The holy grail of university education still remains elusive and maybe that is as it should be. Why should one size fit all, the assumption that there is one perfect undergraduate experience at university seems deeply flawed to me. However, that has not stopped armies of academics and commentators writing about it and it is not going to stop me.Society and student needs are changing. There is overwhelming evidence that the majority of the modern students and society want job-readiness to be better than it has been in the past. The student themselves are changing, there a mixture of ages at all levels, more international students, more service needs for mental health and accommodation, more indigenous students to name a few trends.
Universities have responded to these changes in various ways. Work integrated learning (coop placements, internships, service learning) is everywhere, incubators and design (maker) labs have sprouted on campuses and student services have improved. But what of the underlying pedagogy and curriculum – this is where things are harder. So what would my ideal undergraduate experience look like …
- Admissions would screen for intellectual curiosity and perseverance as well as grades so admissions would be selective.
- The curriculum would be competency based allowing for extensive PLAR and flexible admissions.
- The program would have on-line and face to face options allowing students to mix and match. Bootcamps could be incorporated.
- The program would be based on a strong learning, teaching and research framework.
- Every students would have a work integrated learning experience and a research experience.
- A generic skills framework would be embedded into the curriculum.
and that I think would be it for me. The devil of course is in the details. Would it be offered in a semester system? What would the maximum class size be? How do you really do competency-based education? How many international students? What would the IELTS requirements be? What DLE (Digital Learning Environment) would support the program? What would the degrees be in? Would you incorporate MOOCs? What should the skills be that are embedded in the degree? How much would it cost? How would orientation and bridging work? Would there be opportunities to study abroad? How would you mix differing ages and experience? How would you build a self-supporting learning community? How would you encourage faculty and students to innovate even more with the curriculum? How would you maximize flexibility? How would you transcript the degree to capture the skills the student has?
I have some tentative answers to all of the above, but there really is no right answer other than to take an educated guess and get on with it. Is anyone actually doing all of this comprehensively at the undergraduate level? Not that I have found yet.