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Re-designing Curriculum to Enhance First-Year Student Success: A Case Study

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Student Retention and Success in Higher Education

Abstract

Curriculum design plays an important role in creating environments that promote student engagement and learning gain. The curriculum, including the intentional scaffolding of knowledge and skills acquisition, inclusive approaches, clarity of learning outcomes, development of assessment literacy, authentic, engaging assessment tasks, work-integrated learning, options for the development of twenty-first century skills, embedded active and collaborative engagement and flexible delivery are all essential aspects of achieving positive learning outcomes. The chapter presents a case study of an Australian university that introduced a new way of offering subjects to students now known as Block delivery. The chapter outlines the rationale of this pedagogical approach, the principles of the Block curriculum and the learning and retention outcomes achieved in its first year of offer.

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Correspondence to Trish McCluskey .

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McCluskey, T., Samarawickrema, G., Smallridge, A., Dempsey, N. (2021). Re-designing Curriculum to Enhance First-Year Student Success: A Case Study. In: Shah, M., Kift, S., Thomas, L. (eds) Student Retention and Success in Higher Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80045-1_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80045-1_12

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-80044-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-80045-1

  • eBook Packages: EducationEducation (R0)

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