Course & Curricula Development

When good intentions don’t yet lead to good learning

You care about learning.
You want your course, training or programme to work well.

You prepare carefully. You improve things each year.
And still, something feels slightly off.

Or the programme as a whole makes sense on paper,
yet students experience it as a series of separate parts.

Participants attend — but key ideas don’t quite land.
They complete tasks — yet struggle to apply them later.
Feedback is given — but little changes afterwards.

So improvement keeps returning to the same place:
tweak something, try again next time.

In many courses and programmes I work with, I see people working very hard on details,
while the underlying design question remains unclear.

From questions to workable design choices

This is where I work with educators and teams in higher education and professional organisations.

We start by looking closely at what actually happens during learning.
Where do people hesitate?
What do they try?
Where does understanding break down?

From there we make design choices.

Not abstract principles.
Not a full redesign unless it truly helps.
But deliberate decisions you can act on next week.

This might mean:

• adjusting one assignment that blocks understanding
• clarifying the role of assessment in a course
• reshaping how parts of a programme connect
• deciding what belongs in which year — and what does not
• aligning expectations across courses or instructors
• designing a new learning activity that fits practice

Always grounded in the real situation you work in.

What tends to change

After working together, courses and programmes usually feel calmer.
That shift is often noticeable within a few iterations.

At programme level, choices also become clearer:
what to keep, what to remove, and what belongs where.

Participants understand earlier what matters.
Activities support each other instead of competing for time.
Explanations become shorter because they connect better.

For you and your colleagues:

You can explain why something works.
You build on previous iterations instead of restarting.
Conversations about teaching become more concrete.

Improvement becomes part of the work — not an extra project beside it.

How I approach this

I like working inside the actual course or programme, not next to it.
My background in scientific research and years of teaching and curriculum work shape how I approach these questions, across different disciplines and professional fields.

We use what is already there as our starting point.
Sometimes analytically, sometimes creatively — often both.

My role is to help untangle complex questions and keep choices practical.
Small adjustments where possible, larger changes only when useful.

Having taught and designed courses myself, I know the balancing act between learning goals, assessment, time pressure and institutional realities.

Where helpful, we draw on insights from the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning — not as theory to implement, but as support for better decisions.

The aim is simple:
design choices that keep working, also next year.

Getting in touch

If this sounds familiar, feel free to reach out.

We can start with a short conversation about what you are seeing in your course or programme, and what might help move it forward.

You can message me hereor email me at info@irmact.com.