A framework for describing and comparing courses and curricula

Abstract

Curriculum and course planning is a key step in developing quality educational programs, but current practices very often lack a systematic approach. This article addresses this issue by refining and expanding the concept of Testable, Reusable Unit of Cognition (Truc). The methodology allows modeling courses and verifying compliance of a given course to a given description. It also makes it possible to describe precisely what students have previously learned and, as a result, adapt the teaching to their specific needs. The article presents a case study of comparing a subset of two introductory programming textbooks and describes the application TrucStudio that supports the methodology.