To begin I conducted some research and started coming up for ideas for my pitch.
I decided to start by creating a mindmap of different sectors that I felt could be worth exploring. From here I plotted out some potential areas of interest from each sector. An area i’ve never really looked at in any of my university work is education. Being within education at the moment kind of gives me a unique perspective in some sense.
I then further plotted out some poignant issues with education currently. I found at this point I had lots to work with in terms of my approach. I chose to explore curriculum relevance but perhaps in a more broad sense. I had the idea that students can pick and choose their own modules interchangeably so that they can create their own desired skillset and not be subject to the confines of an institution. It is almost like a re-imagining of education but there are so many aspects of education that are simply outdated, and more specifically, not geared towards getting students into work.
It’s worth noting that higher education also has many strengths, but for the purpose of this project I’m focusing on areas where the current model struggles to keep pace with modern needs.
Now that I have highlighted a key issue, I now need to establish a problem statement in order to begin some research. For me it feels as though higher education would need some kind of reform, or at least a new approach. With this in mind I settled on a problem statement. That being;
“Education hasn’t kept pace with the evolving needs of students or industry, leaving learners working within outdated structures that don’t fully support the development of relevant, future-focused skills”.
****or
“Current education systems offer rigid, outdated curriculum structures that prevent students from developing personalised, industry-relevant skillsets, leaving many unprepared for real-world employment”.
To fully understand why this is an issue, we must look at how it comes about. By looking at the background of contemporary education we can highlight where the shift has occurred and how it can be best remedied. I started my research by searching some associated phrases such as;