Navigating through COVID-19 complexity

An assessment-centered transdisciplinary approach for internationalizing the curriculum

Abstract

COVID-19 has led to tremendous stress on curriculum design for frontline academics at the course level. Australian universities are struggling with the complexities of meeting domestic and international students’ diverse needs, their university’s quality teaching standards, and the government’s recent higher education reforms that focus primarily on national, rather than global, priorities. This study proposes an assessment-centered transdisciplinary approach (ACTA) to address these needs and to ensure continuation of an internationalized curriculum despite the national focus of the reforms. ACTA at a course level not only motivates students to learn, but also enhances their understanding of competence by focusing curriculum effort on assessment, with resources, support and evaluation built around it, which benefits both domestic and international students. ACTA will also ensure a minimum standard for shortening courses with modularization and takes into account student feedback in course redevelopment for more sustainable curriculum design.