 COURSE DEVELOPMENT STRATEGIES

The Team Approach

Certain well-established curriculum development strategies, usually in practice, in institutions engaged in distance and open learning, are also practiced in the NOS. The accent is on optimising use of resources, keeping most of the resource persons outside the institution than within, in order to both increase access to greater richness of resources as well as to substantially reduce costs in course development. Hence only a core team is provided in the NOS. This means generally a Tutor is responsible for organising and coordinating the development of a course in one's own subject area. The Director (Academic) is the head of the Department.

Stages in the development of the curriculum in a subject are given in the flow chart below:

A Planning meeting is held, to which academicians, subject and curriculum specialists as well as practitioners are invited to discuss and arrive at a broad consensus on a curriculum framework. Once finalised, it will be normative for all subject-related courses. The conceptual framework will keep in view and incorporate the broad content areas suitable for Open Learning. Subject committees are then set up, who discuss in detail the content areas and approach in the specific subject and decide on inclusion/ exclusion of topics in the course. The depth of treatment of a topic, the weightage to be given to it, the kind of scope for applications or for project or practical work will also be discussed and decided upon. All this will be done within the context of the Curriculum Framework. Audio or video support is also planned at this stage.

Since it is likely that some members of the Subject Committees (who are mainly from the formal system) are unaware of the demands and expectations of the distance and open learning system, orientation is planned to enable the members to examine, understand and accept the Curriculum Framework, its rationale and philosophy. Only those who can arrive at a measure of consensus are associated with the course development work.

Next comes the finalisation of detailed teaching learning syllabus by the members of the Subject committee, which includes teachers, and subject specialists, from special national level Institutions or from Universities as well.

After vetting the detailed syllabus through its exposure for feedback a larger number of teachers and if possible, students, the syllabus is finalised, with weightages to topic or groups of topics, stress on particular areas, approaches in treatment, indication of depth of treatment of a topic etc.

In order to make the detailed syllabus a teaching-learning syllabus, the next step is to organise workshops to define the specific Learning Outcomes, ensuring that all the three, namely the cognitive, affective and psychomotor domains are given their due share of weightage and different levels of difficulty in each area also identified. Thus the cognitive would go well beyond mere memory or recall. Scope is given for experiential learning than only limit to second-hand learning exclusively. This exercise is essential for improving learning effectiveness, for setting clear standards of educational attainments and to facilitate evaluation.

Now the Curriculum Committee or the Academic Committee, which has cross section representation from subject committees would meet to accord its approval. Then the formal approval from the Executive Board obtained and the detailed syllabus becomes normative and prescriptive.

The next step is the writing of the Lessons. A group of lessons are organised into different dispatches. For writing the Lessons, a Subject Team Course Chairman (STCM) and a small team of lesson writers are selected,

who either have experience of writing lessons in the specific format required for distance education text (a teacher in print) or are given an orientation through a workshop. The subject Tutor co-ordinates the work. The course is expected to be largely auto-instructional, though additional teaching through face-to-face support is provided.

The orientation takes care of content, format, and pedagogical aspects of the presentation. A few meetings are held by the STCM to review and improve the work of the lesson writers. Graphic inputs are also planned alongside.

After final editing by the Subject Tutor, a manuscript is prepared for the press.

The research division engages in getting feed-back from the students about the course, relevance and difficulty level of topics and these are taken into account when the course is revised.

Student assignments are prepared as part of the preparation of lessons. This provides feedback to the students, since answers are provided in the text itself and which the Teachers at the study Centres, use for testing comprehension.

In order to provide a meaningful learning package, students are also provided with sample question papers, for practice examinations, along with Marking Schemes. These enable the students to know exactly the criteria that NOS uses for marking and grading the answers.

To promote self-learning, NOS has initiated the development of Concept Maps or Mind Maps, to enable the learners to get a bird's eyeview of the whole course and the linkage between the various components of the course units.