 Welcome back to Science Live. I would now like to introduce two very special guests, the Vice-Chancellor Professor Paul Johnson and the Dean of the Faculty of Science Professor Tony O'Donnell. Welcome to Science Live. Future's vision is about ensuring that today's students get the educational experience that will position them for tomorrow's careers. So with Education Futures we're looking at how we use technology in the classroom and outside of the classroom, how we put students at the centre of their learning experience, their their own personal intellectual journey as they go through their opportunities here at UWA, how we give them all the skills that they will need in terms of analytical skills, laboratory skills, communication skills, so that at the point of graduation they will be able to make really good decisions about what their future career will be. For some it may be a further degree and research for others it will be going off to get a job with an employer but that job of course is only the entry point to a career and we want to make sure that our graduates have the capacity not just to get a good job at the entry point to a career but have the skills to go on learning, to go on focusing on questions, analysing complex situations so that they can build those careers, whatever path they choose. And we know that that means we have to change, we've got to make use of all the possibilities with new technology but technology is just one part of the Education Futures vision because actually what we also need to make sure is that and you don't get those just by interacting with the screen so the technology part is crucially important but so is the face-to-face learning experience with some of the world's best academic staff and also here at UWA with some of the very best students. Bright students learning with other bright students produce fantastic outcomes. Okay thank you. Although the word vision is used I know the vision is already started would you like to tell me about some of the education practices that are already in place at UWA for both our undergraduate and postgraduate students. So we're doing a huge amount across all the subject areas here at UWA obviously there's a lot of laboratory experience for science students and we're focusing on ways in which that can be built upon so that the laboratory experience isn't just kind of going through a formulaic set of experiments but so that students are given real world problems, they can work in groups, they can apply their knowledge with guidance from the staff to produce solutions to those problems then write up research papers around that so they get a real experience of how to address the uncertainties, the unknowns. Remembering always that what the future career will focus on whether it's a research career or a career with a major employer it's about bringing skills to focus on complexity. If no one employs pays a lot of money to employ bright graduates to solve yesterday's problems those have already been solved we know the answers. So graduates and there are many different approaches to this across our different degree programs to give students these insights in a sense insights into the unknown. For us the for the faculty the education futures vision is about anticipating the future needs of our students that includes the students that we have here currently but also the students that will be enrolling excellent staff here as the Vice Chancellor has mentioned. We are already teaching at the leading edge we are researching at the leading edge and as one of the world's best universities UWA wants to stay at the leading edge therefore for the faculty of science and I think generally for the university the education futures vision is about ensuring we remain one of the world's best universities both for education and research. In practical terms and I think this is what your question is about in practical terms what is it we're doing well basically we're looking at this from three different perspectives. First of all the the design and structure of our courses and this is something that the university and the faculty embarked on way before 2012. 2012 marked a milestone in us actually preparing for 2020 but 2012 prior to 2012 the faculties the science faculties were actually looking at how do we actually take students all the way through from where the students are today coming to find out about our courses all the way through their undergraduate degree into their postgraduate work and then into it then importantly into into employment. So one of the things that we have done and it's been a part of the faculty's strategy as part of its development has been to ensure that postgraduate degrees butt on to the end of undergraduate degrees so we have end on masters programs that actually provide a pathway and with the university's help we've actually managed now to make that is really quite quite efficient so I'm hoping today that some of the students that we're seeing at open day today will actually be thinking not just about where what they're coming into study next year as undergraduates but actually thinking about what sort of career do they want and what and asking the university and asking the faculty what can you do to help me get onto onto onto that pathway so specific examples are the way in which we've actually got masters programs that actually join our undergraduate programs the fact that we've got two majors fact that students have flexibility and choice in those majors so just imagine how the advantage a student would have actually having doing a major in the first major in say agricultural sciences just think how better off it is if they were the other way around as well actually come up to do business as the first major and then do agricultural science as a second major and we've actually started to see this year an increase in students wanting to do those sorts of options so it's not just science of business it can be science and arts and that's the that's the great thing about the new courses 2012 the other thing that we're focused on is actually the content of those courses we see many our students coming up now many different types of experience I think the way in which I was taught and probably Paul was taught just wouldn't be relevant today actually I was watching the videos earlier on from my office and the under 25s are much more relaxed sitting here in front of a camera than people like myself so I think you know we need to Paul mentioned adapting the technologies and introducing the technologies well we need to do we need to be very much aware this is the way this university needs to to move and I think the the 2020 vision is the education futures vision is a great way of actually rallying faculties and the staff around actually trying to develop that trying to as I said anticipate future needs of our students the other thing is around the content is if you look at some of the things we were trying to do one of the things the Vice Chancellor has asked us to look at is we often think about careers as what can I do with my degree you know so one of the things we are looking at now in order to get new programs up we have to have provide the university with a good examples of what these degrees might lead into what sort of jobs our students might do do with this and this reflects the fact that this university has a very high success rate in putting its students into employment and more importantly particularly if you're a parent those students actually start on higher salaries than than the national average but we're also looking at how to what the other thing that we've been looking at as well how can we actually help students start their own businesses so one of the things that Paul has been pushing is entrepreneurship and commercialization and to build that into our undergraduate and our postgraduate programs and we have some good examples starting next year so the masters of biotechnology actually is a program we have developed jointly with the business school so students will get taught state of the art molecular biology gene technology environmental technologies from some of the very best researchers in the world and but they will also from our business school be actually taught by professionals in in business administration but also in commercialization and spin out they will meet with business angels the faculty will run competition in actually trying to sponsor some of these these initiatives and the third thing we're doing is and it's again it's an integral part of the education future program and that is actually to ensure that all of our students have an enrichment experience of some sort the university is very keen on us spending sending our students overseas and this faculty has been I can't remember Paul what were we aiming were we aiming for 100% or 50% 50% we're currently at about 22% of each cohort of graduating students has spent some time studying overseas and you know we want to get that up to 50% yes so 50% of the students studying overseas now the other students we would expect to give a meaningful enrichment experience whilst they're here at UW and that might be an industrial and industrial placement so some of our masters programs do have an explicit industrial placement bit built into them the other area that we're very as a science faculty you might think is a little surprising but we actually are also developing a new masters in international development regional development again we've gone outside the faculty to actually bring in expertise from from politics because if you're involved in international development it's not just a bit climate change and agricultural productivity or urban planning it's also about that social political dimension so we bring staff in from from outside so the faculty has a fairly well developed plan to actually integrate and to build up that enrichment for our students as we go forward okay well thank you so much for both coming and sharing UW's 2020 vision with us thank you for your time today thank you there are over 10 000 universities in the world there are 39 in Australia and of the five in western Australia only one is ranked in the top 100 in the world the university of western Australia it's why our graduates are preferred by employers and earn higher graduate salaries choose wisely and you'll be career ready for life