HE-C06 — Program Review and Improvement

Course Code: HE-C06  |  School: School of Higher Education  |  Cluster: Curriculum and Teaching

Level: Intermediate  |  Estimated duration: 6 weeks (approximately 40 hours)  |  Language: English  |  Certificate: Professional Certificate (non-degree)  |  Format: Self-paced with AI support under human supervision

Overview

Programme review is the mechanism by which a university examines whether a degree still does what it claims to do. In most systems it is also a compliance ritual: a large self-study document assembled under deadline, read by a panel for two days, and shelved. This course is built on the premise that the difference between a review that changes a programme and a review that changes nothing lies in design choices made long before the panel arrives.

Learners study the major evaluation traditions that inform academic review — Stufflebeam’s CIPP model, Patton’s utilisation-focused evaluation, and the constructive alignment tradition associated with Biggs and Tang — and apply them to the specific problem of judging an academic programme. The course insists on the distinction between quality as fitness for purpose, quality as transformation, and quality as compliance, following the taxonomy set out by Harvey and Green.

The practical spine of the course is the production of a genuine review instrument: an evidence framework, a set of review questions, a data specification and a follow-through mechanism. Learners finish with a review design that could be run, and with a realistic account of the institutional politics that will determine whether its recommendations are implemented.

Learning outcomes

On completion, a successful learner will be able to:

1. Distinguish the principal conceptions of quality in higher education and identify which conception a given review process actually operationalises.
2. Apply an established evaluation model to the design of an academic programme review.
3. Specify an evidence base for review that combines outcome data, curriculum mapping, student feedback and external reference points.
4. Conduct curriculum mapping to expose gaps, redundancies and misalignments between stated outcomes, teaching and assessment.
5. Design review questions that are answerable with available evidence and consequential for programme decisions.
6. Evaluate why review recommendations fail to be implemented and design follow-through mechanisms that address those failures.
7. Produce a review report that is usable by academic staff rather than only by regulators.

Who this course is for

Programme directors, heads of department, quality officers, curriculum committee members, deans with portfolio responsibility for academic standards, and external reviewers who sit on validation and revalidation panels.

Prerequisites

Familiarity with the structure of a degree programme and with learning outcomes as a curricular device. HE-C01 Curriculum Design and Development and HE-C02 Learning Outcomes and Assessment provide useful grounding but are not required.

Syllabus

Module 1 — Conceptions of Quality and the Purpose of Review

Before designing a review it is necessary to say what the review is for, because fitness for purpose, transformation and compliance imply different evidence and different verdicts. This module makes the choice deliberate.

Lessons. 1.1 Harvey and Green’s five conceptions of quality  ·  1.2 Improvement versus accountability as review purposes  ·  1.3 Internal review, external validation and the regulatory interface  ·  1.4 Diagnosing the implicit purpose of an existing review process

Deliverable. A diagnostic note identifying which conception of quality your institution’s review process enacts and what it consequently cannot see.

Module 2 — Evaluation Models Applied to Academic Programmes

Programme review is a species of evaluation, and the evaluation literature offers tested models that most academic review processes ignore. The module imports them deliberately.

Lessons. 2.1 The CIPP model: context, input, process and product  ·  2.2 Utilisation-focused evaluation and the primary intended user  ·  2.3 Theory of change and programme logic models  ·  2.4 Choosing a model to fit the decision the review must inform

Deliverable. An analytical brief selecting and justifying an evaluation model for one named programme review, with the rejected alternatives explained.

Module 3 — Curriculum Mapping and Alignment Evidence

A curriculum map exposes whether stated outcomes are actually taught and actually assessed, and it routinely reveals that some are neither. This module builds the map and interprets what it shows.

Lessons. 3.1 Mapping outcomes to modules, teaching methods and assessment tasks  ·  3.2 Detecting gaps, redundancy and assessment overload  ·  3.3 Progression, scaffolding and the vertical coherence of a degree  ·  3.4 Reading a map against external subject benchmarks

Deliverable. A design artefact: a complete curriculum map for one programme with an accompanying commentary on the three most significant misalignments.

Module 4 — Evidence, Data and Stakeholder Voice

Reviews are frequently dominated by whichever evidence is easiest to produce, usually satisfaction surveys. This module builds a balanced evidence specification and treats each source’s weaknesses candidly.

Lessons. 4.1 Outcome, progression and destination data and their limits  ·  4.2 Student surveys: response bias, halo effects and interpretation  ·  4.3 Alumni, employer and external examiner evidence  ·  4.4 Triangulation and what to do when sources disagree

Deliverable. An evaluation report specifying the evidence base for a review, with a stated limitation for every source included.

Module 5 — From Findings to Change

The failure point of programme review is implementation: recommendations are accepted in principle and then absorbed by workload, disciplinary autonomy and committee cycles. The module designs against that failure.

Lessons. 5.1 Writing recommendations that are specific, owned and dated  ·  5.2 Academic tribes, disciplinary autonomy and resistance  ·  5.3 Action planning, monitoring and the closing of the loop  ·  5.4 Resourcing change and the honest costing of recommendations

Deliverable. An implementation plan converting a set of review findings into owned, dated actions with a monitoring mechanism.

Module 6 — Capstone: A Complete Review Design

The capstone assembles purpose, model, mapping, evidence and follow-through into a single review design that an institution could adopt. It is judged on whether it would produce change.

Lessons. 6.1 Framing review questions  ·  6.2 Assembling the evidence specification  ·  6.3 Designing the panel process and its outputs  ·  6.4 Building the follow-through architecture

Deliverable. A 2,500-word programme review design for one named programme, including review questions, evidence specification, curriculum map extract, panel process and follow-through plan.

Assessment

Pass mark 70 per cent. All assessed components must be attempted. Every mark in this course is issued by a human assessor; no assessment outcome is generated automatically.

Rubric criteria

Each assessed artefact is marked against four criteria at four levels (distinction, pass with merit, pass, fail).

1. Conceptual clarity. The conception of quality and the evaluation model are stated, justified and applied consistently.
2. Evidence design. The evidence specification is balanced, feasible and honest about the limits of each source.
3. Analytical depth. Curriculum mapping and findings go beyond description to diagnosis.
4. Usability. The output could be used by the intended decision-makers without further translation.

Reading list

Core. Biggs, J. and Tang, C. (2011) Teaching for Quality Learning at University, 4th edn. Maidenhead: Open University Press and SRHE.

• Harvey, L. and Green, D. (1993) ‘Defining Quality’, Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 18(1), pp. 9–34.
• Stufflebeam, D. L. and Coryn, C. L. S. (2014) Evaluation Theory, Models, and Applications, 2nd edn. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
• Patton, M. Q. (2008) Utilization-Focused Evaluation, 4th edn. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
• Banta, T. W. and Palomba, C. A. (2015) Assessment Essentials: Planning, Implementing, and Improving Assessment in Higher Education, 2nd edn. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
• ENQA (2015) Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area (ESG). Brussels: EURASHE, ESU, EUA and ENQA.

Academic integrity and use of AI

Generative AI may be used in this course as a drafting, translation and critique aid, and its use must be disclosed. Every submission carries a short use-of-AI statement naming the tools used, the tasks they performed and the checks the learner applied to the output. Using AI to fabricate data, invent sources, impersonate an interview participant, or produce an artefact the learner cannot explain in a live viva is prohibited.

All citations are verified before submission; a reference that cannot be located by the assessor is treated as fabricated. Fabrication, plagiarism and undisclosed ghost-authorship result in failure of the component and referral to the academic integrity panel. Marks in this course are issued by human assessors, and any learner may be asked to defend a submission orally before a mark is confirmed.