SEMINAR: Education for World Futures Initiative: Foundation units for online global learning

The Seminar We live in a time of unprecedented growth of science and technology with consequent escalating rates of material and social change. Global warming, war, terrorism, the nuclear arsenal, population and information explosions, extreme poverty and affluence, resource depletion and pollution, advanced bionics and genetic engineering will all impact on what it means to be human in the 21st century and well beyond. This is the world our students will inherit: this is the challenge university education must meet. Education for World Futures directly addresses this challenge. Two, fully online or blended teaching foundation units: Humanity in the 21st Century and Human Action for Global Futures will be established in 2009. These units bring together the sciences, social sciences, arts and humanities to study the nature and future of humankind. They will provide students with an understanding of their biological and cultural origins, their history and social organisations, their reliance on and interaction with the “natural world” and the skills required to make a meaningful contribution to human wellbeing in a sustainable world environment. Plans for these units have been presented at the World Universities Forum, 2009, and received considerable international interest. UWA has a significant lead in this area; we now seek faculty partnerships to offer them locally, nationally and internationally.

The Speakers: Neville Bruce is Director of the Centre for Integrated Human Studies, School of Anatomy & Human Biology, UWA (www.ihs.uwa.edu.au ). His major research and teaching interests centred on human reproduction and human biology. Over the past decade he broadened these interests to encompass human wellbeing from a psychological and biological perspective as a basis for developing a philosophy and practice for Integrated Human Studies. He had an active role in establishing the Australasian Society for Human Biology and at an extra curricular level has been involved in Scientists Against Nuclear Arms, the Peace Education Foundation and the WA Alternative Fuels Association. He is committed to furthering the discipline of Integrated Human Studies locally and internationally.

Steve Johnson is a lecturer at the Centre for Integrated Human Studies with the responsibility of curriculum development. He is currently working on the development of online first-year units in Integrated Human Studies, which use various e-learning technologies to promote inquiry, collaboration and knowledge construction. He is also completing a doctorate that investigates research writing as a process of semiotic inquiry and the use of diagramming software and portfolios as tools within instructional writing programs. Steve lives in Perth with his wife and two children and enjoys a game of golf when he has the time.