The value of involving students in curriculum redesign

By David Griffin

Updated Mar 07, 2026

Curriculum redesign often stalls when every stakeholder wants something different. A case study from Imperial College London shows what becomes possible when students are treated as partners in redesigning an accredited four-year chemical engineering degree, not just consulted after decisions are made (Chadha et al., 2022).

The paper is useful because it moves beyond a general case for student voice in curriculum design. It shows how student feedback surfaced concrete issues around workload, assessment, and professional development, then informed specific changes to the course.

The main goal of the redesign was to align the degree with the modularised format used by European counterparts. Before starting, however, the authors set end goals that kept students at the centre of the process. They wanted a curriculum that felt less burdensome, more engaging, and better aligned with life after graduation.

The authors used a Theory of Change approach. In practice, that meant defining the desired end state first and then working backwards to identify the steps needed to reach it (Connell and Kubisch, 1998). The benefit of this model was clarity: it gave the team a structured way to connect student evidence to redesign decisions.

To capture both current and retrospective views, the team gathered input from current and former students through focus groups, surveys, and individual interviews. Their feedback revealed three main priorities:

Wellbeing and support
Interactive teaching and assessment
Personal and professional development

Wellbeing and Support

More than a third of surveyed students said the programme did not provide a reasonable work-life balance. Interviewees described stress and sustained pressure, and some felt mental health concerns were not being addressed by staff. The takeaway for programme teams is clear: workload design and pastoral support cannot be treated as separate issues.

Interactive Teaching and Assessment

Perhaps surprisingly, most students felt the quantity and difficulty of coursework and exams were reasonable. The bigger problem was time management and how pressure accumulated across the programme. Survey responses also showed a preference for active learning over passive delivery, and for collaboration over competition. For curriculum teams, that means assessment design should improve how learning feels day to day, not just rebalance the volume of work, a point echoed in work on student voice in assessment practices.

Personal and professional development

Most students were confident in the programme's ability to develop their intellectual skills, but they felt less prepared in practical terms. They also wanted stronger support around career planning and professional development. That matters because students judge a curriculum not only by what it teaches, but by how well it prepares them for work.

In response, the authors introduced several changes from spring 2018 onwards.

These included the following:

Annual study hours, which had ranged from 1575 to 1825 depending on the year of study, were reduced to 1499 across all years to address workload concerns directly.
Assessments in some classes were redesigned to spread pressure more evenly, with coursework added where grades had previously depended on a single exam.
Compulsory tutorials were replaced with optional-attendance sessions.
A wellbeing adviser was recruited to offer one-to-one support.

The team also created a working group to investigate concerns about assessment and group work, including questions of group work assessment, while keeping students involved in the discussion. At the same time, staff were encouraged to build more active learning into the revised curriculum. The result was not a single policy change, but a broader shift towards a more responsive student experience.

The full impact of the redesign was difficult to measure in the short term. The COVID-19 pandemic then pushed the institution into remote and blended learning, which made it harder to isolate the effects of the new curriculum. Even so, the paper points to several useful conclusions.

The Theory of Change model gave the team a practical roadmap and made the redesign process more transparent to students. It also positioned students as partners whose views could shape decisions at each stage. The main limitation the authors note is that the model is linear, so it can be harder to adapt when unexpected events disrupt the plan.

This is only one example of curriculum planning, but it makes a broader point many institutions still miss. Students are not just recipients of a curriculum, they can help design it. If you want redesign decisions to land, involve students early, show how feedback changes the course, and keep tracking whether those changes improve the experience.

FAQ

Q: How were the specific methods of collecting student feedback (focus groups, surveys, and individual interviews) chosen, and how did each method contribute differently to understanding student needs and experiences?

A: Together, the three methods balanced breadth with depth. Focus groups helped surface shared frustrations and the language students used with one another. Surveys showed how widespread particular issues were across the cohort. Individual interviews created space for more detailed or sensitive accounts. Used together, the methods reduced the risk of redesigning around only the loudest voices.

Q: What specific text analysis techniques were employed to analyse qualitative feedback from students, and how did these techniques help in identifying the major areas of importance (wellbeing and support, interactive teaching and assessment, personal and professional development)?

A: The article does not name a formal text analysis workflow. In practice, feedback like this is usually reviewed through thematic or content analysis, where comments are coded and grouped into recurring patterns, often using a student feedback analysis glossary to keep terms consistent. That kind of structured review helps teams move from hundreds of individual remarks to a smaller set of priorities they can act on, such as workload, assessment design, and career development.

Q: What measures are being considered or implemented to continuously incorporate student voice in the curriculum development process beyond the initial redesign phase, especially in adapting to unforeseen challenges like the COVID-19 pandemic?

A: The post focuses on the initial redesign, so it does not set out a full long-term feedback system. A sensible next step would be to build student voice into regular review cycles through repeat surveys, follow-up focus groups, and clear feedback channels during delivery. That matters most when conditions change quickly, because institutions need a way to detect emerging issues before they become entrenched.

References:

Chadha, D., Campbell, J., Maraj, M., Brechtelsbauer, C., Kogelbauer, A., et al. (2022) Engaging Students to Shape Their Own Learning: Driving Curriculum Re-design using a Theory of Change Approach. Educ. Chem. Eng. 38 (2022) 14-21
DOI: 10.1016/j.ece.2021.10.001

Connell, J.P. and Kubisch, A.C. (1998) Applying a Theory of Change Approach to the Evaluation of Comprehensive Community Initiatives: Progress, Prospects, and Problems. The Aspen Institute, USA.
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