What does it mean for an institution to recognise Being, not just Knowing?
The Bachelor of Creative Intelligence and Innovation (BCII) is a transdisciplinary, future-facing degree that combines with 25 other core degrees. Its aim is to prepare students with the broad range of 21st century skills that employers want, and equip students with the creative confidence to traverse fields and forge discovery between disciplines. As staff, our purpose and joy comes from seeing transformational results and the satisfaction of working with our future leaders. In our minds, they will need ‘uncommon sense’ to tackle the toughest global, social and organisational challenges of our times, and learn to collaborate in ways that might have been hard to imagine a few years earlier.
As we’ve evolved the programme, we’ve seen some beautiful transdisciplinary practices emerge that allow students to learn from many different types of knowledges. But more importantly, we’ve also developed practices to develop the ‘Knower’ not just the ‘Knowledges.’ This makes sense, as the knower is the one person who will reliably be present across any lifelong learning journey, whilst the knowledge encountered might often be provisional and can change with different contexts.
As part of the First Year and Further Experience Forum, I will be presenting what can loosely be described as a ‘Curriculum for Being’. It starts with a first-year exercise where, instead of doing the usual university ‘Recognition of Prior Learning’, we offer students ‘Recognition of Prior Living.’
What are the experiences that make us unique and what do we bring with us into our educational context? And how can we make sure that we recognise that no student graduates the same?
Join us at the first FFYE forum of 2020 on February 20th, where you can collaborate with peers across disciplines on how you can give recognition to your students for who they are, not just what they know – and to share your ideas on how you might develop a ‘Curriculum for Being’ in your own discipline.