DCU Futures
DCU Futures Learning Journey
DCU has transformed its undergraduate curriculum in DCU Futures to develop our students' personal agency as they move into an evolving world transformed by ever-advancing technologies.
Our objective is to create a radically different undergraduate learning experience that will foster the development of graduates who can flourish in the 21st century, living a life that they have reason to value and that is of value to society.
This major initiative will help us transform the learning experience of undergraduate students at DCU by re-conceptualising learning opportunities, creating authentic connections between the classroom and enterprise, and embedding digital literacies, disciplinary competencies and key transversal skills, to enable our graduates to thrive in a rapidly changing workplace.
In order to deliver this innovative learning experience effectively, our staff and colleagues require competencies. Learning and Organisational Development have curated a number of workshops that build skills to help academic colleagues in particular to deliver on DCU Futures.
Futures-related courses
Design Thinking is a key skill that anyone working on the learning experience of the future will need. The design thinking mindset and approach is rooted in empathy – imagining the world from different perspectives, taking a “student first” approach to understand needs. It’s these insights that inspire useful, practical solutions. Coupled with this is an inherent bias towards action – through learning from others, creative collaboration, rapid experimentation and constant iteration.
In-person workshop: Introduction to Design Thinking
LinkedIn Learning Course: Design Thinking: Understanding the Process
Originality is at the heart of becoming a Creative Genius. So how do you ensure your ideas are as original as possible? It’s all about finding fresh ground by going against the grain and ignoring the rulebook.
In-person workshop: Creative Genius
Linkedin Learning: Creative Exercises to Spark Original Thinking
Linkedin Learning: Practical Creativity for Everyone
During any transformation, we can encounter Difficult Dialogue that can challenge long held assumptions. Innovating requires disruption and how to navigate that disruption to achieve a positive outcome is a skill. Join this full day workshop to become better equipped at challenging dialogue without causing conflict.
Communicating with impact and influence is about gauging your current effectiveness in communicating your message and influencing others. We'll help you assess how effective you are in bringing others to your way of thinking with compelling communication.
The session will give you usable strategies to identify resilient solutions to everyday challenges. Anti-Fragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resist shocks and stay the same; those who are antifragile are able to see the opportunity in shocks, and thrive. Use this Resilience and Anti-Fragility workshop to channel energy from change and transformation into positivity and action, to support your journey with change arising from DCU Futures.
In order to make good decisions it’s crucial that we evaluate things critically and use reliable approaches to decide and take the best course of action. This Critical Thinking session challenges you to question how you interpret the world around you, helping you learn how to take an objective, impartial view on complex information and make sound decisions on issues that you could be facing when working on transforming the learning experience for students.