Key success factors in the curriculum design of higher education in Taiwan

Higher education has devoted to developing college students being lifelong learners in the past years. This study therefore tends to understand the learning contents of higher education, find out the classification and the trend of such contents, and further discuss the key success factors in the curriculum design of higher education in Taiwan, including the procedure, key points, and critical factors. The present situation of curriculum design is investigated, and the key factors are analyzed with Delphi Method and AHP. Total 380 instructors and students from 19 public and private universities are distributed the questionnaire, and 247 valid copies are retrieved, with the retrieval rate 65%. The research results show that the dimension of Analysis, weighted 0.275, is mostly emphasized, about 27.5% of global priority, followed by Development (weighted 0.218) and Design (weighted 0.193). From the global priority of the key success factors in the curriculum design of higher education, the top five, within 13, evaluation criteria stressed by the experts cover (1) Course objective, 0.143 of Global priority, (2) Learner characteristics, 0.129 of Global priority, (3) Material production, 0.106 of Global priority, (4) Word choice, 0.093 of Global priority, and (5) Learning result, 0.086 of Global priority.