Developing curriculum guidelines [from Suzette]

  -------- Original Message --------
Subject: 	Re: FW: EOWG: Agenda & material for this week
Date: 	Fri, 20 Jan 2012 11:01:38 +0000
From: 	suzette keith <suzette.skeith@gmail.com>
To: 	Shawn Henry <shawn@w3.org>, "EOWG (E-mail)" <w3c-wai-eo@w3.org>



Dear All

May I suggest that we give consideration to the work on developing curriculum guidelines that were part of the  EU funded project Design for All@eInclusion. We developed guidelines for a Masters level programme in Design for All which included a module called Accessible Web Design. Details are now published at http://www.dfaei.org/curricula.html and available to be used under Creative Commons with attribution.

The development of the guidelines involved partners of EDeAN with representatives from 23 EU countries. Middlesex Uni led the work package and education and training. As well as working closely with our partners I ensured that we took account of the European Qualifications Framework (EQF) that came into effect from 2010. This is intended to harmonise qualifications in order to support mobility of labour (implicitly it acknowledges substantial differences in academic practice in Europe). See http://ec.europa.eu/education/pub/pdf/general/*eqf*/broch_en.pdf

In effect three things are important: the content, the level it is taught at, and the national educational context. The EQF and UK higher education practice is to use 'learning outcomes' - a measurable description of what the student should achieve, to define the learning. These were 'new' to most of our EU partners but are coming into more common use in academic circles.
Learning outcomes are deliberately somewhat abstracted - and leave the educator scope to determine the actual materials and delivery method used.  One advantage of this abstraction is that methods of delivery and assessment can be varied to improve accessibility of learning, and including distance learning.
However the language is formalised and directly relates to the level of knowledge and skills - at lower levels the student just needs to know facts while at the higher levels the student is expected to demonstrate problem solving and discovering new knowledge at the frontiers of current knowledge.

I'll skip the full background of this three year project, the point is that it would be advisable for any curriculum development to harmonise with existing mainstream further and higher education processes and practices. The Guidelines represent at important stage in the process of developing and validating new courses and we told our EU reviewers that we would like to see new courses developed through Europe and worldwide!

In relation to work based learning and professional development, one of our project partners also developed a Universal Design curriculum which was taken forward as a CEN workshop agreement.

I would be happy to bring forward further information to EOWG about both sets of guidelines.
Regards
Suzette













    On 18/01/2012 14:30, "Shawn Henry" <shawn@w3.org <mailto:shawn@w3.org>> wrote:

     >  EOWG,
     >
     >The agenda for this week is updated at: http://www.w3.org/WAI/EO/#agenda
     >
     >Also, remember Actions for all EOWG in January listed under
     >http://www.w3.org/WAI/EO/#announcements
     >And your action items in Tracker, sorted by person at
     >http://www.w3.org/WAI/EO/track/actions/open?sort=owner
     >
     >Talk to you Friday (and I guess Saturday early morning for Andrew <grin>).
     >
     >~Shawn
     >

Received on Friday, 20 January 2012 13:13:07 UTC