Why is it so important to renew our curriculum now?
We are innovating to meet the challenges of a more competitive environment, because our students need new capabilities to succeed in the disrupted future world of work – and because our society, and our Greater Western Sydney communities, need universities to offer an education for new ways of ‘being’ in the world.
There seem to be a lot of DVC(A) projects going on?
Yes, there are several major initiatives underway – including Western Sydney Online, however they all work towards the common goal of transforming our educational offerings so we can better meet the needs of new students seeking new careers in our rapidly changing world.
Why do we need a simpler and shared degree-architecture?
Our current degree structures don’t always provide meaningful choices for students and don’t allow individual staff or Schools to easily innovate and respond to emerging opportunities. At present we have over 320 unique degrees; each is developed and managed as an individual offering. Some have different names but almost identical content. Most of our degree structures allow limited opportunities to embed different study choices by students once they enrol. The idiosyncratic nature of our degree structures makes it difficult to embed innovative elements at scale, and necessitates a cumbersome approval process for any new courses or changes.
Will we launch some really exciting new courses?
Absolutely! We need to first renew and streamline the courses that are our current ‘core business’. However we also need to look to the future and develop new course offerings that will attract different student cohorts (diversify load), for example our WSU online partnership with OES and our new partnership with the Sydney Institute of Business Technology to offer the option of a Sydney City Campus for a new cohort of students. We will also build on our external partnerships to offer education opportunities that will look very different to our current degrees.
Will we stop offering degrees and just deal in blockchain credentials?
We are a university and we need to both acknowledge our social obligation and play to our strengths so we will continue to offer degrees that are relevant to our students. We will also work to improve access to education for those who don’t want or need to enrol in a degree. This will see us develop innovative stackable credentials based on learning in work and society, and new entry (and re-entry) pathways into more traditional degrees.
What’s the 21C plan at a glance?
This is a three year project to co-create our future curriculum in three overlapping stages. In 2017 we agreed on the basic architecture for our degrees so we can share learning experiences between degrees, and created opportunities for new signature learning experiences within our degrees. As a community we explored how the ‘Future of Work’ might usefully disrupt university curriculum. We also expanded our partnerships, and started to co-design and create new University-wide elements to embed within our shared degree structures. In 2018 we will begin to implement those more coherent structures. Students, staff and external partners will work together to co-create new curriculum elements, new courses, and new education opportunities that go beyond traditional courses. The focus for 2019 will be ensuring our curriculum renewal is sustainable and efficiently supported by University systems. Throughout the process we will ensure staff, students and partners are supported and empowered to lead the work.
When will our students see our new curriculum?
Some of the ‘Signature learning experiences’ of our curriculum will be apparent to commencing students in 2018 as we give new prominence to existing elements in new marketing and communications. The additional benefits flowing from simpler shared architectures will begin to be available to students commencing in 2019. New courses and new education opportunities that go beyond traditional courses will be available from 2019.
What might our new curriculum look like to students?
Our new curriculum will offer simpler pathways and explicit signature learning opportunities leading to qualifications that will build our graduates’ employment prospects and successes and equip them as capable citizens. This will take different forms depending on the range of degree structures we co-create.
Why don't we just enrol more international students like other universities do?
We are able to enrol many more international students than we currently do and we are working to increase the number of international students who choose to study at Western.
Why can’t we just update all our courses before they run in 2018?
We have nearly 42,000 students already studying with us – we need to meet our commitments to those students, and preserve and further enhance the excellent reputation many of our current programs have by carefully renewing them. We also need to look to the future and develop new courses that will probably look very different to our current degrees.
What is the Course and Load Planning Group doing?
The Course and Load Planning Group is the Steering Group for the 21st Century Project. It is also working to develop a data driven set of ‘Indicators of Course Sustainability’ that will assist the University to develop and manage a more sustainable and viable portfolio of courses; we need to know when to support, expand and retire courses.
Curriculum reviews have been done before, why is this project any different?
Schools routinely engage in curriculum reviews. This project seeks to realise the significant learning potential of our partnerships with industry and our community. It will embed distinctive ‘partnership pedagogies’ across the new simplified structure of all of our degrees and allow us to tell a more coherent institutional story about our University’s educational value.
How will we change how we engage with external partners?
Schools have many existing industry and community partners and in some cases all we will do is make our partnerships more visible to students in our curriculum. There will be an increased focus on Work Integrated Learning. Our new curriculum and co-curriculum learning experiences will be co-designed with our partners to deliver a distinctive competitive edge to our graduates in the future workforce.