With the support of the EC many European Master Programmes are currently being (and will be) developed. Not all of them come to life as “real programmes”, but some end together with the project- or development life cycle and never run at universities. Especially the shift from input to output orientation forces universities to adjust their curriculum development and simultaneously develop new strategic directions and processes. These changes and adjustments take place on a system, an institutional and on individual level.
This paper will discuss a newly developed approach on a market- skills- and competences- oriented curriculum development process in an international environment. The paper and presentation will give some insights on the difficulties but also provide positive aspects of a curriculum development process at European level. Moving from the single institutional process view to a multilateral curriculum development, the main critical factors of the development process will be discussed. The necessity of customizing a programme to the market, the topic, and the institution is the basic element of our approach. Further questions like: How to use the prior experience with curriculum development processes at partner universities? How to manage the links between input and output during the development phase? How to analyse - in some cases create - the market for the specific curriculum? - All these are relevant questions for curriculum designers. This paper will show the theoretical management approach of the combination of input- and output-based curriculum design.
Finally with a curriculum development case study based on the Danube University Krems experiences as a project coordinator from the European “Higher Education Management and Development” ERASMUS LLL Framework project the practical relevance of the new approach will be discussed.