Abstract
This roundtable is for higher education leaders, programme directors, curriculum designers, and educators who are questioning whether knowledge and skills alone are sufficient preparation for an increasingly complex world.
Across the Asia-Pacific region, universities are preparing graduates for professional environments shaped by artificial intelligence, sustainability challenges, technological change, and growing uncertainty. Curriculum discussions often focus on knowledge, skills, employability, and AI literacy. Yet one important dimension frequently remains implicit: the development of professional identity, judgement, responsibility, and purpose.
In the Creative Business – Beyond Campus programme, these qualities have become explicit curriculum design goals. Students work on real-world challenges with professional partners while reflecting on the values, assumptions, and responsibilities that shape their decisions and actions as emerging professionals.
This roundtable explores a practical curriculum design question: what happens when professional identity, judgement, responsibility, and purpose become intentional educational goals rather than accidental by-products of higher education? Participants will exchange examples, challenges, and approaches from their own institutions, and explore how curriculum design can support these qualities without prescribing who students should become. Participants will leave with practical ideas and design questions that can inform curriculum innovation, graduate development, and future-focused programme design.
Learning objectives
Participants will:
- Explore how AI and societal change challenge traditional assumptions about graduate development.
- Discuss the role of professional identity, judgement, responsibility, and purpose in higher education.
- Examine approaches for making professional formation a more explicit curriculum design goal.
- Exchange experiences and challenges related to supporting human agency in AI-mediated learning environments.
- Generate practical ideas for integrating professional formation into programme and curriculum design.
Target audience
Higher education leaders, programme directors, curriculum designers, educational developers, student experience professionals, and educators interested in assessment, professional identity, curriculum innovation, and the future of higher education.