how to build learning pathways through your course

Page last updated:
26 Jan 2024

To succeed, any student needs to navigate a learning pathway though their course. 

Courses that are designed to provide inclusive opportunities for students to engage behaviourally (through excellent course planning and management), conceptually (through appropriate challenge and development), personally and socially (through student support and course community) will maximise student participation and success. The diagram below represents course planning, course management, student support, course community, student development and student challenge as six segments. This is useful as it clearly shows the interrelationships of functions at different stages of a course.

Decorative (Student Outcomes & Teaching Excellence Wheel 2022)

The Centre for Learning and Teaching has collaborated with colleagues from across the institution to bring together resources, links and case studies for each segment to help you to plan and manage your course to support your students and build a community where each student can develop and be appropriately challenged to achieve their potential: 

Course planning: course orientation, planning of assessment, planning of learning resources, and accrediting achievement

Course management: practical and professional orientation; practical and professional guidance, course operation and working with students as partners, professional development

Student support: personal integration, personalised learning, personal, pastoral and academic advice, personal development

Course community: social integration, student participation, peer learning and collaborative working

Student development: academic preparation, developmental feedback, teaching, independent learning

Student challenge: disciplinary preparation, assessment design, learning opportunities, development of subject knowledge

The Learning Pathway

Excellent course planning requires a curriculum focused on course orientation and induction, constructive alignment of assessment and resources, and a clear and transparent route to the achievement of a qualification.

Excellent course management requires a professional learning environment focused on a practical orientation to the Institution, the locale and the community, providing day to day organisation, listening and responding to the student body and establishing professional expectations and behaviours.

Excellent student support requires an inclusive environment which values and promotes individual student perspectives and provides personalised academic support and guidance for each student to develop individually.

An excellent learning community requires a focus on social integration, encouraging students to feel a sense of belonging and to learn from others through teaching approaches that involve regular interaction, integrated feedback and opportunities for students to develop as collaborative learners.

Excellent student development requires offering teaching approaches that prioritise students' academic preparation and academic literacies, thought provoking teaching and timely, formative feedback that empowers students to become independent learners.

An excellent learning community requires a focus on social integration, encouraging students to feel a sense of belonging and to learn from others through teaching approaches that involve regular interaction, integrated feedback and opportunities for students to develop as collaborative learners.

Excellent course planning requires a curriculum focused on course orientation and induction, constructive alignment of assessment and resources, and a clear and transparent route to the achievement of a qualification.

Excellent course management requires a professional learning environment focused on a practical orientation to the Institution, the locale and the community, providing day to day organisation, listening and responding to the student body and establishing professional expectations and behaviours.

Excellent student support requires an inclusive environment which values and promotes individual student perspectives and provides personalised academic support and guidance for each student to develop individually.

An excellent learning community requires a focus on social integration, encouraging students to feel a sense of belonging and to learn from others through teaching approaches that involve regular interaction, integrated feedback and opportunities for students to develop as collaborative learners.

Excellent student development requires offering teaching approaches that prioritise students' academic preparation and academic literacies, thought provoking teaching and timely, formative feedback that empowers students to become independent learners.

An excellent learning community requires a focus on social integration, encouraging students to feel a sense of belonging and to learn from others through teaching approaches that involve regular interaction, integrated feedback and opportunities for students to develop as collaborative learners.