High resolution mapping of engineering subjects from multiple perspectives

Abstract

Curriculum design has traditionally been done within single institutions and at the course level, in terms of deciding what to cover and the order of coverage. Increasing student mobility between institutions creates a challenge in determining what background knowledge they bring to a course and in personalising recommendations about how they can efficiently acquire sufficient background knowledge to allow them to best learn from a course. At the same time, the increasing availability of online Open Educational Resources (e.g. from MOOCs) creates an opportunity for drawing together resources from diverse world-class sources to help students learn. These changes require more detailed mapping of curricula, both in terms of smaller units of knowledge (e.g. topics that might be covered in minutes rather than courses that might take weeks) and in terms of considering the diverse perspectives that education resources drawn from various institutions may offer for a subject. In this paper we describe our methodology and experiences in high resolution mapping of subjects in the field of electrical engineering (in particular, telecommunications engineering) that has allowed us to personalise student learning experiences through the use of online resources from varied sources.