Health Science Curriculum Reform: A framework for evaluation

This paper presents a framework for evaluating curriculum changes undertaken in the University of Sydney's Faculty of Health Sciences. In a climate of shrinking resources for higher education in Australia and an international move away from 'mono-disciplinary' educational practices, the Faculty of Health Sciences has undertaken curriculum reform to decrease the staff time associated with preparing and delivering many versions of similar units of study and increase the opportunities for disciplinary mingling at an undergraduate level. Twenty-nine cross-disciplinary units of study in which students from a range of disciplines will work together have been introduced to replace 100 units of study unique to individual disciplines. It is expected that the curriculum changes will create savings in terms of staff time that can be diverted to other activities, such as research, reduce the workload demands of assessment on staff and students and improve students' learning experiences, particularly with regard to working in teams, multidisciplinary teaching and learning environments and overall course satisfaction. The paper presents a framework of cost-consequence analysis for evaluating the curriculum changes and presents some preliminary comparative data.