Process

In the Revise and Plan stage decisions about what changes are to be made or put into effect immediately in the medium and then long term. Consideration is given in this stage to possible blockers and enablers as these relate to implementing or enacting the desired change and/or changes and developing strategies to address these. The goal in this stage is to set objectives, milestones, and/or targets, developing an action/implementation and evaluation plans and strategies, and planning how you will communicate what you are doing with those in the discipline and across the university. The core question in the Revise and Plan stage is:

• What will we do differently? 

This encompasses all dimensions of the curriculum and its design and delivery including the program, teaching, and learning arrangements (formal and informal).

A note on enablers and blockers:

Internationalisation of the curriculum involves by necessity change. There are numerous enablers and blockers of change at the individual, team and institutional levels. These can include as Leask (2015) identifies:

• Enablers – included university policy, management practices, human resource procedures, professional development, or reward structures; leadership; organizational culture; and provision of training and other opportunities for self-development.
• Blockers – any factors that inhibited staff in developing and providing an internationalized curriculum. They include factors such as disciplinary ways of thinking, which may inhibit or restrict approaches to internationalization of the curriculum. Other blockers include a lack of support/resourcing for academic staff to collaborate with or work in international industry settings, lack of (or poor communication of) institutional vision, and weakly defined policy and strategy in relation to internationalization (Leask 2015, p. 49).

Applying design thinking in the Revise and Plan stage is the stage Prototype [external link – https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/design-thinking-get-started-with-prototyping]. ‘Prototyping is about bringing conceptual or theoretical ideas to life and exploring their real-world impact before finally executing them’ (Dam & Siang, nd.). Prototypes can take many forms but these must be tangible which could include revised learning intended learning outcomes, simple outlines of a course structure, maps of learning activities and descriptions of approaches to teaching. These are shared and “tested” and then refined and/or changed in order to make the final product. This process can reveal hidden assumptions or biases (Dam & Siang, nd.) about the nature of the curriculum, learning and teaching. The goal of developing prototypes is to explore what works with users to find out what works of could be improved. The core questions in Prototyping is:

• How will users respond to this prototype? What can we learn from this process to enhance, refine, or redesign the product? Has our solution been successful?

Activities associated with this stage might include:

• Establishing goals and objectives for internationalisation of the curriculum in your program
• Identifying blockers and enablers for individuals and the team in achieving these
• Identifying experts, champions and latent champions in your team and across the university who can help you to achieve them
• Identifying and sourcing support and resources to assist staff and students to overcome major obstacles
• Setting priorities and developing an action plan focussed on who will do what, by when, and what resources and support will be required
• Discussing how you will evaluate the effectiveness of any changes you make to the curriculum, including their effect on student learning
• Negotiating the roles of individual team members in the process of internationalisation of the curriculum in the next two stages.

Key resources  

Some key program planning questions have been developed to assist teams to establish program goals and objectives for internationalisation of the curriculum. A short questionnaire concerning blockers and enablers [active link external word doc] to individual staff engagement in internalisation of the curriculum is a useful aid to planning who will do what.

For more on deign thinking in education a useful starting strategies for each stage download the Design Thinking for Educators handbook from IDEO [Link – https://www.ideo.com/post/design-thinking-for-educators]