Course Design & Schemes of Work

When thinking about doing a blog, I tend to get hung up on the idea that a blog is for ‘publication’, and since the writing I've done for publication goes through quite a few stages before being published, posting a blog which resembles a draft seems to be risky and a bit of an imposition (why should readers be given early thoughts?) Well, I guess that in fact blogs are really work in progress, so this blog represents some early thoughts and really is work in progress.

The topic is designing courses – ELT courses, that is. And the stimulus for thinking about this came from some feedback from an IDLTM alumnus who felt that, although specified in the course outline, not enough attention had been given to curriculum. In fact, curriculum as such isn't a significant item in the course description, although ‘Course planning, preparation, provision & follow up (including evaluation/feedback cycle’ is.

So, prompted by this point, I started thinking about course planning, etc., which I’ll refer to as course management or CM. First stop: a web search. Not a great deal turns up, and what does turn up tends to be rather more at the applied linguistics end of the spectrum than at the actual CM end. Furthermore, for the LTO manager, concerned with managing a range of courses of varying levels and lengths (all complicated by the continuous enrolment which is widespread in non state sector or private language teaching organizations (LTOs)), commonly for nationally diverse student groups, the kinds of discussion which goes on in the literature doesn't seem to make much connection with the realities of CM in the typical LTO. (This isn't to say that an academic manager shouldn't be familiar with this literature and the ideas and controversies which are part of this particular discourse arena. An MA in ELT seems to be the place for such study, however.)

So, back to CM. In FTOM (White, R., Hockley, A., van der Horst Jansen, J., & Laughner, M. 2008. From Teacher to Manager: Managing language teaching organizations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.) I propose 3 levels, which are

1. Principles
2. Frameworks and guidelines
3. Specific products & services (i.e. courses)

Principles includes vision and mission, and could be linked to the top level of curriculum development which is that of the educational philosophy which motivates the curriculum. So, for the course manager, the first point of reference is that of the educational mission of the LTO, and the principles which motivate teaching. Such statements are, I suspect, quite rare, so the academic manager may have to start by involving colleagues in developing such a statement of principles. But that isn’t the message which an academic manager, such as the DOS or ADOS, wants to hear when they’ve got to get a course ready for next week!

The frameworks and guidelines are closer to operations level concerns and the manager may have access to such documentation, as in an examination handbook, or in the form of the Common European Framework (CEF). What, then, does the manager do with this documentation and planning the course? The choice of aims, objectives, content, teaching activities, and evaluation will depend on a number of factors:

1. Course participants: level, diversity, goals (broadly speaking, their needs, although a needs analysis of any sort is unlikely to be available, and needs analyses aren’t necessarily very helpful as they aren’t necessarily well designed or conducted.)
2. Course duration and organization. This, in my own experience , has always been critical because planning any course is highly determined by the amount of time available to reach whatever goals have been sest.
3. Course specification: thanks to the influence of the CEF, there is a move towards expressing these in terms of the levels and specifications used in the CEF, including the use of ‘can do’ statements (as is done in the FCE handbook, for instance).
4. Course outline: this is where, I think, there is a transition to a kind of documentation which is common in mainstream education: the Scheme of Work.
5. Lesson plans.

The key document here is the Scheme of Work, and I suspect that it is this which is what accreditation scheme inspectors seek to sight and which academic managers are really concerned with when thinking about CM and course design.

What is a scheme of work (SOW)? At the risk of confirming that blogs really are rough drafts, I’ll refer to the definition offered by Wikipedia:

In the UK, a scheme of work is a not statutory guideline that defines the structure and content of a course. It maps out clearly how resources (e.g. books, equipment, time) and class activities (e.g. teacher-talk, groupwork, practicals, discussions) and assessment strategies (e.g. tests, quizzes, Q&A, homework) will be used to ensure that the learning aims and objectives of the course are met successfully. It will normally include times and dates. The scheme of work is usually an interpretation of a specification or syllabus and can be used as a guide throughout the course to monitor progress against the original plan. Schemes of work can be shared with students so that they have an overview of their course.

The key parts of a "scheme of work" include:
• Content
• Objectives or Outcomes
• Methods of delivery (student and teacher activity)
• Assessment strategies
• Resources
• Other Remarks

A more extensive but accessible account of SOW can be found at

http://www.excellencegateway.org.uk/ferl.aclearn.resource.id5602

So, I’ll end this blog with a question: is the SOW what academic managers are thinking of when dealing with CM? Or is it something else?