Preparing Students for Careers of the Future: Embedding Innovative and Creative Technologies into Curriculum.

Abstract

To prepare students for prosperous careers, students from all disciplines need to adapt to emerging trends in technologies, such as 3D-Printing, Digital Media, and Virtual Reality, and have the confidence to apply these technologies into unique and novel settings (Nguyen et al., 2020; Harvey, 2016; Hasenstein et al., 2019). A limitation in tertiary education is the ability for individual disciplines to provide the required support and opportunities to venture beyond course content and embrace multidisciplinary, creative, and innovative technologies (Tabarés and Boni, 2022). To resolve these barriers, the University of Sydney Library established a team of postgraduate students as Peer Learning Advisors to support their student peers (Collings et al., 2014). The development of the Library Technology Spaces, ThinkSpace and CreateSpace (The University of Sydney Library, 2022), allowed students to experiment in technologies using the expertise of Peer Learning Advisors to experiment in technologies. Since then, academics have approached the Library to collaborate on bespoke workshops embedded within the curriculum. Such examples include involving students to create podcasts to develop health communication skills using audio equipment and peer-led workshops in audio editing in a Population Health unit (Dunsmore and Di Paolo, 2021), and the incorporation of peer-to-peer workshops in 3D-printing and modelling to develop student understanding in fabrication in assistive technologies for disabilities. This model of a collaborative approach between student leaders and academics can be applied to all tertiary institutions in resolving current barriers to accessibility to innovative and creative technologies that fall beyond the scope of individual disciplines.