- Thinking about course design/redesign?
- Looking for greater programme cohesiveness?
- Thinking about graduate attributes in your programme design?
- Developing a fully or substantially online course?
- Planning to incorporate new learning/teaching/assessment approaches?
- Want better collaboration within the programme team?
We have a range of resources and services that can help.
Keynote presentations
George Roberts
has an international reputation on community, identity and learning online and off. He has given Keynotes and invited presentations:
Personal development planning, portfolios, e-portfolios, assessment and reflective learning.
- Keynote at the Learning and Teaching Conference, Falmouth College of Art. (2005).
- Beyond Flexibility: flexible distributed learning (FDL) and e-portfolios.
- Invited speaker at University of the Highlands and Islands Staff Development Conference. Aviemore, Scotland: UHI Millennium Institute.
Course Design intensives
The Course Design Intensive (CDI) is a team-based curriculum development process. It is intended for whole degree programmes, as opposed to modules or units. Typically the process spans several months and involves consultancy and 2 or 3 days of
workshops organised by OCSLD. To read more about the origins, development and benefits of the CDI process see Dempster et al (2012), Benfield (2008a) and Benfield (2008b). CDIs are for course teams who have already decided to develop one or more
specific curriculum objectives, e.g:
- blended learning
- distance learning
- innovative assessment across the programme
- problem-based learning
- redesigning for graduate attributes
The idea is that course teams bring their syllabus, learning outcomes, assessment regime, etc, and we supply experienced educational developers, learning technologists and subject librarians and work together to (re)design your course. The aim is
to do course design in a concentrated, collaborative way. Originally developed to support Technology Enhanced Learning, CDIs worked so well that they are now used to support curriculum development of all kinds. The process has been adopted by several
UK universities, including the University of Brighton, Coventry University, Robert Gordon University and the University of Oxford. The CDI process has also been taken up in Australia. In 2013 Greg Benfield, who leads the CDI process at Brookes, was
appointed Visiting Fellow at Victoria University, Melbourne, to help establish the process for supporting an ambitious university-wide curriculum renewal project (for more information see Curriculum renewal at Victoria University, Melbourne).
Resources
Many of our resources are freely available online.
International visitors
We welcome international visitors to Oxford and can arrange events from 1 to 3 days for groups, which include a range of guest speakers, workshops and social time in Oxford.
Testimonials
"The first thing to say is that the work they did for us was incredibly helpful and useful. We are attempting to build a very complex university wide programme with numerous competing ideologies and requirements. The CDI developed for us moved us
lightyears ahead. I would never have been able to get us moving so far and so quickly without them. Every session was useful and the participants were engaged, energised and enthusiastic about what we are trying to do. That was in large part down to
the planning and facilitation that George [Roberts] and Mark [Childs] did. George was particularly good at the facilitation of the sessions. He also helped pull ideas together and get them down in a way that kept us moving forward. The combination of
really understanding mundane QA procedures and processes, having expertise in curriculum development, using groupwork skills and having an external eye was so powerful and helpful. Well worth the money!"
Professor Tim Kelly
Professor of Social Work and Dean of the School of Education and Social Work
University of Dundee