ABSTRACT
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University required all degree programmes to be restructured into a credit-based system to be operational from October 1997. In addition to this requirement, the Department of Building and Real Estate undertook to review and revise its 4 undergraduate degree programmes as part of its commitment to developing and implementing quality management systems. The Department took the opportunity presented by this necessary re-structuring to also look at the future skills requirements and work influences on Hong Kong construction professionals for the year 2000 and beyond.
An important objective for the course re-structuring and review was to use methods that ensured all staff were fully committed to the course revisions. The methods adopted involved the use of change management. The Department elected to use assistance from the Educational Development Department—a member of their staff became the “process helper” [1] who worked jointly with one of the academic departmental staff to define the problems and help the whole department to solve them.
This work discusses the processes in curriculum design used to involve all staff, create ownership of the changes and incorporate other inputs to the curriculum design process—the “clients” i.e. students and their employers.
An analysis of the effectiveness of the methods used identifies the successes and areas for improvement. For instance, the re-structuring has allowed the development of a desired skills base for graduates that is reflected in the individual module descriptions and that will influence the teaching methods adopted. New modules have been developed that will prepare future graduates for the workforce in 2001. The change management process itself developed increased co-operation amongst the staff but in the later stages, a sense of frustration with the length of time the process took. This resulted in hastiness through the final stages of writing and operationalising the curriculum. Additionally, there has been no effort made to reflect on the process or to build internal capacity for the staff to be able to work on other problems in a similar way.
