Topic 03 | Promoting and fostering higher education students’ agency: Goals and practices

[Stephen Billett]

Promoting students to be active, intentional and interdependent learners has been a long-standing goal for higher education. Fostering that capacity is important for: effective study; reconciling experiences across educational, workplace and community settings; transitioning to working life and becoming effective ‘lifelong learners’. So, how should we seek to develop further higher students’ capacities as agentic learners? Through a structured, but highly participatory process, this forum seeks to explore and elaborate some means by such an outcome might be approached. The aim here is to focus on offering some ways for considering the goals for and personal and institutional practices within higher education, participants will consider how higher educational environments can be designed, enacted and experienced in ways that are generative of graduates as agentic learners.

The following four questions directing this forum are:
What are the premises for progressing the educational project of securing agentic learners through higher education?
What kinds of activities and interactions within higher education institutions are likely to be generative of enhanced student agency?
What kinds of experiences outside of those in educational institutions would be helpful to be generative of this agency?
In what ways should students engage to develop and deploy such capacities?

This topic and these questions are the focus of a workshop held at Edith Cowan University’s Mount Lawley campus on the 10th August between 9.00 am and 1.30 pm – Promoting and fostering higher education students’ agency: Goals and practices presented and facilitated by Professor Stephen Billett, Griffith University
The workshop is hosted jointly by the Western Australian divisions of the Higher Education Research ad Development Society of Australia (HERDSA) and Australian Collaborative Education Network (ACEN). The venue is Room 34.545, Joondalup Campus, Edith Cowan University. For more information, please contact Heather Pate Email: [email protected] | Phone: (08) 6304 2410
Program:
9.15– 9.30 am Registration
9.30 am Acknowledgement to Country
Welcome and overview of workshop: Professor Angela Hill, Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Education), ECU
Stephen Billett
9.40 am Introduction to learner agency
10.10 am Group formation – intros and first task
Workshop #1 Issues of learner agency
10.40 am Morning tea
11.00 am Brief sharing exercise
11.15 am
Workshop #2 Strategies for promoting student interdependence, engagement and agency?
12.00 pm Sharing exercise
12.30 pm Lunch and networking
1.30 pm Finish

The outcomes of this workshop will be posted on the forum and used to engage a broader audience in discussions about the nature, application and promotion of learner agency.

• This topic was modified 6 years, 8 months ago by Developing Employability.
• This topic was modified 6 years, 8 months ago by Stephen Billett.
• This topic was modified 6 years, 8 months ago by Stephen Billett.
• This topic was modified 6 years, 8 months ago by Stephen Billett.

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