ID220 Future Thinkers

The Idea

My idea is to refocus our teaching on 'future thinking' and future career paths. By this I mean projecting forward 10 years (or more) and presenting a series of probable future scenarios to our students to which we direct some of our teaching. We need to challenge our students to seek and create new interdisciplinary solutions with multiple benefits (e.g. economy, society, environment). I suspect that we often teach todays' solutions to todays' problems and, by the very nature of degree programmes, we unwittingly encourage silo thinking. 

We need to equip our students to learn to be interdisciplinary thinkers in order to find solutions to future challenges and to be better than the generation before them. One way to do this is to give each student the opportunity to encounter a Future Thinkers Scenario with a strong connection to their degree programme. 

Some examples are  

1. Rising sea levels - engineering solutions alongside habitat restoration, managed retreat and urban migration;  
2. Competing land uses - agrivoltaics bringing together farming, biodiversity and efficient renewable energy;  
3. Changing climate and seasons - management of clean water resources, urban planning and drainage solutions; 
4. AI and energy use - efficient AI design, energy efficiency, co-design (wise use of waste heat).  

There are many more (e.g. health, agriculture) but the opportunity to bring interdisciplinary thinking into the core of our traditional degrees is not being realised as effectively as it could be. 

Some of these examples already align well with career paths linked to our existing degree programmes (geography, environment, ecology, engineering), but there is opportunity to refocus the marketing of our degree programmes around potential future career paths, rather than the silo thinking that is so often associated with a subject in isolation. 

Why This Idea Should Be Considered

Our planet is changing and we need to be training our students to be better than we are at looking after the environment (which is effectively our life-support system). Healthy economies exist when a society is stable. Stable societies only exist when their environment can support them and they have a chance to thrive. David Attenborough said of Keele in 2019: "This university is showing that it understands the importance of sustainability and human beings cannot go on taking from the natural world without any care." We need to be training our students to seek and find interdisciplinary solutions to the complex problems on the horizon, taking this style of thinking forward with them into their future career. 

How this differs from, and compliments existing provision 

The Global Challenge Pathways (GCP) operate on an opt-in basis with interested students deciding to undertake a particular course of wider study in place of one of the optional modules offered by their host programme. The GCP opt-in mechanism means that not all students are being formally trained to think beyond their discipline or to consider their discipline in terms of future scenarios (challenges and solutions). Building a Future Thinkers Scenario into core module delivery would ensure that every student encounters a subject-specific interdisciplinary challenge. Making it discipline specific means that it can be included within existing module structures rather than having to reinvent entirely new modules or separate programmes. The close tie to their chosen field of study and a potential likely career path means that students can easily see the value of engaging with Future Thinkers.

How We Would Implement This Idea

Programme Directors should be brought together from across the university to  

• meet each other,  
• open conversations about potential interdisciplinary challenges of relevance that could be presented to students within their traditional degree pathway,  
• show how they relate to future career paths (good for marketing purposes),  
• trail a couple of 'future thinker scenarios' before considering a wider roll-out,  
• develop a series of cross-university events or ‘Future Thinkers’ Moments’ to bring in external voices and encourage young people to think more deeply about interdisciplinary opportunities (problem solving) and future generations

What Success Would Look Like

Success looks like this –  

1. Students being able to combine knowledge from across different degree disciplines;  
2. Students being able to automatically think 'outside of the box' and seek solutions with multiple benefits (e.g. solar farms combining agriculture and biodiversity with energy creation) both within their degree and later within their workplace;  
3. Students coming up with future solutions (rather than simply focussing on present-day solutions).