The Prescription: Curriculum Mapping Software: Finding Harmony in Education

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Duration: 24:06

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If you’re a music lover like I am, you know that there’s nothing better than hearing a music group that really clicks. You listen to this group perform and you think, “Wow, these people were just born to create music together.” Their instrumentation is really tight. Their vocals blend together really well. They’re just this unified, musical force. And because they’re so together, they become something greater than the sum of their parts.

What I’ve always found interesting (and even frustrating) about music is that when a part is off (even by just a little bit), it can really ruin a song. For instance, right now I have some background music playing, and the instruments sound really good together. But, what happens if the drummer starts to lag behind the rest of the group? What happens if the bass player forgot to tune his guitar? And, what happens if the guitar player just up and starts playing the wrong song? The results are very different, aren’t they?

The reason this song went from being harmonious to inharmonious is because the musicians stopped paying attention to each other. They lost what musicians refer to as “the groove,” that sweet spot where all of the elements connect and work together.

Well, you’re probably thinking at this point: “Ok, this is all well and good, but what does this have to do with curriculum, education, teaching, learning, and all that sort of fun stuff?” Well, curriculum is a lot like music. It takes careful planning. It takes a lot of practice to get it right. It requires effective execution or implementation. And, it functions best when all parties are working together to create a unified experience for the audience.

As educators, we’re all responsible for delivering our own small segment of a curriculum. I know from my own experience in the classroom, it’s often the case that each of us gets into an individual groove, and we lose sight of what our peers are doing in their courses. The end result of this scenario is that collectively we end up implementing a curriculum that is not as good as it could be. There might be a great deal of unnecessary redundancy in the curriculum. Maybe the order of the educational experiences we’re putting forth is not optimal for students. Perhaps some important areas in the curriculum are not being covered with enough frequency. And in a worst-case scenario, there may even be some important material that is not being included at all.

Now on the flip side, imagine a scenario, in which each course in a curriculum draws on students’ past curricular experiences, reinforces learning from other courses, facilitates new learning, and then sets the stage for future educational experiences. This type of tight orchestration amongst the courses in a program of study is the goal of something called “curriculum mapping.”

Basically, curriculum mapping is a strategy that aims to harmonize the educational experiences within a curriculum and ultimately create a more effective program overall. Heidi Hayes Jacobs (2004), who is a renowned expert in curriculum mapping, describes it this way: “Curriculum mapping is a procedure for collecting data about the operational curriculum in a school…referenced directly to the calendar. Mapping provides the basis for authentic examination of that database in conjunction with assessment information about learners” (pp. 1—2). Janet Hale (2004), another noteworthy curriculum mapping expert, further explains that “[d]uring the initial learning-to-map-phase the most commonly recorded data includes content, skills, assessments, resources, and their alignment to one another…and…standards. In subsequent and more advanced phases of mapping, additional data such as evaluation processes, attachments of best-practice lesson plans and activities, essential questions, and other curricular information are often included.” So essentially, curriculum mapping is a way for a team of educators to get on the same page, to sing from the same sheet of music, to create a consistent, coherent, and standards-based program that will maximize student learning.

Well, gosh, that sounds great, but that seems like a mammoth undertaking. How would an institution facilitate this type of information gathering and how would they organize all of this data for purposes of reflection and curricular improvement?

Well, the good news is that there is software on the market designed specifically to help facilitate the process of curriculum mapping. TechPaths, Rubicon, and Collaborative Learning, Inc. are just a few of the software companies out there that offer curriculum mapping products. Basically these products offer a way to organize information about a curriculum and make that information accessible to all educators in a particular department or program. For instance, maybe you’re a pharmacy professor, and you’re planning to increase your focus on teaching patient safety in one of your courses. If you’re in a department that has used one of the aforementioned software products to create a curriculum map, you would be able to search a database and uncover who else is teaching patient safety in your department, when they are teaching this topic, and how they are teaching it.

The benefits of having this information at your fingertips would be numerous. You would gain insights into the curriculum as a whole, and you would likely form collaborative relationships with your peers. These things would have a significant and positive impact on your approach to teaching this topic.

So what institutions are engaging in curriculum mapping and what has their experience been with this strategy? Well, the truth is that curriculum mapping is most prevalent at the K12 level of education. Because of No Child Left Behind, many school districts have undertaken curriculum mapping initiatives to improve their educational programs and align their curricular activities to state and national standards. In the world of higher education, curriculum mapping is only now beginning to take root.

To shed some light on the benefits and challenges of curriculum mapping within higher education, I recently interviewed Dr. Cynthia Naughton of North Dakota State’s College of Pharmacy. She revealed that her program has been curriculum mapping for several years and that they recently augmented their process with the use of Rubicon’s Atlas Curriculum Mapping System.

BLADES:
I’m here with Dr. Cynthia Naughton from North Dakota State’s College of Pharmacy, and she’s going to be discussing her program’s use of the Atlas Curriculum Mapping System. Would you mind telling the listening audience a little bit about yourself?

NAUGHTON:
Well, I am an assistant professor at the College of Pharmacy at North Dakota State University and most recently named Associate Dean for Academic Affairs. And, I am currently now in the Pharmacy Practice section and I teach Renal Pharmacotherapy to P3 students. And, I have a clinical practice at the family healthcare center.

BLADES:
Well, I’m definitely excited to learn from you today. I definitely appreciate you taking the time to meet. I guess my first question is “Why curriculum mapping software?” Your program existed for years without it. Why did your college determine that you needed this type of platform?

NAUGHTON:
With the new standards in Pharmacy education, we decided that we really wanted to take a look and assess our curriculum. We got engaged in curriculum mapping actually several years before that looking to see if we have any gaps in our curriculum, duplications, and just as a point to determine if we needed to revise the curriculum. And so, as we were researching the topic, we recognized that any efforts with curriculum mapping would have to be digital just because of the immense work involved to keep it up-to-date and also to be able to run reports to show data that support if we have gaps or duplications or that type of thing.

BLADES:
All right. In doing my own research of curriculum mapping software, I was frankly a little bit surprised that most of the clientele with curriculum mapping software seems to be at the K12 level, and your college was one of the few institutions that I found that was actually doing this. So I guess my question is “Was there any resistance within your college to the idea of using this type of software to organize your program?”

NAUGHTON:
Not really. I explained as we started the project that there wasn’t any software out there, but we did need to use some type of software. And, I also explained that this current software from Atlas isn’t perfect, and it was designed for the K12 system. But, it would do what we needed it to do and that’s in terms of its reporting capability and to be able to help us analyze the curriculum. And, I also emphasized that if we waited until curriculum mapping software was made available to us for postsecondary education that we could be waiting for another five or ten years. And so, we needed to start now and work with what we have, and we could always modify. We pay a licensing fee yearly, and so if something better comes along that would suit our needs, then we can always change at that time.

BLADES:
Now with these reports that you’re mentioning, could you describe what those look like? Specifically, what are the types of things that you’re looking for when you generate those types of reports?

NAUGHTON:
Well, to be honest, we aren’t even at that spot yet….The first step that you have to do is all instructors have to input their diary maps into this software, and that diary map is just a map of what they teach: actual content, objectives, assessment. That has to go into the curriculum map before you can generate any reports. And so, it took us about a year to do that, to get everybody on board and to get their curriculum maps into this software. We’re just now at the point where we can take a look and analyze the software and the reporting capability. I haven’t even…really taken the time to generate reports yet just because that’s our next step. But, it is able to generate reports across the curriculum. We can look at, say for instance, if I wanted to know how many places in the curriculum that we discuss ACE inhibitors. I can type in that search, “ACE inhibitors,” and it will pick up all places in the curriculum where that is discussed. And, it will generate a report showing what year, what course, what instructor, if it occurred in the content section or assessment section. So that’s able to at least tell us…where it’s being taught.

BLADES:
Ok, now did you have to train professors to input the information in a certain format? For example, with objectives, there is a number of formats that a professor could use to write an objective or a lesson plan or a unit plan. Was there any of those types of requirements in place, or is it a type of system that will find the information no matter what type of format is used to input the information?

NAUGHTON:
Oh, yes. It’s a Google search. It’s a Google search engine, so you don’t have to have any particular format of the objectives…for searching capabilities. But, in terms of writing good objectives, we did have some recommendations that we wanted to follow Bloom’s Taxonomy to do that. But, for searching, no.

BLADES:
Ok, so in terms of rolling out this system, what did that look like? Was there some type of orientation or some type of series of training events?

NAUGHTON:
Yes, we had a representative from the company come and train us on the software….We blocked off a day to do that, and then faculty, at that time, were able to input their diary maps with the trainer here. And so, if they had any questions, then the person was right here. And so, we got a good start on it that day, but not everybody’s map got completed. So, it took us a couple false starts and encouragement and downright nagging to get this done, but our administration (our dean of the College of Pharmacy) was very much supportive of the project and so basically stated, “This is something we will be doing.” And, we set a deadline, and that was the final impetus to get everybody to have their maps done.

BLADES:
Now in terms of a time investment for your professors, what was the average amount of time that it took a professor to create his or her individual map? Was it a week? Was it a day? Was it a month?

NAUGHTON:
Well, I think they were very surprised at how easy it was. I think they were thinking up front that this is going to be very time consuming, but in all actuality, it’s not because you already have your objectives written out for the students. In our College of Pharmacy, we do have student outline packets for them, so that’s already out there. And so basically, there were two methods to do it. You can cut and paste into the particular sections in the software or you can type freehand into it. And so, once they realized that they already had the information there, it didn’t take much time. And, for one course, I suppose it took less than a week to put it in. What you do is you just need maybe a one-hour block of time (two-hour block of time) to work on it, and within a week’s time period, everybody had it done.

BLADES:
Ok, and was that sort of focused effort maybe over the summer where it was determined that this will be the week where we all get this done or was it more fluid?

NAUGHTON:
Yes, towards the end, when the deadline came up (toward the end it was), we had a faculty retreat, and we discussed it in the morning and then we broke out and went and either finished up the diary maps or we did another activity related to curriculum mapping.

BLADES:
In terms of the professors, who have participated, are there any “All-Stars” (in other words, people, who have really stood out, who have done a really great job with their maps)? And, if so, what do their maps look like?

NAUGHTON:
Yes, in fact, there were several, and we called those “exemplary maps.” And, what I would do is send out an email, encouraging people to get their maps done, and then I would highlight those particular professors and say, “These are exemplary maps. They have the information that we want and the different characteristics that we were looking for.” And so, we put those out there as examples for people to look at.

BLADES:
Now in looking at those curriculum maps, did you guys have some type of rubric in place that professors could look at and say, “Ok well, here’s sort of where I fall in the grand scheme of things in terms of the excellence of my curriculum map”? Was there anything like that in place?

NAUGHTON:
Yes…I did generate a rubric that we used, and we did meet with the instructors. I met with them face-to-face, and we looked at their maps and pointed out areas that were very good and pointed out areas that may have needed a little bit more work. And so, they were instructed to go back and take a look at their maps again and do some revisions and then submit a final curriculum map.

BLADES:
All right. Well, based on some of the lessons you’ve learned with using curriculum maps, what would be some of your advice for an institution like the University of Florida, College of Pharmacy, who is looking to potentially use this type of software? What are some of the lessons that you’ve learned and some of the general themes or even specifics that you would be willing to pass on?

NAUGHTON:
Well, first and foremost, you have to have administrative support. If you don’t have administrative support, you’re not going to get very far with it. And secondly, I would do due diligence…up front and really research into curriculum mapping. Have a plan and a strategy…[for] when you introduce the concept to faculty. Of course, now it’s becoming more common, whereas when I did it several years ago, I had a couple raised eyebrows when I mentioned that this is being done in the K12 arena. And so I know what they were thinking. Why are we doing it? But, to really explain to them and show them some examples of what can be done with the software in terms of search capability and reporting mechanisms. And then also just to allay instructors’ fears that this is not an evaluation tool to be used to put in their files or an evaluation tool against them and that the main goal of the whole project is to improve our curriculum and also to improve collegiality between departments and communication and collaboration.

BLADES:
What are some of the strengths that you’ve really seen come about as a result of using the curriculum mapping software? You mentioned things like filling gaps in the curriculum, better communication. How have you seen that manifested in particular classes or even across the board?

NAUGHTON:
I think what we’re just starting to see some of the effects of it. We have two departments in our college: the Department of Pharmacy Science and the Department of Pharmacy Practice. And up until the curriculum mapping project, we pretty much practiced independently of one another. And, I think at times there was some distrust between the departments thinking…they’re not doing their job teaching the students these things or Pharmacy Science might be thinking about Pharmacy Practice that we don’t appreciate their efforts in the curriculum. And, what had happened is that we came together and individuals from both departments, who teach like material, got together and shared their curriculum maps with one another. And I think we learned from each other (from the different departments) and really gained a respect for what each individual faculty member was actually teaching in their course. And,…Pharmacy Practice was able to give examples to Pharmacy Science, real-life patient examples, that they could use in their courses to enhance their material….It was a good learning experience for all of us, and I think it really increased collegiality and that was just the first step. Now we’re going to go forward since obviously…we haven’t gotten to the point where we’ve actually generated reports for the rest of the faculty to look at and then make curriculum revisions based on those reports. But, I think the groundwork has been laid…for all faculty combined, that when we come out with these decisions or talk about…areas that need revision that I think it will be better accepted because it had a process. They participated in the process and recognize that we are doing this just to improve our curriculum.

References:

Hale, J. (2004). Curriculum mapping. Retrieved March 14, 2008, from
http://www.curriculummapping101.com/Curriculum_Mapping.html

Jacobs, H. H. (2004). Getting results with curriculum mapping. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Additional Resources:

Example Curriculum Map (courtesy of Dr. Cynthia Naughton of North Dakota State's College of Pharmacy)
http://media.cop.ufl.edu/podcasts/exemplary_maps.pdf