Using student reflections to explore curriculum alignment

Abstract

The concept of curriculum alignment is held as a guiding principle of good curriculum design in higher education. Curriculum alignment can be mapped using a variety of strategies and tools. This paper reports on a project that expands the horizons of curriculum review by applying a novel methodology, word clouds, to investigate the use of student reflections for exploring curriculum alignment. Students, from Australia and Denmark, engaged in written reflections about their learning in a Business Brand Marketing subject. These reflections provide the data that is analysed for its alignment with the subject's learning outcomes. The word cloud analysis is found to be useful in providing evidence of curriculum alignment and indicators for directing deeper textual analysis.