The University’s first prototype of the Discovery Jam 2024: Spaces for Change

As part of Curriculum Redefined, a group of academics, professional service staff and students are working together to develop an approach that enhances the current Discovery offer at the University of Leeds and provides a broader reach to learning and teaching.

This new provision will meet the desire to create expansive, boundary-crossing, lifelong and lifewide learning opportunities for all learners; including prospective and current students, staff, alumni and the broader community.

The group is exploring three different learning pathways:

• Discovery Jam: a short online, facilitated programme, available at a different time each year, offered over a few days
• Open Discovery: flexible online short courses
• Block Discovery: condensed blended courses available in Semesters 1 and 2

This new provision will meet the desire to create expansive, boundary-crossing, lifelong and lifewide learning opportunities for all learners; including prospective and current students, staff, alumni and the broader community. It will complement our existing elective-type Discovery modules and create cross-disciplinary and collaboratively designed opportunities for personal learning and professional development that give hope, empower, lead to action and have societal impact.

The group is testing the approach by developing and co-creating with students prototypes of the three new learning pathways. The first one is the Discovery Jam 2024, titled Spaces for Change.

We hope to run Jams at various times every calendar year from now on. Ideas on future topics are very much welcomed.

What is the subject of the Discovery Jam 2024 prototype?

We are excited to announce that our very first online Discovery Jam 2024 prototype will be on Social Justice. We are currently in the process of taking a people-centred approach to design. Subject to a successful launch, we hope to run Jams at various times every calendar year from now on. Ideas on future topics are very much welcomed.

Funding and guidance have been received from the Horizons Institute, for which we are extremely grateful. This generous support enabled us to identify our partner from the University of Pretoria. Further details regarding partnership working will follow. The funding is being used to provide training to students and staff on how to deliver a Global Goals Jam, recruit student facilitators, and sponsor guest speakers and partners. We will explore “What comes after the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)?” through the lens of Social Justice and providing solutions to challenges at the local level.

One of the most important debates in the field of sustainable development is how the SDGs can be localised and how communities can be empowered to develop solutions. During the Jam, we will explore scenarios based on local community challenges that relate to the SDGs and bring diverse groups of participants together to think about new ideas and potentially solutions. We will do this in an open, online, collaborative environment and we aim to shed light on how participants can work in groups to devise solutions that are context-specific and culturally relevant by using challenge-based learning as the pedagogical approach. This will give us insights into how diverse groups can focus, investigate, and share solutions remotely.

A personal perspective

As leader of the development of the Discovery Jam, I work with over 40 staff and students from around the institution including Charles Pullman (Student Sustainability Architect: School of Geography), who not only gives feedback on the group’s plans but also works on all aspects of student engagement. Other colleagues from various schools and services are also part of the team and are helping in its realisation through actively shaping its design, enabling links with external partners or by being contributors and facilitators of sessions and activities. We are also working very closely with colleagues from the Digital Education Service (DES) to harness the technology to implement the Jam and realise our collective vision to make it a stimulating experience for learners, facilitators, and organisers alike. Our approach is very much rooted in participatory, critical, and creative pedagogic practice. I am genuinely excited by the possibilities of the Discovery Jam.

How can I get involved?

Jam as contributors, participants, or just by spreading the word and sharing it with your networks and communities.

If you’d like to be part of the Discovery community, either as a Jam facilitator or participant, please get in touch with us at curriculumredefined@leeds.ac.uk.

We’re also giving our students the opportunity to become Discovery Jam facilitators too. We’d love it if you could spread the word about this new and exciting prototype in your own networks, and watch this space!

Dr Vasiliki Kioupi (Lecturer in Sustainable Curriculum)