Curriculum Mapping of the B.Sc. (Agr.)

The following are a few excerpts from the project scope document. The Educational Technology & Design unit was tasked with moving this project forward with the aim of mapping the complete B.Sc. (Agr.) degree program, along with the seven majors, by the spring of 2016. This project is a major undertaking and one that will not be successful without the cooperation and input from faculty. We are simply guiding and managing the process. The success of the project and the viability of the resulting map will depend upon all those involved taking ownership of the process and contributing when called upon throughout the upcoming months.

Project objectives

• Assist and guide faculty to identify relationships between course and overall program goals, and learning outcomes
• Provide students with a better understanding of what is expected of them, and what they will accomplish from different courses and program components.
• Identify gaps in course offerings as well as redundancies

Critical success factors

• Interest and involvement of faculty will be important as the knowledge of what is expected of students within each course lies within the faculty member responsible for the course
• Department chairs will need to actively support the initiative to ensure their faculty are aware of the importance of participating

Project timeline

TASK	TIME FRAME	DATE COMPLETED
Gather all existing course syllabi and organize	March 3	March 3
Develop an inventory of core and major courses along with their syllabi in a centralized, easily accessible format – OneDrive	March 10	March 10
Identify all courses with existing learning outcomes and those without	March 16	March 12
Gain access to the software and become familiar with best practices for its use	March 16	March 16
Presentation to ARPC – inform and explain the process and work toward confirmation of program outcomes	April 21	April 21
Confirmation of program outcomes (draft)	April 25	April 29
Develop a communication plan to inform the campus community of the importance of participating when called upon	April 30	April 30
Identification of a “champion” within each major to help facilitate confirmation of learning outcomes to be mapped	April 30	June 26
Identification of the best resources for development of metadata	April 30
Work with those faculty that either do not have written LO or those that require some refinement (beginning with the core courses) – [time estimate – 30-60 minutes per course]	May to September
Map the B.Sc. (Agr.) core courses and learning outcomes [time estimate – 30-60 minutes per course]	May to June	June 12
Presentation to Faculty Council – confirmation of Program Objectives for the B.Sc. (Agr.) and explanation of project and faculty involvement	June	June 9
Map the majors	June to September
Request review by those responsible for each major	September to December
Refine based on feedback	January
Release of completed curriculum map	February

 

Linked Resources

Christian Blouin’s blog explaining Daedalus software and curriculum mapping

Sample completed map using Daedalus – Computer Science

Program Objectives and Associated Skills – 2015 [B.Sc. (Agr.)]