I have recently entered a new personal and professional phase in my life and career. In May 2016, I took up the position of Director: Product Management at Laureate International Education, Australia and I am now based in the exciting city of Sydney. I was born and lived and worked in Johannesburg all my life, so this is new in so many ways. I have a long history with the Australian Higher Education system from years of working with Monash University, and now I am here and aiming to make a difference through higher education beyond South Africa.
The Laureate network consists of over 80 institutions offering degrees to over 1 million students around the world, spanning 28 countries. My work in curriculum development has now taken on a new dimension and scale. Scale, a word I generally shy away from as an educator. However, I learnt early on in my journey at Laureate, that scale and quality is not mutually exclusive. Being part of the Laureate family is extending my international higher education management experience and added very valuable multi-national business experience.
I know academics generally don’t like these terms, but there is a reality around education worldwide that we have to face and we have to make it work, protecting our integrity as academics and educational institutions, keeping with our hearts and minds in the proverbial right place. I have been inducted into the network and got the opportunity to experience and learn about the curriculum development, product management and best practice implemented at various of the Laureate network institutions, specifically in Paris, Turkey and Spain. What a journey, to really see how curriculum can truly be international. To learn how Public Health students can compare health systems of different countries, rather than to only learn about the health system in their own country. To see how Architecture students design projects all over the world and share virtually what they have done and learn with each other. To see students sitting, talking and studying with the Eifel Tower as backdrop, or the Sydney Opera House, it is all a dream and an opportunity that I will treasure forever.
Before coming to Sydney, I was employed at Monash South Africa (MSA) for almost 12 years in various roles, the last being Chief Operating Officer. I know, that sounds very far from curriculum design and development, and yes, it was. But students are sometimes based at a campus, some of them live there 24 hours a day for most of the year. Like me now, they are far away from home and they get ill, they get homesick, they need things and they sometimes need a sympathetic ear or help with an assignment. That is what Operations taught me, that curriculum does not happen in isolation. It does not always happen on a campus, but it happens somewhere, everywhere and there are many people, things, books, computers, etc. needed to make it happen. I am grateful for getting “into the weeds” of higher education, as I believe it made me a better teacher, a better higher education manager and a better curriculum designer, because I have a much better understanding of the “hidden curriculum”, another theoretical term I learnt during my undergrad studies. The importance of the unwritten, the unofficial and unintended lessons in the lives and worlds of students.
MSA was founded by Monash University Australia. Monash is ranked in top 100 in the Times Higher Education World University Ranking. With over 50 000 students in total, spreading across four continents. MSA has 4 000 students and the campus is located in Johannesburg, on the West rand. I have been passionately working to build this campus from 400 when I joined in 2004 to the vibrant private institution it is today, for more than 11 years. I have been involved with curriculum development during my time there, and it was particularly valuable to adjust content and learn about benchmarking and country and context specific assessment, considering ways to ensure contextually relevant and authentic assessment for the students at MSA also studying and being recognized for studying the Monash University degree programmes.
My professional career gave me exposure to local, national and international; public and private higher education environments. I fulfilled different roles during my professional career stretching over 15 years. My main learning was that universities themselves are learning organisations, where the business and academic sectors meet. I am currently in the final year of my doctoral studies in the field of Higher Education Management at the University of Liverpool in the United Kingdom. My research focuses on the role of institutional governance in creating points of connection and engagement for academics and administrators to discuss curriculum and quality delivery to students.
If you asked me what I wanted to become one day when I was young, my answer would have been simple and without hesitation, a music teacher. My undergraduate studies were in Education, and during my honours years I migrated over to Human Resource Development, which gave me valuable insight and experience regarding training and development. At master’s level I focused on Adult Education. I have now arrived at my true passion, Higher Education Management, I do believe that universities should be managed well and curriculum should be delivered well and that the student experience and learning activities are crucial. So, my love for quality assurance and governance found a home in my doctoral these. I have spent my entire career teaching, doing research, publishing articles and writing book chapters, learning how to cultivate, evaluate and monitor quality higher education delivery and how to facilitate sound curriculum design which ensures that students are employable. And how this can and should be managed well in a very unique environment where administration and academics meet.
I believe that academics should be guided and trained in the science and methodology of curriculum development. Most academics do it right, either by chance, figuring it out for themselves, and the need and passion to teach students to end somewhere with some skills and abilities. Many however have a heap of subject matter expertise, but not the educational background and knowledge about curriculum development needed to translate their knowledge about their subjects into something that can result in optimal learning for students.
I also believe that curricula can be developed to enhance quality in the design and delivery. There should be a focus on employability and this should be part of the conceptualization phase of the process. There should be guidance and help for academics along the way. They often drift away as they don’t appreciate getting bogged down in paperwork, and thus curriculum design and development, accreditation and approval is viewed as a negative, time consuming exercise. The quality and beauty of the process is lost through the need for compliance.
Lastly, I believe that the quality of curriculum can improve exponentially if assessment is designed well, continuously and authentically. It is what it is all about right? What students need to know, what they must be able to do and the outcomes they need to achieve. But how do we know they can do this? A clear understanding of the value of various assessment methods, and off course to do it creatively and in an interesting way, to ensure students are engaged and challenged.
I have always lived by the famous quote by Socrates, “I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think”. And what a good feeling if you are privileged enough to see this happen. I don’t believe that students actually remember content, but that they remember experiences, they remember those who made an impact in their lives, they remember stories and they remember people. We need to develop curriculum, but we need passionate people to teach it, to learn from students and to engage with those around them. Real people with real lives and real stories. Students will always be in a different environment and context, they will not have the text book on hand, they will not recall the list of factors of something they learnt off by heart in their second year to be able to write a quick note once they get the exam paper, I know because I was there. But, I was blessed with some brilliant teachers, stories and engaging classes which got me hooked on being a teacher.
I have many passions, one which you have read about – teaching. The other two are part of how I try to keep sane in a world that is sometimes too much for me as an introvert to absorb. They are music and running. In that order. For the first one I have a bit of talent, but I have to practice. For the second one, I have no talent, got to it late in life but learnt how a different community of people (i.e. runners) can teach me something that is completely outside my comfort zone and frame of reference, but how they stand together, how they carry each other and how they persist and have grit. (If you don’t know what “grit” is, search for the TED talk – it changed my life when I learnt about it).
In some ways these two passions go together, but they are also very different and separate. I can relate both of them to curriculum development. Building a curriculum is running a race. The word “curriculum” is Latin, and derived from “currere” which literally means “a race”, which then became a verb, “to run” or “to proceed”. It crept into ancient universities to describe a course of study, and even curriculum vitae describing “the course of one’s life”.
So, from running a few races and being involved with developing a few curricula, I have learnt that it is a messy process. The sense of achievement is enormous and it is difficult, and humbling. It is not an easy process, it needs practice and it needs perseverance. There are distractions along the way and people get disheartened. There is a course to follow and an ultimate goal and outcome to reach. And when you get there it is a glorious experience.
I have not forgotten about music… Music is my life and passion for teaching comes from the need from when I was very little to teach others to play music. Music is complicated, you need to practice a lot, you need perseverance, you need to play alone, and you need to be part of a group. My days playing in bands and orchestras are some of my fondest memories. Lead by some renowned conductors, it is amazing feeling to play and to experience where they can take you if you follow their lead, but do your part and continuously try to play it better. So many pieces that fits the analogy of curriculum development.
In running, music and curriculum development, you need to plan and practice, you have to achieve milestones, you have to measure your progress, you have to go slower and faster, you have to stop and think and rest, you have to rush and finish, you have to stay with the group, sometimes be alone. These are my journeys, these are my races. Keep running. Keep playing. Keep on teaching. And most of all, keep learning.