Curriculum mapping: the visual approach to curriculum re-engineering

Curriculum mapping feels like another added curricular document requirement that academic programs are compelled to comply with, thus adding further angst to that already piling up with respect to outcome-based education (OBE). For all the effort it calls for, the process of curriculum mapping fruitfully engages us to discover the existing strengths of our education programs and enables us to easily recognize the aspects of the curriculum that need to be amended. In the long run, curriculum mapping helps up plan and implement our curricula in a way that undisputably promotes our learners' attainment of the expected learning outcomes.

The medical educationist Ronald Harden describes a curriculum map as a “diagrammatic representation of the curriculum displaying the different elements of the curriculum and the interrelationships between these different elements.” The elements of the curriculum that can be depicted visually may include the learning outcomes, the course content, the learning experiences, the learning resources, and the staff. The curriculum map can also include the students' program of study, i.e., how they interact with the learning opportunities in different phases of the education program (Harden, 2001). The process of curriculum mapping thus offers an opportunity to reflect critically on these elements, and substantiate how they are linked to expectations about learners. Employing the diagrammatic methodology of curriculum mapping generates a helpful visual aid that expedites the task of checking how well-aligned our programs are with the expected learning outcomes. This visual also serves as a functional blueprint for putting the “designing backwards” principle of OBE into action.

Basic curriculum mapping begins with the four key clusters of curricular elements: learning outcomes, content, learning opportunities, and assessment. The most straightforward method involves checking the congruence of subject content with the learning outcomes. Determining this alignment of content with the program outcomes simply calls for identifying the specific subject(s) where the content relevant to achieving each of program outcomes is taught. This relationship is then represented in a table such as the one below.

Subsequently, we can reflect on the learning opportunities in relation to the learning outcomes using the same approach. The effective application of the outcome-based education model calls for learners to be actually doing the verbs contained in our statements of intended outcomes (Biggs & Tang, 2011). Thus, to establish the link between outcomes and learning opportunities, we have to contemplate: Which subject(s) contain learning activities where the students actually perform the verbs contained in the statements of learning outcomes? Identified matches between activities within subjects and the learning outcomes they address can be marked in a table similar to the one above.

Furthermore, we can use the curriculum map to characterize the extent of our learners’ engagement with the content related to each program outcome. After identifying the respective subjects where the content relevant to each program outcome is taken up, we can denote if the content is simply introduced (conceptually), or if there are activities involving learners’ practicing (with supervision, mostly) how to apply the content in (mostly simulated) concrete situations, or if the learners are given the opportunity to apply the content in actual, real-world settings. These can be indicated in the curriculum map as “I”, “P”, and “D”, respectively, such as in the sample below.

It could be practicable to see mostly “I” or “P” labels in the curriculum maps of the earlier year levels of our programs (like in Subjects 1 to 6 in the curriculum map above), but it would be unsuitable to have more I’s and P’s than D’s in the later years of the curriculum, when the learners are expected to have progressed to levels of proficiency that reflect more (rather than less) independent demonstrations of competence. The curriculum map for the later years of the program should look like the ones for Subjects 7 to 10 in the sample above.

I propose that we carry out curriculum mapping this way at least twice during curriculum reviews. In the first round of curriculum mapping, we indicate the level of engagement in relation to each exit outcome (I, P, or D) that is actually happening presently in our classes in all year levels of the program of study. In the second round of curriculum mapping, we construct a second curriculum map that reflects what we feel should be the intended level of engagement (again, I, P, or D) for each of the exit outcomes in every year level of the program. The first map is, in effect, mapping the enacted curriculum – the curriculum that is actually implemented, while the second map represents the intended curriculum – planned, but not yet actually realized. By comparing these two curriculum maps, we can easily identify existing gaps between what is and what should be in the way we implement our curricula.

Following this, we can apply the same process when we map our assessment activities with respect to the learning outcomes. Documenting the extent to which all program outcomes are assessed throughout the program of study helps us recognize the extent of alignment of our program outcomes and the way we measure student achievement of these outcomes. This mapping process generates yet another useful blueprint: one that will guide us as we construct the assessment system for our curriculum. Furthermore, assessment-oriented curriculum mapping can provide a richer analysis of the role of assessments in the curriculum by depicting the extent to which formative assessments (which are crucial in OBE) of the outcomes are present throughout the program of study. Similar to mapping the enacted and the intended curriculum in terms of the students’ level of active engagement with the intended outcomes during the learning activities, we can likewise map and then compare the enacted and intended curriculum in terms of the presence of formative assessments of the outcomes.