A connected curriculum for higher education
- Dilly Fung, University College London
This seminar will draw on a newly published monograph (Fung 2017), which argues that the customary separation of teaching and learning (or education) from research is both unhelpful and unnecessary.
Drawing on the field of philosophical hermeneutics (Gadamer 2004, Fairfield 2012) and illustrating her argument with vignettes of practice from around the world, Professor Fung will propose that there are many reasons for looking again at connecting students on taught programmes at all levels of study with research, and that there are many creative ways of doing this successfully.
A Connected Curriculum framework for thinking about and enhancing practice illustrates a core principle – that of engaging students actively with research and enquiry – and six related dimensions of practice, each of which speaks to a different kind of connectivity.
These dimensions foreground the importance of connecting students with researchers and with one another; designing programmes of study that empower students to develop a holistic sense of their developing understandings and identity; connecting across disciplinary boundaries to look at global challenges; connecting academic with workplace and lifelong learning; and, crucially, connecting students with real world audiences and partners as they communicate the findings of their enquiry in ways that are meaningful to them and meaningful to society.
Drawing on UCL as a case study university where the Connected Curriculum framework has been introduced, Professor Fung will argue that re-framing the relationship between research and education in this way benefits students, lecturers, researchers and even research; it also has the potential to empower universities and the communities which host them to develop even stronger relationships, addressing together ‘the global common good’ (UNESCO 2015).
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Dilly Fung is Professor of Higher Education Development and Academic Director of the Arena Centre Research-based Education at UCL. A Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, she is leading a series of ambitious initiatives designed to advance research-based education at UCL, including the innovative Connected Curriculum project, which aims to bring research and education much closer together for both students and for academics.
