This is the big picture. You are graduating students with a specific set of knowledge and skills. There will be skills related to the acquisition of knowledge and regurgitation, skills related to applying recipe-like processes, and there will be the deeper intellectual capabilities associated with the various levels of the Bloom taxonomies; cognitive processes and cognitive complexity. These skills and use of knowledge will be different by faculty, department and program. That much is obvious. This note provides a high level perspective of how to approach a program design.
There are two versions of the program design activity; a new program and a program review and revision. Both are similar in many ways, but different in some.
If the program is brand spanking new, there will be more assumptions made and more looking elsewhere for ideas. If the activity is a review or revision, there is the past and existing that can be used to inform the review and any possible re-design activity. Other programs at other comparable institutions can also provide insights.
In both cases, there should be a clear picture of what you want the students to be capable of when they graduate; the knowledge and skills. This view should include initial usage of the skills and knowledge upon graduation and for the first few years after graduation. You are not just preparing the students for the time immediately after graduation, but also providing them the starting knowledge and skills that will help them in their career progression during the first few years. You should not be focusing on those students you would love to see as a graduate student – you need to address the educational needs of the 80-90%, not just the elite.
You need to have a program that has three tenets: i) support the present, ii) provide the tools for the alumni to evolve themselves and their practice of your field, and iii) create the discipline specific foundations for future growth – the new ideas from research, “best practice”, that might inspire or open up opportunities for the alumni.
In the existing case, or if there are exemplars, you can try to survey and find out what the existing, recent alumni have experienced. Of course, you are not 100% focused on what they are doing and constrained to replicating that, but you should be aware of what you have been teaching and what value that has (or has not) generated. If you are creating a new, innovative program for which there are no exemplars, you will need to have meetings with the targeted ‘market’ to ensure that you are designing a program for which there is a need, or that there will be a need in the imminent future.
If one was to use an growth mindset using a problem solving stratgy, you must define the requirements and desired outcomes (skills and knowledge) and then consciously design the program to deliver those skills. You should not teach topics just because they have been taught for many decades. You should not teach topics just because they are a fad. You should not teach topics just because you did your graduate studies on the topic, and you think it is neat, exciting and that everyone should know it and do it. You should design programs based on empirical data and make it outcomes based.
There also has to be feedback and possible program design adjustments. The program design or revision might have unrealistic expectations or create situations that need to be phased in. The program design cannot be a concrete, inflexible structure and must recognize the infeasible and impractical.
If you are interested in some of the historic views and some very relevant points to consider, we suggest that you read Tyler (1957) on curriculum design. It is focused on the secondary level, but we think most of the points, almost all, are also relevant to post-secondary!