Curriculum Reinvigoration

Making Curriculum Changes

Balancing curriculum means examining both individual course curriculum and courses cumulative workload across a program to ensure students remain in the zone of proximal development, or the “learning zone.” If curriculum is not balanced and learners enter the “Panic” zone, they enter a type of survival mode where unproductive stress impacts their efforts towards success. Unproductive stress can have impacts for both faculty and students.

Zone of Proximal Development (or the “Learning Zone”)

When learners enter the panic zone, their ability to engage meaningfully with course content can be significantly reduced. At the same time, this can increase pressure on faculty to provide additional support, often stretching capacity, where it can feel like there is not enough time or space to meet everyone’s needs, particularly in larger classes. When faculty are navigating this heightened stress alongside students, the risk of compassion fatigue increases, resulting in difficulty responding with empathy and care. The shared strain can unintentionally impact the ability to rehumanize learning spaces and fully support students through individualized, relationship centered outreach.

How do we get back to a place of balance?

Balance is created by these key features:

• Using the Jumpstart model and embedding breaks into classes.
• Staggering due dates across courses and programs helps prevent overwhelming periods where multiple assessments are due at the same time.
  • Spacing assessments intentionally support both students and faculty. When deadlines are distributed more evenly, learners have more time to engage meaningfully with the material, and faculty have the capacity to provide thoughtful, actionable feedback without unnecessary pressure.
• Information is intentionally chunked using evidence-based science of learning principles, allowing adequate time for active learning, practice, and feedback before high‑stakes, summative assessments.
• Time is built between topics to allow learners to catch up where needed, revisit common challenges, and consolidate understanding before moving forward.
• Active recall strategies are embedded throughout the curriculum to strengthen knowledge retention and support long-term learning.

Collaborative Curriculum and Assessment Design and Support

Rehumanizing is the intentional process of restoring dignity, agency, and humanity to students and educators within learning systems that have become overly bureaucratic, standardized, and depersonalized. This asks faculty to transition from “I teach” to “We learn.”

It acts as a counter-movement to "dehumanizing" practices such as excessive high-stakes testing, deficit-based pedagogies, and punitive discipline, that treat individuals as data points or transactions rather than whole people.

Deficit-based pedagogies (or the "deficit model") in education represent a framework that focuses on the perceived weaknesses, shortcomings, and limitations of students rather than their strengths and capabilities.

Rehumanizing education recognizes and centers strength‑based approaches that honour students as whole people, with physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual dimensions (Bell, 2014). Students bring lived experiences and responsibilities outside of schooling (e.g. childcare, parental care, multiple jobs to sustain their education, responsibilities at home, etc.) that shape how they engage with learning. By acknowledging these realities, we can intentionally design teaching and learning practices that allow students to show up as their full, human selves and be supported with dignity and care.

Assessment techniques to Support the learning process

Resubmissions and Missed Tests

Life circumstances can sometimes affect a learner’s ability to engage fully with course learning and assessments. Offering alternative assessment opportunities, missed test opportunities, or resubmissions can be a meaningful way to reduce unnecessary barriers, especially when these options are applied equitably and with clear expectations.

It is also important to note that faculty do not require a formal accommodation plan through the Academic Success Centre (ASC) to offer one-time flexibility when a student experiences uncontrollable external factors that impact their ability to participate in or complete an assessment (e.g.. a student misses a test due to an unexpected illness or emergency). Thoughtful, case‑by‑case flexibility can support student learning.

To learn more about accommodations please see the ADMIN-225-Accommodations for Students with Disabilities and Exceptionalities and note that retroactive accommodation plans operate differently. If you have questions about accommodations, please reach out to the Access and Support Centre.

Meaningful Feedback

Adding humanness into feedback can be a great way to rehumanize your course. Hearing criticism can be difficult, especially when it is attached to passing or failing a course, and it can make students more nervous when performing under pressure. Ensuring criticism is productive and encouraging student growth rather than being deficient-based can support learners to keep trying, and learning, to reach their goals.

Applying strength-based approaches to feedback and grading ensures we are uplifting student’s gifts/strengths, which is just as important as giving feedback for growth. This ensures they know they belong and can see themselves succeeding, while still working on areas of improvement.

There are several types of feedback structures that support strength-based approaches.

The R.I.S.E. Model:

• Reflect, Inquire, Suggest, Elevate
• Reflect: Share what stood out to you and why.
• Inquire: ask questions to gain clarity.
• Suggest: offer suggestions for improvement.
• Elevate: Share encouragement for future situations.

The Sandwich Model

Worried about grading time when considering meaningful feedback?

Ensure you have well-communicated rubrics that tell students exactly what the expectations are for success. FOR JONELLE - To learn about building rubrics please see [link CTL rubric page when created].

Further ways to lesson grading overload is to try specifications-based rubrics, peer grading (Kritik is available to all DC Faculty), or student self-grading to reduce grading overload.