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Two Centre for Integrated Human Studies staff members will present papers at the World Universities Forum in Mumbai, India in January.

Associate Professor Neville Bruce will speak on Focusing Education on World Futures, and lecturer Steve Johnson will talk about the link between Integrated Human Studies and e-learning. Neville and Steve are currently preparing curricula in Integrated Human Studies, a new field of interdisciplinary study.

“The world is at crisis point,” said Associate Professor Bruce, “and the next fifty years will be crucial. Universities must accept that they have a responsibility to educate the citizens and leaders of the future. We must equip the brightest minds with the tools to solve the huge problems facing human beings.”

He explained that complex problems require broad based understandings across disciplines. Integrated Human Studies begins from the premise that we must understand our human origins and culture, and that to this broad base, the well educated citizen should add competencies from a number of disciplines.

Lecturer Steve Johnson has found that Web 2 technologies lend themselves to this kind of broadening curriculum by facilitating a community of inquiry model of pedagogy. Global problems require responses from the global community, and education for this century had to engage with a culturally and geographically diverse student body. E-learning makes this possible. The inaugural World Universities Forum was held in Davos, Switzerland, in early 2008. Conference organisers recently said that “proceeding with the [2009] conference [was] one way of showing our solidarity with the people of Mumbai and confidence in its rapid recovery”. Neville and Steve agree that the disturbing recent events in Mumbai underscore the necessity for concerned people, and particularly educators, to join in proposing positive action for human futures.