plan is such that it focuses on assessing what can be assessed easily rather than what is stated as learning outcomes, then the students will align their learning towards the assessment rather than the learning outcomes, and the grades given to the student will not accurately represent the learning with respect to the learning outcomes. This again results in compromising the goal of teaching and learning in a course.

The design of a course, therefore starts from stating its learning outcomes. Learning outcomes are statements about the knowledge and capabilities of a student who has successfully completed the course, i.e. statements that assert what the student at the end of the course should know and what she will be able to do. The learning outcomes are critical in design of courses, as from these, it can be determined if the graduate attributes are being delivered by the program or not. The learning outcomes of the set of courses that a student does in a program should together ensure that outcomes of the program are satisfied. Hence, learning outcomes are not just what the instructor of a course decides for the course – they have to be aligned to the program outcomes, particularly for the compulsory or core courses.

Once the learning outcomes of a course are decided, then the syllabus of the course can be designed, along with the teaching and learning activities in the course. Generally, the most visible aspect of this plan is the schedule to topics covered in lectures. While this schedule of topics is sufficient to ensure that appropriate topics are covered for the learning outcomes, it is an incomplete plan for ensuring achievement of learning outcomes. For that, outside the lecture activities must also be included in the plan. While lectures can form the nucleus of knowledge for learning in a course, most of the learning by students happens in the activities they have to perform outside the lecture. Hence, these must be included in the instruction plan for a course.

Finally, there must be good assessment plan in a course. Assessment is an important and difficult aspect of teaching, and one that is often not enjoyed by teachers, as it is also generally cumbersome and time consuming. However, it is an essential aspect of teaching and learning. Without a proper assessment plan, the effectiveness of teaching cannot really be judged, and learning levels achieved will depend only on the student’s motivation and drive.  Note that assessment does not mean only exams or tests – assignments, report writing, etc. can all be, and generally are, components of assessment. In fact, an assessment based only on formal tests/exams will be limiting in scope – it may not be able to test some of the learning objectives (e.g. ability to set up an experiment), and it also encourages students to spend most of their effort for learning around the exams. Hence, assessment plans often use multiple instruments which are spread throughout the duration of the course. The final goal of assessment is to determine the level of learning achieved by the student – which is often captured in terms of the grade the student receives.

Course design is a much-discussed topic – many books focus on this. Assessments also is a much-discussed topic with many books focusing only on assessment. Readers who want a deeper understanding should refer to these resources.

Summing Up

Design of the curriculum of a program is a serious and long exercise. It should normally start with discussion and agreement of the program objectives – for what type of careers the program aims to prepare the students.

The expected outcomes from a program are called graduate attributes – these are statements on knowledge and skills of students at the time of graduation from the program. These attributes should align with the objectives of the program. Graduate attributes are often grouped into two categories – general graduate attributed and discipline specific graduate attributes.

With the graduate attributes established, the network of courses to be taught to the student in the program has to be decided, such that together they develop the graduate attributes. Such a design generally will have some compulsory courses, some disciplinary electives, and some open electives.

Finally, the courses in the program have to be designed. The learning outcomes of the courses have to be such that each course contributes towards the learning outcomes of the whole program, and together the courses provide the learning outcomes of the program.

As can be seen that this is a complex and lengthy exercise. Often such an exercise will take a year or more with many committees involved in designing different parts of the curriculum.