Curriculum Development

The development of an effective curriculum is a collaborative process. The process is cyclical, beginning with defining the programme goals and learning outcomes which are submitted with your endorsement application, to designing interactive activities, to reviewing and back to defining the goals and outcomes based on the revised programme.

We ask that you share your final curriculum with UWC International.

Programme goals are always in support of UWC values and answer the question "What is the purpose of this programme?" and are usually broad and overarching. Learning outcomes are the result of participants' learning experiences: they identify what participants will know and be able to do by the end of a course or program. Usually expressed as knowledge, skills, attitudes or values, they are the measurable indicators to determine whether participants have achieved the programme goals.

The second step is to develop teaching methods by listing and explaining all the activities and projects in the curriculum that lead to achieve course learning outcomes and ultimately, programme goals. As short courses are a chance for non-formal education, there are no assessment methods: the learning outcomes are qualitatively indicated in participants' feedback.

The final step involves a careful evaluation of the impact of the short courses on participants. It also gathers data on courses' perceived strengths, weaknesses, and areas that have room for improvement.

Pedagogy

To further explain the above, below are some pedagogy explanations developed by previous short course organisers, the first relating to UWC short courses in general, the second to Catalyst, 2017.

Lukas Wallrich, 2018

Short Course pedagogy.pdf

Catalyst, Mexico, 2017

Catalyst 2017 Pedagogy.pdf

There are broader educational thinkers talking about educational paradigms and pedagogy too. Here is some of what they have to say, and what can help to shape your curriculum:

Copyright Reminder

Before delving into the curriculums and educational resources below, please be reminded of the copyright guidelines below.

Copyright Guidelines.pdf

Sample Curriculums

Below are sample curriculums which were used in previous short courses.

Catalyst: Rethinking the War on Drugs, Mexico, 2017

Catalyst 2017 Schedule.pdf

Building a Sustainable Future, Germany, 2016

Building a Sustainable Future 2016 Schedule.pdf

Global Leadership Programme, Atlantic College Wales, 2018

AC Global Leadership Programme Schedule 2018.pdf

You can find more schedules from previous short courses in the folder here.

All of these course curriculums provided a structure to support the learning journey. In designing your curriculum, you should think about what you are going to do to:

  • support arrival, bonding and group formation
  • provide milestones, rituals and structure
  • create opportunities for reflection and the transfer and personalisation of learnings
  • support the transition out of the short course and participants' next steps

Building a Sustainable Future created the below toolkit which can be used for inspiration if you wish to create a similar guide for your facilitators ahead of the training, or as a checklist to see that you've covered whilst in your preparations in planning your schedule and workshops.

Workshop Design Toolkit - Clara Freudenberg.pdf

Treasure Trove of Resources

From observations of previous UWC short courses, UWC International recommends that 'ice breaker' activities, or 'energisers' are part of the daily schedule. On the first day these can allow participants to get to know each other and learn names, and in the days afterwards, they can be used to introduce the day's theme and get the participants into the headspace to start thinking about related concepts.

But you need more than icebreakers to fill a 1-3 week curriculum. The below live folder contains the best short course curriculum activities which have been shared with UWC International over the past few years.

We encourage you to delve deep into each folder to find resources which resonate with you, and would work in your short course, as many of these formats can work with any topic.

More curriculum resources are offered for free by Salto Youth via their toolbox, here.

Organisers have also shared recommended books to help with curriculum development, and the pedagogical approach to UWC short courses. These are:

In order to continuously improve this and make it really work for you and your peers, we particularly welcome your expert knowledge in this area. If you know of activities which aren't included here and are too good to not be shared with the UWC short courses community, then please share them with us via the short courses mailbox, and we'll add them to the platform!

UWC Short Course Curriculum Sample & Template

Below you will find a template document for you to fill in and share with your co-organisers and facilitators to outline the objectives, plan and schedule of your short course.

You will see that it has sample information filled out. This is only an example text and should be edited to fit your short course.

**IMPORTANT** :

  • Please make a copy of the below document in order to edit it.
  • To edit the text and/or picture on the front cover, you must double click the front cover so that a new window opens labelled 'Drawing', once this window is open you can replace the image (if you wish to) by clicking on the image and then 'replace image'. You can edit the text by selecting the text box. Then click 'save and close'.
UWC SC Curriculum Sample & Template.pdf