ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the major contemporary influences on curricula in British higher education. The term 'curriculum' is used here to include content, outcomes, teaching methods, learning processes and assessment. Students come into higher education with an understanding of knowledge, skills and attitudes that higher education seeks to activate, improve, add to and amend. Communications and information technology in particular is transforming the ways in which staff-student and student-student interactions can take place. Frequently curriculum design is not undertaken in full or with acknowledged consideration of this broad context, and the rationale is often not made explicit; moreover there is usually a lengthy time lag before changes are reflected in the curriculum. Assessment is a key part of curriculum design and should be fully integrated from the start of the planning process. Most subjects and courses are increasingly becoming aware of the desirability of taking a more systematic and sophisticated approach to assessment.
