Abstract:

If education is the foundational process by which our societies evolve, the curriculum is the central driver of social change and the syllabus its micro-unit. How can we reimagine our syllabi as our educational institutions struggle to engage increasingly diverse student populations and empower them to become agents of positive, sustainable change in our global and digital societies?

We approach this question as a working group of students and faculty from different local institutions representing three areas of experiences: the involvement in the strategic planning of New York University as the first global network university, our work in local learning communities, and the daily practical engagement with students of diverse academic, cultural, ethnic, and religious backgrounds, who study across 15 sites on six continents.

We will tackle the following questions across cultural and generational perspectives:
A. What is our north star? Why do we have to reimagine our syllabi? We will consider the particular complexity and the interplay of contemporary social problems, the future of work, and generational trends in student development.
B. What are the main challenges associated with changing the core narratives that structure the curriculum? We will discuss the power of the canon as it relates to storytelling, representation, academic discourse, and institutional realities. Particular focus will be on the shift from fact-based knowledge to competency-based inquiry-oriented problem-solving.
C. What are practical steps every learning community can take to rethink the syllabus as a micro-unit of educational change for the ongoing Fourth Industrial Revolution? Drawing on conflict and consensus in our working group, we will suggest five concrete practices that can be implemented across institutional frameworks.
D. What are the blind spots forums like this can illuminate? How can our dialogue inspire collaborative learning that mediates across the binary distinctions between theory and practice on the one hand and between the university and broader social structures on the other hand? We will discuss the new kinds of partnerships that will be part and product of a change-oriented educational practice.

Keywords:

Excellence in teaching, inclusion, diversity, competency, innovation, laboratory, social change, global learning, digital literacy, Fourth Industrial Revolution.