Evaluation and curriculum transformation: Two MOOCs, new learning environments, many pathways

Universities are now tasked with competing in a global education market. Consequently there are considerable creative, pedagogical, and capacity building challenges for institutions, many of which are related to curriculum transformation. Curriculum transformation is a deliberate process of marked change in learning and teaching that impacts the construction of effective learning environments. In this paper we discuss curriculum transformation at an Australian university, where challenging opportunities for innovation were recognised and taken up, resulting in new learning pathways for students and the organisation. The design of two massive open online courses (MOOCs) is presented as a triggering event for change. MOOC evaluation findings confirm the need to establish quality parameters for curriculum innovation projects; the contribution of personal and organisational learning to the transformation process; the need to select the delivery platform early in the project development stage; and issues of designing for a culturally and educationally diverse student body with widely divergent motivations and capabilities. The evaluation was conducted using mixed methods, and the Phillips et al. elearning evaluation lifecycle applied as a tool for mapping stages of evaluation against the design process. The potential for new conceptual models for learning as a result of MOOC experiments is offered as an area for future research