Carnegie Mellon University

Eberly Center

Teaching Excellence & Educational Innovation

Using Curriculum Mapping to Guide Assessment

Sample Agenda and Facilitation Questions 

Agenda (day-long retreat)

Potential questions to facilitate discussion

Curriculum sequence and progression

  • Are courses sequenced appropriately to allow for student progression from introductory to mastery levels?
  • Is each outcome introduced at the appropriate place in the curriculum?
  • Do any gaps exist where outcomes are not addressed sufficiently?
  • Are there any unnecessary overlaps?
  • Does too much time elapse between introductory knowledge, advanced knowledge, or mastery?
  • What are the strengths of the curriculum (i.e., where program outcomes are addressed thoroughly)?Given our observations, what steps should we take to improve the curriculum (and student learning)?

Instructional activities/student practice

  • Do students receive adequate opportunity to practice using their knowledge and skills in variety of contexts?
  • Do they receive enough feedback from faculty on their performance?What are the instructional strategies that faculty most use?
  • Do they align with the discipline/field?
  • Do they align with employer needs?
  • Are there additional strategies that should be used?
  • Are “high impact” or “active” instructional practices used (e.g., public reviews, service learning, research opportunities, internships, culminating or capstone experiences, skill intensive courses--writing or problem-based intensive courses)?
  • What concepts or skills do students seem to have the most difficulty with in your courses?
  • Given our observations, what steps should we take to improve the curriculum?
  • How should we go about assessing student learning and the effects of our changes/improvements?
    • Should we prioritize what outcome(s) to assess, and engage in a regular cycle of assessment?
  • Might we use assessments already embedded in our courses to measure student performance at the program level?
  • How should we assure that we use the same criteria to measure the same outcomes?
  • How should we test interrater reliability?
  • What is our implementation plan?
  • What are our action items and next steps?