D630 Designing Curriculum and Instruction I carries catalog number EDUC 5069 and is worth 3 competency units. It covers the theories, design principles and evaluation models that determine curriculum quality, and it culminates in a curriculum analysis. D630 and EDUC 5069 name one requirement. The word analysis is the whole assignment: you are being asked to judge a curriculum against stated criteria, and a document that describes one instead will not meet the aspect.
Analysis means criteria applied, not opinion offered
Most students submit one of two things when asked to analyse a curriculum. The first is a summary: this unit covers these topics in this order over six weeks. The second is a reaction: the pacing feels rushed and the readings are dated. Neither is analysis. Analysis is what happens when you state a criterion, state what evidence would satisfy it, look at the curriculum, and reach a judgment you could defend to the person who wrote it.
The theory in this course exists to supply those criteria. Different traditions in curriculum thought disagree about what a curriculum is for, and that disagreement is useful rather than academic. A curriculum designed to transmit an established body of knowledge should be judged on coherence, sequence and fidelity to the discipline. One designed around learner experience should be judged on relevance, agency and the quality of the questions it opens. One designed for social outcomes should be judged on whose voices appear and what action it makes possible. Judging a curriculum by criteria drawn from a tradition it never claimed to belong to produces a critique that misses.
The design principles supply the second layer. Alignment between goals, learning experiences and assessment. Coherence across a sequence rather than a set of independent units. Vertical articulation, so that what a student meets in one year prepares them for the next. Sufficient depth for the standards claimed. Accessibility for the range of learners in the room. These are checkable against a document.
Every task closes as Competent or Not Competent. Nothing here produces a letter grade or an ordinary grade point average, and the 3 competency units describe how much of a six month flat rate term the analysis work is expected to occupy.
Turning aspects into an analysis plan
WGU keeps scoring detail inside your Course of Study rather than the public catalog, so count the aspects on your rubric first. Each scores separately and each has to reach a 2 for the task to pass. In this course the aspect students most often lose is the one asking for evaluation against a model, because they describe the model in one section and then analyse without it in the next.
The budget, worked. Assume six scored aspects and directions pointing near 2,500 words. Reserve 200 words to introduce the curriculum under review and 150 to close, leaving 2,150 of scored body. Flat that is 358 each. Weight it: 520 to the aspect covering your evaluation criteria and model, 480 to the analysis itself, and 287 to each of the remaining four. That comes to 2,148.
Write the criteria before you open the curriculum. Criteria derived after reading are criteria shaped by what you already noticed, and an evaluator can usually tell because every criterion has a finding attached and none of them came out clean.
A shape for a curriculum analysis
Where a template is supplied, use it. Where the arrangement is yours, this order keeps the judgment traceable from criterion to evidence to verdict.
| Section | What it settles | The evidence it uses |
|---|---|---|
| The curriculum under review | What it is, who publishes it, for which grade and subject, over what span | The document itself, cited |
| Its stated purpose | What the curriculum claims to do, in its own words | Front matter, philosophy statements, teacher guidance |
| Evaluation framework | The model and criteria you are applying, and why they fit this curriculum | Curriculum theory literature, cited |
| Alignment analysis | Whether goals, activities and assessments point at the same thing | A mapping of objectives against tasks and assessments |
| Coherence and sequence | Whether the order builds and whether the pieces connect | Unit to unit progression traced through the document |
| Access and representation | Who this curriculum works for and who it does not | Reading demand, materials, examples, and whose experience appears |
| Judgment and recommendations | The verdict against each criterion and what you would change | Your analysis, with priorities and reasons |
The alignment row is where the concrete work lives. Build a simple mapping of stated objectives against the tasks that develop them and the assessments that measure them, and the gaps announce themselves. An objective with no assessment and an assessment with no objective are both findings, and both are far more persuasive than a paragraph of impressions.
Writing a judgment somebody could argue with
The strongest analyses in this course share a quality that is easy to describe and hard to produce: they are decidable. A reader can tell exactly what verdict was reached, on what grounds, and could disagree with it specifically.
Three habits produce that. Name the criterion before the finding, so the reader knows what standard is being applied. Quote or cite the part of the curriculum that supports the finding, with a page or unit reference, because a claim about a document that does not point into the document is unverifiable. And state the strength of your evidence, since a gap you found in three consecutive units is a stronger finding than one you found in a single lesson.
Balance matters too, but not the false kind. An analysis that awards each criterion a mild positive and a mild negative reads as evasion. Where a curriculum is genuinely strong on alignment and genuinely weak on access, say both plainly and at different lengths. What you are avoiding is not criticism; it is unsupported criticism.
Finish with recommendations that are ordered. Three changes listed as equal choices tell a reader nothing about what matters. One change named as the first priority, with a reason and a consequence attached, is the recommendation of somebody who has actually formed a view.
Sourcing for a curriculum analysis
- Cite the curriculum itself as a source with publisher, edition and year, and reference specific units or pages when you make a claim about it.
- Use curriculum theory literature for your evaluation model rather than a general education blog, since the aspect is asking you to apply a recognised framework.
- Cite the standards document you are checking alignment against, and quote standards rather than paraphrasing them so the verbs survive.
- Where you use published reviews of a curriculum, treat them as one source among several and check their criteria before adopting their conclusions.
- Follow the citation style your directions name and cite at the point of claim, including inside any mapping table.
What separates Competent from a return
Aspects score independently, so a curriculum analysis usually returns for one identifiable reason. The three that recur are description presented as analysis, criteria named but never applied, and recommendations with no basis in the findings.
- Every finding is preceded by the criterion it is measured against.
- Every claim about the curriculum points at a specific part of it.
- The evaluation model appears in the analysis, not only in the section describing it.
- The judgment is stated plainly rather than left for the reader to infer.
- Recommendations are prioritised and each traces to a finding.
Performance assessment work at WGU can be revised and resubmitted with no grade penalty, so a return costs calendar rather than standing. Inside a six month flat rate term calendar decides how many courses close, and writing the criteria before reading the curriculum is the cheapest protection against the most common return in this course. Where your plan pairs this course with a proctored objective assessment, our boundary is unchanged: preparation only, never sitting or assisting during an assessment, and no request for portal credentials.
Analysis turning into a summary?
Send the D630 rubric and the curriculum you are reviewing. You get criteria drawn from a named model, an alignment mapping to fill, and a judgment structure a reader could argue with.
Six mistakes that stall D630
- Summarising the curriculum. A description of contents is the setup for an analysis, not the analysis.
- Judging by taste. Dated, boring and too fast are reactions. Misaligned to the standard's verb is a finding.
- Choosing a model that does not fit. Applying criteria from one curriculum tradition to a curriculum built on another produces a critique that never engages with what the designers intended.
- Analysing a curriculum you cannot see fully. A single sample unit will not support claims about coherence or vertical articulation, so scope your claims to what you actually have.
- Skipping access. Reading demand, materials cost, language and representation all determine who a curriculum works for, and leaving that out narrows the analysis noticeably.
- Recommendations with no priority. An unordered list of improvements is a wish list rather than professional advice.
Three questions students send about D630
Is D630 the same course as EDUC 5069?
How does D630 differ from D631?
Which curriculum should I analyse?
Where D630 sits in WGU's programs
The July 2026 catalog places this code in 1 current WGU program. Open a program page for the complete standard path and term positions. The live Degree Plan remains authoritative after transfer credit, substitutions, and mentor planning.
The assessments, one by one
The public catalog does not publish this course's PA/OA identity or task count. WGU Tutors publishes at most one PA manual per course and only from a WGU-controlled public rubric. Until that source exists, PA help begins from the student's real Course of Study and OA support remains preparation only.