week 2

Video instructions that accompany these written instructions are available under the Module 2 Watch Items.

Overview

During this course, you will be developing your own master’s degree program. Moving forward, this will be known as The Curriculum Design Project. This project will be compiled as six separate parts. In order to develop an effective strategy for creating a master’s degree, a study of what other schools offer can be very valuable.

Instructions

In this first part of the curriculum design project, you will provide a comparison study of curricula from benchmark institutions (institutions that offer similar programs to the one you are seeking to design. So, in order for the students to effectively complete the benchmark analysis, you will need to decide what kind of masters program you wish to create in this course.

The purposes for this benchmark analysis are to:

1. Learn about what other institutions of higher learning are doing,

2. Create a standard against which your program can be measured during program assessment,

3. Demonstrate to an Accrediting agency that there is a precedent for the kind of program you are seeking to offer,

4. Stir the imagination as you think through what you should include in your program.

5. Discover how to stack your program against a competitor institution.

The below is an example for you to use for this portion of the project. You need to find programs for 5 benchmark institutions and complete this template for each of them. A blank template is available as a separate download. Simply copy and paste this template for each of them. Add or delete rows as necessary (usually, you can select the final row and right click for options to insert more rows or delete cells.)

Tip: Any institute of higher learning has a website where this information can be easily found. You may use Liberty University as a frame of reference, but you cannot include LU programs in this project.

Each template should include each of the following:

1. Name of the institution

2. Physical address

3. Web address

4. Name of the Masters degree you are comparing

5. The format of the program (resident, online, or both)

6. Total credit hours required

7. All coursework required including all of the course information.

Instructions: Choose a 30–36-hour graduate degree and complete the below template for 5 institutes of higher learning that offer that degree or something comparable. Remember, you may NOT use Liberty University! The submitted project should include all 5 completed templates in a single word document.

Below is the template you should use with completed information from a graduate degree at Liberty University as an example.

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