94753 Designing Regenerative Futures Studio

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Subject handbook information prior to 2025 is available in the Archives.

Description

What if learning environments, initiatives or organisations were more like regenerative ecosystems?

In this subject, participants engage with the challenge of designing professional learning and educational environments tuned to learning and transformation, in response to and in anticipation of inevitable change. They examine regenerative approaches operating in different disciplines, professions or cultures that go beyond sustainable and resilient practices for responding to shocks and stresses in systems, building capability to do and be more than was possible before. Working with external partners, participants collectively explore regenerative principles as they engage in a project-based challenge and envisage transformative pathways to ethical futures. They design and trial small-scale probes to gauge how they might gain insights into future-oriented learning initiatives that anticipate change and generate opportunities for creative, bold reform.

Subject learning objectives (SLOs)

Course intended learning outcomes (CILOs)

This subject contributes specifically to the development of the following course intended learning outcomes:

• Imagine, design and trial transdisciplinary learning environments that promote collective experimentation, generativity and reflexivity (1.2)
• Describe, synthesise and model collective learning situations using various inquiry methods and critically appraising them from different philosophical and theoretical perspectives (2.2)
• Use principled approaches for designing and developing transdisciplinary initiatives, taking into account their moral and cultural dimensions including indigenous knowledge (3.2)

Teaching and learning strategies

Collective learning approaches

In the studio subjects, participants are immersed in complex professional learning / educational challenges that cut across sectors and stakeholders as they work together with external partners and academic researchers to generate new insights and initiatives for action, while also considering the relevance of those developments to their own professional contexts and networks. Learning therefore is highly collaborative and personalised, where participants benefit from interactions with other professionals and also contribute their knowledge, experience and curiosity to the collective’s learning. In the process, participants extend their professional networks and future opportunities for transdisciplinary learning.

Self-paced and face-to-face online learning

Learning in the online studio environment is inquiry-driven, creative and rigorous, where novel ideas and possibilities are imagined, generated and tested on value. The studio therefore involves active learning with professional colleagues, academic researchers and external partners – as well as engagement with cutting ideas in different fields – and provides ongoing opportunities for feedback and “feedforward” from a range of different perspectives and disciplines. The studio space opens up two weeks prior to the official commencement of the subject enabling introductory exploration of ideas and assessments, as well as developing a study plan. Week 1 begins with a face-to-face online seminar, leading into self-paced collective asynchronous learning experiences that run over the first two weeks, enabling participants to engage deeply with key ideas and practices from different disciplines, professions and cultures. Then in Weeks 3 and 4, participants are immersed in intensive face-to-face online workshops on Zoom and collaborative applications to work with their peers, academics and external partners and trial ideas in operation withinparticular situations. The final self-paced, mentored week provides the space to probe, make sense of and extend what occurred in this studio setting, using different frameworks, philosophical or theoretical perspectives and in terms of learning, designing or inquiry/research.

Professional practice integration

Participants undertake activities collaboratively within the studio collective – whether during the self-paced session or intensive workshops – that are tuned to their professional requirements and interests. Subsequently, the experiences and insights generated within the studio’s collaborative environment provide, for example, rich data and material to interpret, analyse and think with and that subsequently form the basis for individually assessed tasks. In particular, these assessment tasks entail participants considering the emerging possibilities and implications for their own practice, professional context and aspirations. The subject ends with an informal networking opportunity to celebrate achievements and explore openings that have emerged for future action, inquiry and collaboration.

Content (topics)

• Futures methods and methodologies
• Regenerative principles and regenerative design
• Generative learning theory
• Designing as value selection
• Ecological metaphors
• Systems thinking, emergence and warm data
• Indigenous knowledges and practices
• Ethical considerations, rigour and integrity in practice
• Complex reflection and reflexivity

Assessment

Assessment task 1: Probes into futures methods and regenerative practices

Assessment task 2: Future-oriented designs for learning

Minimum requirements

Students must make a reasonable attempt to meet the expectations outlined for each assessment task and achieve an overall pass grade in order to pass this subject.