Epistemic Diversity and the POISEL Framework: Cornerstone of Higher Education Design
Course designs embed implicit epistemological commitments concerning knowledge. They assume knowledge can be tentative and contested, mastered techniques are correct, and personal experiences are valid evidence. These foundational beliefs shape disciplines but often remain unacknowledged, potentially obscuring students’ understanding of how knowledge is constructed and validated.
The Strategic Options: Why Most Institutions Will Choose the Wrong Ones
The financial sustainability crisis in higher education invokes three types of institutional responses: defensive, transitional, and structural. Most institutions adopt defensive measures due to governance challenges, preferring short-term stability over long-term solutions. Structural changes are rare, despite evidence suggesting their necessity, highlighting a need for improved governance strategies among leaders.
Discipline Orientation as a Design Act
The article discusses how faculty and learning designers often overlook student misconceptions when designing courses, leading to obstacles in understanding vital concepts. It introduces the Four Quadrants approach, which poses student-centered questions to address these misconceptions, clarify the discipline, and create coherent, transparent course structures for better learning outcomes.
Practice Note 3: Making Lectures Work
Traditional whole-group teaching is prevalent in higher education but often ineffective for deep understanding. Practice Note No. 3 emphasizes that lectures are a design challenge. Active learning boosts student performance. By focusing on cognitive engagement and employing strategies like polling and discussions, educators can enhance lectures to foster real-time understanding.
The Student Inclusion Model
Course design teams often rely too heavily on academic entry requirements, inadvertently building curricula for an idealised student cohort that mirrors their own background. To address this structural problem, the Student Inclusion Model (derived from the work of Taylor and May) provides a framework for understanding the diversity of actual learners. It challenges educators to…
The Tuition Trap: How Dependence Became Fragility
Revenue diversification efforts often fail due to persistent tuition dependence, which hampers institutional capacity. Governance structures and cultures focused solely on enrolment growth hinder diversification strategies. The key issue lies in governance reform; without it, institutions will struggle to effectively diversify their revenue beyond financial limits.
Practice Note 2: Useful Learning Outcomes
This Practice Note addresses why learning outcomes in higher education are often ignored and how educators can transform them into practical tools for course design. To move beyond treating outcomes as mere administrative requirements, the note champions constructive alignment, ensuring that intended learning outcomes (ILOs), teaching activities, and assessments are coherently linked. The guide identifies…
The case for personas: designing for students, not content
The article emphasizes the importance of developing student personas in learning design, arguing against generic archetypes. It advocates for tailored course creation that accommodates diverse student capabilities. This proactive approach enhances inclusion, reduces structural friction, and improves efficiency, ultimately benefiting institutions while contradicting the notion that personas reinforce biases.
New Practice Notes for Teaching Practitioners
I’m delighted to announce the launch today of a series of weekly Practice Notes for learning and teaching faculty, lecturers, and teachers in tertiary or higher education contexts. These PDFs are free to download and share with your colleagues. The first issue is giving feedback that students will actually use. The next issue will deal…
Is your institution stuck diagnosing the AI problem without a clear roadmap for action?
The article emphasizes the urgent need for academic leaders to address curriculum inertia in the age of AI. It presents a 12-month action plan for Deputy and Pro Vice-Chancellors that includes naming outdated curricula as a key challenge, conducting thorough audits, and implementing rapid reform pathways.
Is your university’s governance architecture actively blocking your AI curriculum strategy?
The piece discusses how traditional academic governance is failing to adapt to the rapid impact of AI on curricula. It identifies three primary failures: slow review cycles, unclear ownership of AI initiatives, and a focus on compliance rather than transformation. Senior leadership must lead changes to effectively respond to these challenges.
Are we mistaking activity for strategy when it comes to AI in higher education?
Senior leadership discussions on AI often overlook the critical issue of curriculum inertia in higher education. As the labor market demands AI fluency, many graduates feel unprepared. Institutions risk falling behind in graduate employability, student retention, and reputation unless they adapt their degree programs swiftly to meet these changes.
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