Building a Shared Vision
Three angles could be considered to have an influence on the content of a course:
The job market - economic and professional needs
Society - individual, family and community needs
Education and politics - the hope and need for a better level of learning, regional and national strategic needs
How can we work towards this shared vision? When re-modelling a course, through a reform, by updating or by creating a new course. What means should we employ?
Should we think globally in order to address all the issues or should we use statistics to define the importance of each issue in order to reflect that degree of importance in the course content?
It is a given fact that time spent on this diagnostic phase is short. Funding and human resources are minimal, too. This leads us to decide on a rational increase in the size of the team identified as being efficient in diagnostics.
This means defining 'efficiency in diagnostics'. The success of the course is at stake.
Should professionals be engaged to do the task? or a team of professors, educational engineers and students?
Students are available for carrying out surveys and it is good experience for them. However, people could be influenced into giving biased answers because of the students.
The implication of the teaching staff could be an efficient way to strengthen links between academics and professionals.
