# Software Development and Tool Support for Curriculum Design: A Systematic Mapping Study
## 4 Results
### RQ3: What Models, Methods, or Techniques Are Used in Developing Technological Tools?  
From the 45 articles selected, 27 present some model, method, or technique in software development, described in Section 3.4. A summary is presented in Table 4. Most commonly used are ontology models to model the instructional process [76; 77], course design [78; 79], competencies [80; 81; 82], effective lessons [83], contents [84] or meso-curriculum components [85].  
[PERSON] and [PERSON] present an ontology that explains the relationships between instructional design concepts such as learning objectives, teaching processes, and the didactic material used to reach the objectives [76]. [PERSON] and [PERSON] present an ontology that represents the assessment activities according to the competency-based model so that teachers, curriculum experts, and other stakeholders can collaborate to improve the relationship between competency assessment and the means to achieve this assessment, such as teaching methods [80].  
On the other hand, [PERSON] and [PERSON] use UML to visualize the design process and to model various components of an online course [86], while [PERSON] uses it for an instructional design system [87].  
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c} \hline \hline
**Name** & **Category** & **Reference** \\ \hline ADDIE & Method & [88] \\ Boehm & Model & [89] \\ CMM & Model & [90] \\ Prototype & Method & [91] \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table}
Table 4: Models, methods, or techniques used.  
Figure 9: Models, methods, and techniques used.  
RQ4: Which Technological Tools Focus on Providing a Solution to the Alignment between Curricular Elements?  
There are 21 articles that mention or attempt to provide a solution to the alignment problem. The alignment mentioned by the authors can be focused either at the meso-curriculum level or at the micro-curricular level as shown in Table 5. Regarding this matter, out of the 21 articles that mention alignment, 15 pertain to tools for the meso-curriculum level, while the remaining six relate to tools for the micro-curriculum level.  
At the meso-curriculum level, the focus, in general, is on aligning course objectives with the program [92; 104; 106; 108] and with industry needs [89; 99; 100; 107]. The micro-curricular level focuses on learning outcomes with assessment activities, learning methodologies, etc. [102; 103; 90; 14]. In general, the issues that these tools attempt to solve are beyond the alignment of curricular elements. The solutions presented can range from software systems [102; 104; 107; 108; 104; 91; 95; 102; 103; 104] to models based on ontologies, UML or quality models [90; 86; 89; 90; 92; 86]. [PERSON] seeks to improve micro-curriculum and meso-curriculum alignment and coherence through a course-level content mapping tool that helps better understand course content and products and plan and communicate a syllbus [101]. [PERSON] et al. [109] proposes tools for transforming curriculum design documents into an XML-based information model for course data, which utilizes a semantic similarity algorithm to align descriptions of different courses in a structured model. Meanwhile, [PERSON] et al. developed web scraping techniques to analyze job postings and compare them with curriculum design, aiming to identify curricular alignment between the current and future job market for upcoming graduates [99]. [PERSON] et al. [100] also explored this concept through their system for aligning with the needs of the labor market. [PERSON] et al. [95] offer several tools to align curricular components, such as learning outcomes, course requirements, learning activities, and assessment, with the European Qualifications Framework (EQF). In Slack, they developed tools using SQL queries and Python scripts to generate a course catalog document and prerequisite diagram [106]. Using their curriculum mapping tool, [PERSON] et al. aligned their medical curriculum with the topics of otorhinolaryngology and head and neck surgery [105].