Designing a Program

The diagram "The Planning Cycle" shows program design and curriculum development midway through the workplace development planning cycle. If you think of this diagram as spiralling upwards so that the activities recycle and reappear in modified fashion, then each activity leads to and informs the next, creating some variations with each turn of the spiral.

As long as the program continues, design and curriculum are always being transformed by ongoing evaluation and reviews of needs. Curriculum development draws on our whole knowledge of the workplace — its goals, operations, relation- ships, and, most importantly, its people.

Every program that you mount in a workplace (clear writing, ESL for nurses, health and safety for bricklayers, high school diploma courses, for example) has its own mini-spiral. Participants in each program have to define their needs, set their learning objectives, contribute to the development of materials for study, assess their own progress consistently throughout, and evaluate the whole effort. Once set in motion these components form one continuous spiral, rather than separate, sequential acts.

In this chapter we look at some different approaches to curriculum development in the workplace, and we consider ways to set goals. First, think about your own practice in curriculum development.