Sheffield University adopted modularisation and semesterisation in 1994.  We may now be on the brink of turning the clock back in some ways.  Today I met with the colleague from Learning and Teaching Services who has been given the task of administrator to what is likely to become a significant project.  We are responding to repeated calls from some parts of the university to introduce change.  But we are aware that there are some supporters of the status quo - in particular, students who have come through very strongly modularised structures in schools and colleges and who fear change.

There are really three elements to the issue - the modularisation of degree programmes; the size, shape and timing of the modules; and the types and timing of assessment associated with the overall structure.  But in order to respond to the demands for change to one, two or all three of these structural elements, we need to understand what the current structures don't allow us to do, and we will also need to come up with a new structrue that is coherent across the institution as a whole.  We do currently have certain unmodularised and unsemesterised degere programmes (Medicine and Dentistry) but they exist with virtually no teaching connections with programmes in other departments.  One of the things that modularisation has enabled us to do is to introduce many innovative cross-departmental or cross-faculty programmes, making use of the common currency of the 10 or 20 credit module taught within a 12 week block. 

My own view is that we should retain modularisation. Systems for the recording of higher education perfomance throughout the world are based around a concept of units of learning and assessment - often of varying sizes.  The calculations that result in an American Grade Point Average invoilve weightings according to the credit values of individual units: similarly the European Credit Transfer System (ECTS) reflects unit 'size' in its recording of achievement.

But I would like the university to be open to many different ways of delivering units other than the standard 10 or 20 credit undergraduate unit, or the stanard 15 credit postgraduate module, taught throughout a whole semester. There are many units that need delivery across a whole academic year; there are others that would benefit from being delivered on an intensive one-week basis.  Revising our expectations on module timing might enable us to bring accredited summer schools, work placements and field classes into students' profiles, even though they are vacation 'add-ons'. 

Finally, the issue of assessment will no doubt cause much debate - characterised as 'learn and be examined in discrete units' or 'learn and be examined in the round.'  Modularisation in 1994 ushered in the former (although in reality that had already effectively been the structure for many earlier years in many parts of the university).  At the moment I would favour a combination of the two assessment philosophies - each being appropriate for certain types of learning.

But this is the start of a debate.  What we planned today was an exercise to ascertain the views of faculties. When we then try to reconicle them the fun will begin.