greetings all welcome to another session

here of twozy talks today we're going to

continue our discussion in curriculum

testing and assessment and just to let

you know that a lot of this information

is based on nation and mcallister's text

language curriculum design right over

there i certainly want to take a look at

this text if you're going to be

developing a new curriculum today we'll

be talking about the whole idea of

introducing change

into the uh curriculum

um some of these changes should be easy

others are going to take a little more

work and primarily because of the

stakeholders who are involved this idea

of introducing change can be applied to

more than just a curriculum development

or you know the product life cycle can

be used in a lot of different areas both

in school in your own personal life

in business

so it's a very important concept that

you want to try to wrap your head around

today

today we'll talk about some steps that

you can use to try to introduce a change

into the into the curriculum that you've

you've
developed uh try to talk about some

realistic changes and then some

strategies to try to get those uh

involved if you look at the we've got

this little picture over here of the

curriculum

let's just say we've got all the parts

that are there and everything is in

place and everything seems to be working

it still doesn't mean that you're done

you're developing a curriculum just like

any other product life cycle or program

life cycle you're always going to get to

a point where you re-evaluate reassess

find out what's weak find out what needs

to be changed make those changes and

then go through the process again so

we're going to have to remember that

we're going to have steps

involved in

changing what's going on

in the curriculum

curriculum design

again usually involves change it can be

a wonderful thing or it can be very

unpleasant

unpleasant because many of the

stakeholders don't want to change

my sister who used to be a

5th grade

elementary school teacher was one who

was very interested in doing the very

best that she could for her students

worked very hard ever she made

assessments she evaluated she researched

them checked out um the statistical

reliability and validity of all the test

questions that she developed she was

very interested in keeping abreast

of uh

curriculum development uh

measurements and trying to make things

better for their students she worked

with some teachers who said you know

i've been using this book for the past

10 years and i have already established

all the questions that i want i don't

want to change even though the ted the

book is

no longer interesting to my students

they didn't care

they wanted to make it easy

so change can be fun yay

it could also be a pain in the neck if

it's not a welcomed event

okay

so before you go and actually do the

changes within the curriculum you should

make sure that the minds of the

stakeholders are in agreement with you

if at all possible now it may not be

possible

you may if you have the power and you

the power of persuasion is not working

you may need to do something else in

order to

get the

stakeholders to adopt the new changes

that you are trying to implement may be

wise to consider the impact

of these changes on the curriculum

as the saying goes you can lead a horse

to water but you can't make him drink

of course you can put salt in his food

and the whole idea here is you may have

stakeholders you may have teachers or

students or administrators or uh you

know

future employers

parents who may not be interested

but there's probably a way that we can

try to persuade them to say okay maybe

these changes are good

again you need to want to look at this

before you go and do the implementation

uh trying to force it is going can be

quite quite difficult

uh questions you need to ask

is the change really necessary um and so

that's a very important question that

you need to ask i remember listening to

someone speaking about um the great

company compuserve which at one time

was the leader in online uh accounts for

people getting onto the internet they

thought they were untouchable and it was

not very long thereafter

that compuserve is no longer

there was a time when the company ibm

thought that they owned the pc market

and then things changed and they didn't

notice the change they didn't notice

that they needed to make a change and

they

uh paid for it

you could even say that companies like

microsoft who at one point owned the pc

market and owned the internet with

regard to their browser no longer have

that market uh because there are other

people who had come in microsoft even at

one point admitted they weren't prepared

for the internet

so there are a lot of things that can

happen you need to be asking should i

make these changes in my curriculum or

shouldn't i another good example would

be
online

there are even today

schools that are wondering i wonder if i

should i wonder how i can convince my uh

faculty to do this

and they're losing out because the

schools that are jumping onto

online courses are generally the core

programs that are doing better than

those that are only doing so half or not

having that full-fledged push into the

online world is the change really

required

make sure that the curriculum changes

are just right

you don't want to overwhelm your

stakeholders your students your faculty

your

administrators or whatever or whoever

don't make it too big and don't make it

too small you want to try to make the

changes so that it's just right

make sure that the people who are

involved recognize see

understand believe

that these changes are good things as i

mentioned before try to give them some

of that salt in their food to convince

them get them to realize this is a good

thing if indeed it is right if indeed it

is

try to get as much support as you can

right try to get as many cheerleaders

uh saying this is a good idea as you can

when you're trying to make a change

within the curriculum okay of course you

also want to take into account costs the

cost in money

the cost in time

cost and training uh getting these

things all done and uh accounted for

five very important steps five very

important

uh questions you're gonna be looking at

when you're trying to introduce a change

into the curriculum

some other uh

steps to introducing change make sure

that the

design changes are going to be easy to

implement

uh and also recognize try to encourage

the stakeholders to see hey we need this

change

this change is necessary right as i

mentioned in earlier episodes earlier

sessions convinced the kids to paint the

fence

and this is the old story from tom

sawyer where he had to whitewash the

fence and he was none too happy about

having to do it but he convinced all

these kids

to come on and paint the fence that it's

a lot of fun

and he convinced them to go out and do

this so that the work could be done

faster

you also want to try to find the right

zone it can't be too big or too small

you're going to make changes you want to

make enough change so that it's going to

help the program it's going to help the

curriculum

not too much that it's going to

overwhelm or not be effective and not

small enough that it's going to be under

effective i try to look for that

goldilocks zone when you're trying to

make changes

uh

overwhelming people is generally a bad

thing you want to make them con you want

to try to convince them this is good and

then it won't be too much work for them

so back to that whole idea make sure the

changes that you make are realistic

they're doable they're beneficial

make sure the changes are culturally

acceptable

you may be working in overseas and you

may be working in a country and you want

to make some changes

but the culture that you're in won't

allow you to do that as i worked

overseas for example i had made

suggestions about different types of

changes not only within the curriculum

but within the whole infrastructure of

schools that i worked at and oftentimes

i was not listened to

my guess my assumption is i wasn't

listened to because i was an underling

or because i was a foreigner

but i wasn't being heard

i then told

others

the ideas that i had and they went and

made those suggestions and the ch the

suggestions were accepted

okay it may have been that i was simply

going i don't i can't go directly and

make those suggestions somebody else has

to go and do that and that would be more

acceptable that i don't know exactly

make sure that they're culturally

acceptable make sure that you understand

what the teacher beliefs are how is it

going to impact

how they teach

we need to account for

what these teachers believe with regard

to how to teach with regard to their

position

in the teaching world

because getting them on board is

definitely going to help

further the changes in the in the

curriculum if if they're on board

but you need to be aware what do they

believe what do they think is important

for them and try to

work that into the changes that you

believe are going to help improve the

program

uh other approaches to the curriculum

and uh it's the carrot and the stick

what i mean by this is uh there are a

variety of ways to try to enforce or

enable or enact

these changes

again the best way to do this is to work

with all the stakeholders and convince

them or get them to believe and adopt

the changes that need to be made

um that doesn't always work that's this

number three here right right try to get

them to discuss it and and uh try to get

them to persuade or you're trying to

give them some logical reasoning

again this is from more of the top down

number two but you're trying to give

them logical reasoning to say hey this

is a good idea this will be beneficial

and you try to persuade them that way

those may not work

i was at a

web-based education conference

years ago

and

there were people who were talking about

ways to

teach language

using the web and trying to convince

their schools to do web-based education

and one gentleman came up to speak and

he spoke about how he got his entire

school

not just the department the entire

school to take to begin taking training

courses to learn how to

create web courses put their things

online and begin teaching uh courses

either as hybrids or complete online

well when this gentleman finished you

could imagine the hands that went up

were saying iva how did you do this how

did you get your whole school to make

the changes and the answer that he gave

back to us was well he received a

mandate from the president of his

college

and so they had no choice

okay the the order came from above and

everybody was going to comply that's

generally a tough thing to sell for a

school

that you're going to force that on

teachers but in his school it was

successful

most of the places that i have worked at

this the administration will not try to

force

that on the people who are below again

because of the problems that are

involved with the stakeholders not being

uh believing the the uh the changes that

are coming in

so um

authoritarian this definitely is the

more direct route to go but you're also

going to create a lot of problems with

people

who don't want to participate

um

one of the places that i work at even

now there are there are teachers who are

not interested

in getting on board with web-based

education

and so there is a struggle in trying to

sell that now we're not talking about

web-based education here we're talking

about making a change to the curriculum

whether it's you know the assessment

component is weak and we need to

strengthen that or or we're not

collecting enough data and we need to

find a new mechanism to collect data so

we can analyze uh how this thing how our

program is going or uh you know we we

have

four levels and maybe we need to go to

five or six

levels within our within our program um

you know those are the types of things

that we would be looking at um some

major some minor and those are those are

uh uh the types of things we're gonna

look at and we have to convince again

the stakeholders that are involved that

this is a good thing for us to do

some notes regarding uh the approach

that we come across please make sure

that you have good communication even if

you're going with the authoritarian

route

you want to have open conversations you

want to have people uh engaged in

discussion so that they can understand

what's going on and that they will be

able to accept

and move forward with the with those

changes

i'm reminded of the old movie uh 2001

space odyssey when

the computer needed to be shut down

and because they tried to do this

clandestinely without letting hal know

even though he found out he he kind of

freaked out killed everybody

um because their communication wasn't

there in the later movie i think it was

2010 they explained to how what needs to

be done they explained to how they need

to shut him down and it works a little

better if you want to go see those

movies you can go take a look and see

what i mean but ensure there's good

communication

try to define well not try always if you

can define clear objectives define the

procedures the protocols define who's

responsible for what the greater

definition you have the less confusion

you're going to have as you go through

this process of making change

always you want to make sure that you

have uh support throughout the process

that you have people who understand what

these changes are how the implementation

is being made so that your teachers your

students

administrators are not lost or confused

and add to the frustration and raise

raise the affective filter

so making changes is in my opinion part

of the process uh it's part of that life

cycle uh for a curriculum or for

anything else in our case it's a

curriculum it's part of that life cycle

you get done

going through the development and the

implementation and then the assessment

and you're gonna come back to okay what

worked what didn't work and we're gonna

have to try to introduce

ways to make it better

um it's just standard operating

procedure in my opinion um so we're

gonna try to uh we're gonna try to we'll

finish up here

and i want to thank you for stopping by

if you do any questions regarding this

chapter regarding this information

kindly leave me an email down below and

i will talk to you later bye bye now