The following post was written by BILT’s Academic Director, Alvin Birdi.
adaptable, confident, knowledgeable, cognitively and practically resilient and innovative, and aware of their social responsibilities as citizens of contemporary, globalized societies”.
That was how the ambition of Bristol Futures was articulated in 2016 when it was adopted as a central initiative by the University, a way of reimagining its education. Bristol Futures meant building skills and a reflective approach through our programmes, providing opportunities for multidisciplinary and challenge-led learning, engagement with the community and employers and study abroad. These ambitions remain unabated in Bristol Futures which has recently moved to a new phase of activity.
To date, study skills provision and personal development planning (PDP) have been established to support the Bristol Skills Framework; there are freely available online courses on the three broad Bristol Futures themes of sustainable futures, innovation and enterprise and global citizenship; provision for professional and community engagement has been enhanced and some optional credit-bearing units have been created. But Bristol Futures does not end there.
The next phase of Bristol Futures is tasked with embedding the vision above into the core of our assessment, teaching and curriculum in all our programmes. This ambitious work comprises aligning all aspects of a degree programme so that they realise the student outcomes described above in an integrated and developmental way over the programme. That means programme level assessment and an active and challenge-led pedagogy as well as opportunities for working and studying with organisations outside the University.
What has BILT to do with any of this? We have supported and will continue to work with the University in furthering its ambitions with Bristol Futures, particularly around programme level assessment, new and innovative pedagogies that emphasise active and challenge-led learning and the reform of curricula to become more inclusive and receptive to the Bristol Futures themes.
To this end, we now have three BILT Bristol Futures Academic Fellows who will take a lead on the intellectual development of the three Bristol Futures themes. They are Chris Priest, who will lead the theme of sustainable futures; Madhu Krishnan who leads the global citizenship theme; and Dave Jarman who is leading on innovation and enterprise. These leads will be working with BILT student fellows to develop and provide resources to help colleagues conceptualise the themes and to embed them into our programmes of study. Websites on each them are currently under development.
