Watt, C., Ely, P., Chapman, D., 2011.

A service approach to course development

Like many other organizations in both the private and public sectors Higher Education (HE) Institutions are facing challenging and traumatic times as the UK becomes further and mired in the worst economic situation for 60 years. The resulting political, economic and social pressures have led to an increase in politically driven policy reviews and strategic re-alignment that may well change the nature of Higher Education courses and delivery formats for many years to come. There has been a significant shift to-wards greater customer focus that echoes many other government departments with the imperative to drive employability focused curriculum changes increasing. The results of these debates has understandably led to a large number of valuable recommendations being put forward and it is difficult to predict how Universities will react. Without doubt the impact of these pressures on the strategic planning and day-to-day operations of HE Institutions cannot fail to be significant as they contend with major structural, financial and supply chain constraints in an ever increasing competitive marketplace. In this paper we begin to explore how HE education can start to address the issue of delivering value to students by examining how a shift to a paradigm based on lean service design and delivery can add value to course develop processes and outputs.