Curriculum Development Process
The Education program uses Understanding By Design (UbD) as the selected development model to guide curriculum, assessment, and instruction planning. UbD focuses on teaching and assessing for learning by designing curriculum backwards, concentrating on the desired end results first. The process depicted below has been tailored for developing professional education materials such as ours.
Guiding Competencies and Principles
Our team uses well-established competency frameworks to ensure all educational content trains c/t research professionals in the specific skills and characteristics required for career success. Frequently cited competency lists include those developed by the NIH/NCATS Center for Leading Innovation and Collaboration and the Joint Task Force for Clinical Trial Competency.
Additionally, all of our educational content aims to prepare c/t research professionals to respond to the imperative to increase diverse representation in research. To achieve this, we use as our foundation the six comprehensive principles from Achieving Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity in Clinical Research, an extensive guidance document published by the Multi-Regional Clinical Trials Center. These principles serve as a reference point throughout the three UbD phases, empowering content experts to identify and highlight how and where the principles show up in practice. Because the curriculum development process is iterative, these principles inform not only the development of new content, but also the revision and enhancement of existing content. For additional information and examples of how we apply these principles, please visit our DEIB Principles in Development and Design of Educational Content resource.
Understanding by Design (book supporting curriculum process)
Wiggins GP, McTighe J, Kiernan LJ. Understanding by Design. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development; 1998.