Conversations are what we are all about! whether it’s about the latest news or the weather we love discussing, debating and sharing, and at TU Dublin we love having conversations around curriculum.

To help you to capture those really important conversations we have created NorthStar, a curriculum conversation tool.

“Let’s Talk about Curriculum!”

NorthStar is a curriculum conversation tool. Its purpose is to support and encourage staff to have meaningful, purposeful conversations around programmes/modules, specifically focusing on how these reflect TU Dublin high strategic elements. Often such high strategic elements (CoCreated Curriculum Shapers, Strategic Pillars, Graduate attributes, 1st Year Experience etc.) are considered at the end of the curriculum design process. This tool encourages a different approach – one where TU Dublin’s High strategic elements inform the whole process of curriculum development so that they are built-in as opposed to built-on.

NorthStar

• encourages programme teams to engage in focused and meaningful conversations around curricula.
• stimulates the conversation by offering a series of questions designed to identify where the high strategic elements already exist.
• encourages deeper reflection (using a series of specific prompts) to consider opportunities to shape the curriculum with those high strategic elements in mind.
• allows programme teams to capture their conversation in the form of an Exemplar.
• Encourages staff to share their exemplars with the wider teaching and learning community so that we can all learn from each other.

In its first iteration, NorthStar is focussed on the CoCreated Curriculum Shapers. Specifically, this tool represents a user-friendly, practical resource that is a direct outcome of the research. (Ryan, B. et al. (2020). CoCREATE: Collaborative Curriculum Reimagining and Enhancement Aiming to Transform Education. Dublin: Technological University Dublin. Accessed at https://arrow.tudublin.ie/totalarcreptf/1/) 

The tool has the capacity to be further developed to allow other high strategic elements (e.g. Strategic Pillars, Graduate attributes, 1st Year Experience etc.) to be considered in a similar manner, through the addition of a ‘lens’ for each element. As such, it represents the potential for any body of teaching and learning research to be developed into a practical resource, which then can be further scaled.