Haramaya University, College of Education and Behavioral Sciences conducted curriculum review and validation workshop on four MA and two PhD programs at the University’s resource center hall on June 24, 2021. The programs reviewed are Curriculum and Instruction, Curriculum and Quality assurance, Educational Information Management, Leadership and Vocational Education Training and two PhD programs in Adult and Non-formal Education, and Educational Psychology.
Prof. Mengistu Urge, Vice President for Academic Affairs, on his opening speech, said, “Haramaya University is one of the research Universities which are striving to achieve the goals of Ministry of Science and Higher Education (MoSHE) in planning and working towards fulfilling the criteria by expanding post graduate programs.”
Regarding to that,said Prof. Mengistu, “the plan of Haramaya University is to increase PhD programs fromtwenty eight (28)of this time to one hundred (100) in the upcoming ten (10) years as is expected by MoSH, and the MSc programs from one hundred six (106)to more than two hundred (200).
This number of post graduate students to be enrolled in the University must be about 30% of its students’ total population in the coming ten (10) years. Therefore, the current internal curriculum review workshop is very crucial to address the University’s goal and such attempts to increase the post graduate programs are highly appreciable. In the same way, other national curriculum review workshop will be organized in the future.”
Dr. Feyera Densa, the Director of post graduate programs Directorate, in his turn, said “The current curriculum review workshop is a significant workshop as reviewing six curriculums in one day makes it a historic. From the reviewed six Curriculums, one PhD program and two MA programs are new while the rest of them already exist.”
“Currently, many new and existing curriculums are being reviewed in post graduate programs level in a way that they meet the national development plans and the market demand. The internally reviewed curriculums are expected to pass through one another’s checking and validation processes so that they will become functional,” added Dr. Feyera.
Dr. Gemechu Abera, Dean of Education and Behavioral Science College, in his part, said, “Curriculum development is not an easy task and has to be well planned and be purposeful. If we want to work on it, we need to process at the back of our memory whether our curriculum could help the students achieve the intended learning competence or not.”
“These reviewed curriculums need also to be in line with the roadmap to ensure integrated and coherent learning experiences of the students. It should contribute towards their personal, academic and professional learning and development. In short, it is supposed to bring meaningful overall attitudinal change of the students. A curriculum should be updated once after five years to be very good and an acceptable curriculum” added Dr. Gemechu.
The workshop was attended by internal reviewers, examiners as well as the academic community of HU and Constructive Comments and suggestions were forwarded from the reviewers and the participants.
