Option 1: The Personalisation–Community Paradox

Example Objective

Identify one way your institution creates community within a flexible learning model and one gap where belonging is being lost.

Key Points

  • Flexibility and community are not natural allies; they must be deliberately designed together

  • Belonging predicts retention; removing shared time removes the conditions that produce it

  • The problem is structural, not personal; isolated students are often a design failure, not a motivation failure

  • Three design levers exist in any learning environment: shared milestones, peer-matching, and optional-but-valued synchronous moments

  • Even in fully face-to-face settings, personalisation of pathways, timetables, and assessments can fragment community

  • Ask yourself: what do students experience together, even when they are on different learning paths?

Option 2: Deep Capabilities vs. Point-in-Time Skills

Example Objective

Name one skill you are teaching or learning and identify the deeper capability underneath it that will still matter in ten years.

Key Points

  • A skill is specific and perishable; a capability is durable and transferable

  • Job descriptions describe today's work; graduates need to be able to redesign tomorrow's work

  • Skills taught without capabilities produce graduates who can execute but not question

  • Every skill has a capability hiding inside it; find it and teach that too

  • Formula: This skill teaches students to [do X]; the deeper capability is [reason / evaluate / synthesise]

  • The test: if the tool disappears, what remains?

Option 3: The Civic University — What Are We Actually For?

Example Objective

Articulate two purposes of a university, one vocational and one civic, and apply both to a real curriculum decision at your institution.

Key Points

  • Universities have always served two masters: the labour market and the democratic society

  • "Slow to change" is sometimes a feature, not a bug; some things are worth protecting

  • Optimising for throughput and employability alone hollows out the civic purpose

  • Deep reading, sustained argument, and productive discomfort are not inefficiencies; they are the curriculum

  • Before asking what should we change, ask what are we trying to produce?

  • Formula: This curriculum change serves [vocational purpose] but risks losing [civic purpose]; a better design would do both by [specific action]

Find out more about Studio