The modular curriculum – what to do with all the bricks in the wall?

Andy Pitchford
Head of CETI

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26 March 2025

One of the great challenges that face those who work in education is imagining alternatives to the way we currently work.

We are all so acculturated to the norms of the education that are promoted by the societies that we inhabit that it can be very difficult to see which aspects of learning are inescapable, and present in all forms of schooling over time, and which are a ‘construction’ or an accident of history. Understanding this can be the key to identifying those aspects that might be subject to critical thought or innovation of some kind.

The modular nature of higher education in the UK and Europe is a case in point. As educators, we all share some scepticism of the ways in which degree courses are broken down into their component elements. We become frustrated by the inability of learners to see the connections between the various building blocks or between years or levels, and by the tendency to ‘consume and forget’ – the notion that learners engage superficially with a view to passing whatever test they face, and fail to realise the significance of the threshold concepts through which they have passed.

Modular learning can also encourage us to maintain some solitude and avoid collaboration with others. I’m reminded of the colleague at a previous institution who surprised me by explaining how comforting this was: ‘I love my modules – it’s just me and the students,’ he told me. ‘I don’t have any of the awkwardness of dealing with my peers and I can run things efficiently and at a pace that suits my research and other priorities.’

But it is of course true to say that higher learning has not always been designed in this way. Modularisation is a product of mostly well-intentioned university policies in the 1980s and 1990s, which aimed to enhance student choice and-self management, promote inter-disciplinarity and breadth and also to reduce costs and maximise efficiency. We can all imagine a scenario where students selecting ‘bite-size’ units of learning at their own pace would be advantageous, but those benefits are probably harder to discern now. Instead, most of us struggle with the inflexibility of the Tetris-like structures of course maps, and probably assume that the resultant constraints are unavoidable and that there is little that we can do to break free from the rigidity that it represents.

Cracking open the curriculum

This is where I am convinced that we can use authentic learning approaches to imagine new and enlightening approaches. I’ve argued elsewhere that a key component of authentic learning is the idea of students constructing new knowledge, products or artefacts for the benefit of others – beyond the walls of the particular module under consideration. These others might be communities, neighbourhoods, organisations, business or charities, to offer some examples. But they could also be learners at other stages of their qualification or pathway. By breaking the seal of the module in this way, we are piercing the artificial divide which is otherwise so disabling to our imaginations. This process relies upon us repositioning the learner, and envisaging them less as a consumer and more as the constructor of knowledge, but it will encourage us to open up new connections, synergies and applications.

While it helps us at Westminster to describe these processes as ‘authentic,’ this thinking also owes much to three particular scholars. The first of these is the late Mike Neary, whose work on the Student as Producer helps us to shake free from some of the shackles of a modular mindset. Then Ronald Barnett’s various considerations of curricula in the future and the ‘ecological university’ can help us to envisage new associations and inter-connections between different forms of knowledge. Finally it is important to acknowledge Dilly Fung’s leadership of the Connected Curriculum at UCL, and the foundations that her work provides for all of us as we try to break the artificial divides that modularised learning has imposed.

Each of these writers encourage us to reimagine the relationships for which we have some responsibility. How can we use our influence as teachers, academics or knowledge workers to open up modules or units, so that they are no longer hermetically sealed containers for the consumption of information? How can we encourage learners to apply the knowledge that they construct, to see and sense its relevance and its potential benefit to others?

I’d like to suggest that a series of metaphors or analogies could be used to help us picture the relationships between modules or units, and between modules and their newly awoken stakeholders. My hope is that they might represent ways to imagine the role of the curriculum and the university that can helpfully stimulate our thinking.

Conclusion

I’m pitching five potential metaphors that might serve this purpose. Each is an attempt to paint a picture that can help us to renew learning, assessment or curricula more broadly – within the confines that we currently inhabit.

Click on the idea that sparks your interest to find out more.

1. A ‘circular economy of knowledge’
2. The curriculum as social enterprise
3. A curriculum for wellbeing
4. A commissioning model for the construction of knowledge
5. The curriculum as festival

Image: builtbymath via UnSplash

About the Author

Andy is the Head of the Centre for Education and Teaching Innovation at the University of Westminster. He has led community engagement initiatives in universities for the past 30 years and was awarded an Advance HE National Teaching Fellowship in 2015 in recognition of this work. With David Owen and Ed Stevens, he published the Handbook of Authentic Learning with Routledge in 2021.