The four main stages in incorporating the AAF as part of CCR were: identifying the
professional requirements early in curriculum development; assessing how these
requirements could be integrated within curricula; ensuring delivery/achievement of such
expectations; and reviewing this integration within existing university policies and the
professional context/requirement. The reason that these procedures were included was to
ensure that the inter-assessor reliability was maintained, and facilitate homogeneity of the
course developers’ perceptions.
Secondly, two focus group discussions, with four course developers in each group, were held
with course developers from the central Teaching and Learning department. This method
has been shown to be useful in gathering data about perceptions and experiences with a
small number of people focusing on a specific area of interest (Creswell, 2012). Each of the
focus groups involved four participants, and were audio recorded, data was gathered in
relation to strengths and weaknesses of the AAF; generating a broad perspective discussion
from within the group. The focus groups allowed participants to communicate freely and
honestly and to draw from each other’s common and differing experiences in order to better
unpack the information and to explain this to the focus group facilitator. Data was analyzed
thematically from verbatim transcripts in relation to usefulness, applicability, acceptability,
and accommodations required during curriculum review.