Modeling and Architecting Educational Frameworks

Nowadays, there are several program criteria that are proposed for accreditation. However, up to represent various accreditation bodies’ requirements, diversity of disciplines, and specific national contexts, no global and unified framework for higher education has emerged. As such, the ability of educational organizations to work together is often hard to ensure. Following constructive alignment principles, an educational program relies on three main pillars: (i) an intended curriculum, (ii) a taught curriculum, and (iii) a validated learned curriculum. At the core of program descriptions, those three views share concepts, such as learning outcomes. To enable interoperability among existing programs and frameworks, and sustain flexibility and evolution of standards, it is relevant to clarify common core concepts belonging to various frameworks. A system modeling approach is obvious for meeting such interoperability challenges, since it makes it possible to meaningfully, unambiguously, and accurately specify concepts, relations, and viewpoints among stakeholders. The CDIO Initiative celebrates its 10 anniversary by proposing today a mature integrated framework for engineering programs. Structured in twelve standards, it permits to create, to reform, or to continuously improve engineering educational programs. It encourages introducing appropriate pedagogical methods and also addresses student workspaces and staff workforce. Based on the CDIO standards as a proof of concept, this paper proposes to model three views based on structural diagrams. Significant relations between educational concepts are then defined. Furthermore, getting its inspiration from an architectural approach, this paper significantly contributes to lay the foundations of an architectural meta-model for describing complex educational systems, which will contribute to tackling interoperability and flexibility issues.