Involvement in Course Change
In most programs, full-time faculty members who teach specific courses are usually the ones asked to revise those courses. Often, faculty members have lots of good ideas about how a particular course needs to change, and they make those changes as they teach the course over several semesters. Hopefully, their interest in the topic, their continuing professional development and their openness to new ideas and activities in the industry promotes these changes.

However, some faculty members are not always open to new ideas about reconceptualizing a course they have been teaching for some time, nor do they want to do it. If they have always taught garde manger, then dividing a course into types of salads and salad dressings, on the one hand, and sausages, terrines and pâtés on the other might not make sense to them, even if others see it as important. If they have always taught cost control in a certain manner, they might not be able to see that there are several ways to organize the material and new areas to cover as restaurant practices change. The same is true for culinary fundamentals—sometimes organized around the cooking practices and sometimes around the mother sauces and various products.

In these cases, your task as the leader in the department involves educating these faculty members in the need for change and in the changes to be undertaken.

Level of Changes
In making course changes, sometimes the process is very limited and can be done at the program or departmental level without a full review. It might mean moving to using a common textbook or examination process for a course with many sections. It might mean revising a sequence of courses so that students get the proper background in earlier courses to be able to succeed in later courses. It might mean reorganizing material that had been in one course and placing into an earlier course in order to make room for new information in a more advanced course. Most often, if the course description and learning objectives for the course do not change to a significant degree, these changes can be done in the department and implemented immediately. It might involve review by a departmental or program curriculum committee and approval by an administrator, but the process does not extend beyond the department.

In the case of significant changes in courses or dropping some courses and adding totally new courses, the process requires review at the college or university level and sometimes, even, at the level of the State Education Department. In this situation, faculty members get involved in a comprehensive review of the curriculum, the specializations, majors or concentrations involved, the material in the courses, their sequence, and their structure as well as the content. This process requires building a common vision of what graduates should be able to do and what learning activities and topics are essential to help them get to that point. Increasingly, this focus on outcomes leads to some creative program redesigns and refocused curricula.

As part of that process, it can be helpful to try out new ideas.

Trial Course Changes
Many institutions have a series of courses, often entitled Special Topics, Group Studies or Current Issues that can be used to experiment with new course ideas without going through a complete review process. In this case, a faculty member who wants to pilot a new course can propose it or use the course title—often with a hyphen and words that describe the topics for that term—to see whether the idea works and the course makes sense to the students and for the program. Other times, these courses are used to focus on a topic that might not be worth including in the curriculum every year, but might be very timely. Examples include: Special Topics: New Trends in Restaurant Operations, Special Topics: Italian Cuisines, or Special Topics: Quantity Feeding in Olympic Sites.

Elements of a Course
Whichever level of change you are involved in, it can be helpful to consider all the elements of a course—the topics, the purpose, the learning objectives, the pedagogical approach, the place in the curriculum, the range of learning activities, the types of reading and analysis, the kinds of individual and group assignments, the evaluative strategies, and the timeframe of class meetings and outside activities such as field trips, site visits and projects. Thinking about all of these elements will help you improve your courses as you change them and better prepare your students for our ever-changing industry.

Summary
In any case, the process can be exciting, although it may be difficult. Next month, we shall discuss the process of developing a common vision for your program so that the significant changes come from a coherent frame. If you have other ideas or suggestions about curriculum development, let me know and I will share them in future Mayo’s Clinics.

Fred Mayo is a clinical professor at New York University and a frequent presenter at CAFÉ events nationwide. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..