The university intends to transform teaching and learning

MQ U has just launched a new curriculum (Sean Brawley explained it in CMM  here.) And now it announces a four-year creation of a teaching and learning framework, to create “a distinctive MU pedagogy” and provide, “dynamic opportunities for engagement with industry and community partners.” Apparently, this will, “empower students to be success in their pursuits through ‘career development learning that is scaffolded, personalised and future focused.”

“Students are at the heart of everything we do at Macquarie University,” PVC Learning and Teaching, Dominique Parrish tell staff.

Sound familiar? It will to the many admirers of Macquarie U’s 2015 green paper on employment outcomes. “What is being proposed here is not placement, not weak models of work integrated learning, but a core focus on authentic partnership between the student, the university and the employers to change the landscape of what it means to be a graduate,” then DVC A John Simons said, (CMM April 7 2015).

People familiar with the university’s work-placements for students say the new proposal should surely fit with the popular Professional and Community Engagement Programme, which needs more resources. But above all, what observers say MU needs is a coordinated approach which works across campus, rather than with projects in faculty-silos.

And as for the centrality of students, “the university executive is endlessly repeating ‘putting students at the centre of all we do’ as if it is some sort of revelation that MU is in fact an educational institution largely funded in proportion to its student numbers in, and, now, satisfaction with, its courses,” an observer of MU suggests.