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

McCluskey, Trish; Samarawickrema, Gayani; Smallridge, Andrew; Dempsey, Naomi

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-80045-1_12

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

Trish McCluskey⁴,
Gayani Samarawickrema⁴,
Andrew Smallridge⁴ &
Naomi Dempsey⁴

Chapter
First Online: 16 September 2021

450 Accesses

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.

Keywords

Curriculum design
Block model
Student retention
Innovation

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Authors and Affiliations

Victoria University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
Trish McCluskey, Gayani Samarawickrema, Andrew Smallridge & Naomi Dempsey

Authors

Trish McCluskey
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Gayani Samarawickrema
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Andrew Smallridge
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Naomi Dempsey
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Correspondence to Trish McCluskey .

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Editors and Affiliations

Swinburne University of Technology, Sydney, NSW, Australia
Mahsood Shah
James Cook University, Townsville, QLD, Australia
Prof. Sally Kift
Edge Hill University, Ormskirk, Lancashire, UK
Liz Thomas

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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
Published: 16 September 2021
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-80044-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-80045-1
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