consciousness. The game starts with one student’s question, and someone else has to jump up and say, ‘that connects to mine’. And together, the students make a web where all of these ideas are connected – to actually demonstrate that we live in this connected world, this connected consciousness of ideas that are shared. Everything connects to everywhere all at once. Creative people ‘connect the dots’ to see connections between two dots that other people haven’t seen. The Creative Intelligence course demonstrates that it’s possible to see connections, sometimes in almost a prosaic way, for example, by actually surfacing it and visualising it and showing it on a washing line, using pegs to show how everything is connected to everything, how everything connects to everywhere.
The assessments are authentic assessments in education. The students are focussed on outputs that may be useful. So that it’s always normalised that it’s a real-world degree. For example: Problem solvability, students are given cutting edge ideas and paradigms from across the disciplines. They curate their own three questions from ideas of their own, then devise a question they would like to explore and shift it to another domain. They are required to do a thought experiment, a ‘what if’ scenario, or a speculative research proposal on their question. The assessment is measured by how far they have taken that idea, how far they have pushed that idea, to make it different.
Showing that they have gone beyond traditional thinking, the marker of a Peak Transformation Learning Moment.
The Creative Intelligence degree course went on to win award after award including Universities of Australia National Award for Best Program; Business Higher Education Round Table Award for Best Engagement; Wharton Award – Reimagining Education; and the Green Gown Award –sustainable futures.
The course received a bank of positive feedback, a big pile of thank you letters from graduate students written with great sincerity. The course is not only transformative for the students, staff are also transformed.
Then came the amazing statistics: graduate students had a 93% employment rate. The course had an industry partnership of 850+ partners. The course had proved its worth. Students come back as industry partners. Now there is a partnership of students, industry partners, and alumni. It took ten years of hard work. “It is now, really rewarding, a beautiful project to lead and is called The Club That Nobody Wants To Leave,” Bem said.
Bem is now the Director International (since 2024) and is consulting and supporting more universities. The University of Arizona (US) is now delivering this course and it has proven to be successful there too. https://www.bemlehunte.com/
Dr Sharon Rundle is a University of Technology Sydney Friend of Distinction, who encourages international people-to-people links. She edits fiction and nonfiction books, literary magazines, and journals. She co-edited five Indo-Australian anthologies of short fiction. Her stories, essays and articles appear in books, anthologies, journals, magazines, and have been broadcast on radio. She has taught at universities and presented conference papers in Australia, the UK and India. She has served on the Board of Directors and Management Committee of the NSW Writers’ Centre. She was an Australia India Business and Community Awards.finalist.2022. https://sharonrundle.com.au
