An adaptive methodology for curriculum redesign based on performance indicators of the student progression

Abstract

ABSTRACT We propose an adaptive methodology for the curricular redesign based on the performance indicators of the student progression observed after a follow-up period. The feasibility of adopting the same approach should be thoroughly studied to assess its compatibility with institutions and countries that employ an academic credit system based on student workload, such as the European Credit Transfer System. This approach was applied here for the Chilean system, which is highly consistent with the European case. The resulting methods can be automated and integrated into institutional databases for the management of teaching-learning processes to enhance decision-making. Special attention is devoted to the methods for estimating the credit points and the relative position of each course in the curriculum sequence chart of a university degree. As an example of application, we discuss the curriculum redesign of the B.Sc. degree in Physics offered by the Universidad Católica del Norte. The analysis is based on the statistical report of performance indicators of this undergraduate program during the follow-up period 2015–2019 (five years). We report a certain correspondence between the problem of credit allocation and the behavior in the student progression, which represents an empirical evidence of the effectiveness of the associated credit points estimation.