Diversity and the future-ready graduate

“My future is not your future.” Diverse groups have differing educational needs and goals, and defining the term “future-ready graduate” requires us to reflect not only on technology but on factors such as gender, indigeneity, economic status and location. In some cases the role and meaning of education itself need discussion. How can our global community move into our shared future in ways that not only address future technological and economic needs, but also honour differences?

Future-ready teaching methods

How will students be learning in an unknown future? What formats and methods will they require? How can our institutions prepare and respond, and keep education both relevant and accessible?

Future-ready assessment

Inspired, forward-looking developments in education often fail at the assessment stage, where old-fashioned methods still prevail. How can we retain the momentum of innovation right through assessment? What new perspectives are needed? How can we leverage the many digital tools we now have at our disposal?

Future-ready disciplines and curricula

The growth of knowledge is exponential and technology is developing rapidly and radically. How do we ensure that curricula remain relevant and responsive to contextual challenges and to student needs? How do we best work to decolonise western-centric curricula and integrate ways of knowing and learning from the Global South? How do we embed a necessary critique of existing power relations that restrict opportunity and potential? What competences do future graduates need and how do we anticipate these? How do we prepare graduates to be future-ready in a constantly changing digital world, and for the challenges of artificial intelligence?

Future-ready professional development

As the needs of students change, so do those of academics. How will professional development look in the future, and how should our practices as educational developers change? What is the role of the scholarship of teaching and learning in propagating a future-ready mindset?

Future-ready educational developers

How will educational development evolve? What mindset is required to be future-ready, and how do we develop it? What tools will help us to remain innovative and effective?

Future-ready universities

To be future-ready, how will our organisations need to develop? What forms of leadership and collaboration are required, and how do we cultivate them? Where does power currently reside inside and outside our organisations, and what stances do we take?

The future is now

What educational developments are already underway which can take us forward into the future?