How Curriculum Evolves: A Tale of Two Civil Engineering Courses

In an earlier post, I argued that there are no real incentives for professors or higher ed instructors to improve their curriculum. This doesn’t mean that no professors improve their curriculum, just that they aren’t rewarded or recognized for that. This is not a criticism of professors, but of our educational institutions and platforms. To illustrate these ideas, consider two characters: Margaret and Caroline:

Let’s first consider Margaret. Margaret is a graduate student who is given the enviable privilege of teaching Civil Engineering 202. Margaret is excited to teach the class, and is surprised with the freedom she is given to design her course.

Margaret enjoyed the course she took when she was an undergrad, so she locates that syllabus, and makes a few slight changes. Margaret’s primary interest is to optimize the efficiency in delivering the course. She certainly won’t do a thoroughgoing investigation of the best textbooks — the text she has used works, and she’s familiar with it. Why introduce a new learning curve? That same thinking shadows all of her decisions for the next semester.

Margaret’s story is typical, and as an anecdote, it is a little troubling, but this is the status quo we have come to accept. But when we extrapolate from this, the picture gets frustratingly wasteful. This extrapolation suggests this: Thousands of teachers are teaching courses not based on the best materials or best structure, but based on what they have the least resistance teaching. In such an environment, we don’t really have competition. We have lots of silos operating, with little incentive to improve. Consequently, lots of lessons and courses are being handed down for no good reason.

Courses can evolve, the competition happens at Academic Conferences, and Professional Development workshops or seminars.

But notice, in both of these, we must assume the need for a significant, high energy cost intervention. And improving the curriculum is dependent on attending the conference, comprehending the challenge to the status quo, and applying the challenge to change the course. This is a way to improve a course and a field’s curriculum over time, but my, is it stilted, outdated, inefficient, and oblivious to the benefits of technology!

Now consider Caroline. Caroline is a graduate student who is given the enviable privilege of teaching Civil Engineering 202. Caroline is excited to teach the class, and is surprised with the freedom she is given to design her course. The department head hands her a syllabus from last year’s course if it would help, but mentions she is free to design the course however she would like.

Caroline enjoyed the course she took when she was an undergrad, but she knows she can’t assume that since that is how she learned, that is the best way to learn, or that that reflects current practices and understandings in the field. Indeed, how arrogant! She searches for 200 level courses on Teachur, and finds several courses. she narrows her review down to the top 3 best reviewed courses.

She’s delighted that the text she used is in one of them, but she also notices that all 3 courses feature another recently published textbook that she had meant to read when it was first published, but just never got around to it. When she reads the reviews, she is delighted it sounds like what she had been hoping for. Just for kicks, Caroline also reviews the comparable course from a regional university with a very strong reputation in Civil Engineering, and is pleased to see that it is quite close to the course she is basing her new course on (and she’s a little self-satisfied to see that they aren’t yet using the new textbook).

Caroline has her own research agenda and interests, so she doesn’t just adopt the course whole-cloth from Teachur. Instead, Caroline forks a course. That is, she copies the highest-reviewed course, then tweaks it to include some objectives from one of the other courses in the top 3, and adds several objectives she feels strongly about that were missing. She also removes a lesson, and adds two new lessons based on a research project she is working on.

A critical feature, indeed the engine to Caroline’s improving and evolving version is a technological piece called a smart contract. This is a blockchain-based self-executing contract that permanently associates any portion of the curriculum with its creator, and compensates that person (or group) as students use it, and benefit from it. No matter how many times a portion of a course is copied, forked, or re-mixed, it is tied to its creator who is rewarded as the piece demonstrates its value. Why create and share high quality materials? This used to only be a live, vested question for educational publishing houses. On Teachur, it is a live and vested question for everyone with expertise.

It is really easy to locate and review highly-rated courses, and to adapt them to best serve her and her students’ needs and interests. In fact, students and professors leave helpful feedback on the course she forked. Though Caroline is very interested in optimizing the efficiency in delivering the course, she also wants to be sure she is best serving her students, that she is leveraging the class to push her research agenda, and that her class reflects the current field.

Caroline is especially delighted when students and other professors start reviewing her forked course. It takes on a life of its own. The new lessons about her research project resonate with several professors, and they include that section in their new courses (which those professors have tailored to their desires). The objectives that she added prompt another professor to create a video explaining the key ideas in one of the objectives. Meanwhile, another professor has built some assessments tied to another one of the new objectives.

This new life for her course has Caroline more excited about teaching and designing curriculum than she ever has been. There is always a learning curve for teaching a new class, but this is what it means to be a teacher today in a rapidly changing world. That same thinking animates all of her decisions for the next semester.

As an anecdote, Caroline’s story is inspiring. But when we extrapolate from this, the picture gets really exciting. Of course, not every teacher will respond to the new environment of teaching the way Caroline has, but we don’t need every teacher. When we have a critical mass, this extrapolation paints a very different picture than the current set up: Teachers are teaching courses based on highly-rated materials, and structure, and participating in curricular improvement in organic, self-serving ways.

In such an environment, we are optimizing for curriculum evolution; not to a varied spread that struggles to improve, and not to a uniform, homogenous, single curriculum, but to a radically varied and improving spread, where we can easily put our materials out to the world to take on a new life; we can copy sections, adjust, re-mix, and re-work; where we can get feedback, and recognition, and where competition works how it is meant to: discarding redundancies and inefficiencies, and rewarding what works. This is how competition should work in education, but we haven’t been able to logistically organize and manage it until now.

What do you think? Are you persuaded that Caroline’s version could prompt curricular evolution? Or am I missing something? Please let me know in the comments. Or connect with me on Twitter, My site, LinkedIn, or reach me at: ben@teachur.co.

image from: https://www.flickr.com/photos/codnewsroom/31959930984