Prof Ruth Bridgstock, Swinburne University of Technology

Waves of technological, economic, social and environmental change are reshaping what it means to work, learn and live. Higher education faces existential questions about how graduates develop the capability to navigate and shape futures we can't yet see, and how universities need to co-evolve to make this possible.

Drawing on two decades of her research in graduate capability development, authentic learning and institutional transformation, Ruth Bridgstock identifies capabilities for future and change that higher education rarely teaches for, assesses, or even names, and examines the curriculum architectures, pedagogical approaches and educator agency needed to develop them. She argues that developing these capabilities also requires institutions themselves to become more adaptable, forward-oriented and permeable, decisive in the face of uncertainty, and, like the learners they serve, grounded in a clear sense of identity and purpose.

Participants will come away thinking differently about future and change capability, about what it asks of educators and researchers, and about the institutional conditions that need to shift to make it possible.

Dr Giedre Kligyte, Dr Jacqueline Melvold, Annabelle Lewis, Prof Chris Riedy, Dr Rosemary Sainty, A/Prof Jochen Schweitzer & Dr Susanne Pratt, University of Technology Sydney

Universities are increasingly urged to prepare graduates to address complex societal challenges, yet there is limited evidence supporting the claim that future-oriented capabilities can enable graduates to create meaningful impact in the workplace. This presentation draws on a survey of 123 graduates from transdisciplinary, sustainability-focused and impact-oriented business programs at an Australian university to explore the value of their capabilities in professional contexts. Findings reveal the sophisticated ways graduates combine their capabilities to influence organisational practices, highlighting the need for universities to move beyond narrow employability metrics and consider how graduates are enabled to translate those capabilities into meaningful societal contributions.

A/Prof Kathryn Coleman, FoE, University of Melbourne

GenAI has made visible assessment challenges that higher education has been grappling with for decades, accelerating calls to rethink how graduate capability is evidenced, developed and warranted. Rather than asking how universities can preserve existing assessment models, this presentation argues for redesigning assessment around professional agility, ethical judgement, creativity and collaborative knowledge-making. Drawing on an emerging review of the field undertaken through the early stages of a GEM Scott Teaching Fellowship, the session offers an evidence-informed provocation and invites educators, educational developers, learning designers, students and industry partners to co-design assessment approaches for uncertain futures.

Dr Stella Peng & Dr Winn Chow, FEIT, University of Melbourne

The rapid integration of generative AI is fundamentally transforming professional engineering practice. This presentation reports on a systematic analysis of core curricula across civil, mechanical, and software engineering programs at three Australian Group of Eight universities between a 2023 pre-GenAI baseline and 2026. Utilising a novel Execution-Orchestration-Governance (EOG) framework to map 915 learning outcomes, the study reveals that 63.8% of outcomes remain anchored in automatable execution tasks, while high-level sociotechnical governance constitutes just 3.1%. We discuss how faculties can transition from defensive assessment strategies to proactive curriculum redesign, fostering professional agility and long-term graduate employability in an uncertain, AI-driven future.

Dr Lea Campbell & Dr David McGinniss, Arts, University of Melbourne

In 1989 the Berlin Wall fell, the Web was proposed, and Dawkins marketised Australian education — three shifts that turned learning into scarcity, ranking credentials in a labour race nobody wins. AI followed the same script: not new ingredients, just more compute, deepening (rural/ regional) exclusion and inequity. But abundant intelligences — Indigenous scholars and AI's architects arguing interdependence over extraction — offer redress. Our answer is a place-based, civic partnership model: regional and interdisciplinary placements, industry projects, collaboration and codesign, building employability through relationship, not ranking. Realistic about the mess, optimistic about the opening — abundance, not scarcity, from here.

Matthew Dyki,  FBE, University of Melbourne

Generative AI is challenging traditional assumptions about curriculum, assessment and professional capability development while increasing the importance of judgement, evaluation and adaptability (Ballantine et al., 2024; Tharapos et al., 2025; van Zijl et al., 2026). This presentation reflects on the redesign of a postgraduate Accounting Information Systems subject using a blended learning approach centred on making students’ reasoning visible through peer review, self-reflection, comparison of viewpoints and workshop application. Using accounting education as a disciplinary case, it argues that making students’ reasoning visible provides one pathway for developing the professional agility increasingly required in uncertain and AI-enabled professional futures.

David Eckstein, Deakin University

Industry research (Accenture, 2018) speaks to the hard-nosed reality of inclusion: organisations that are intentionally inclusive have better financial bottom lines than those that don’t. It is therefore surprising that, as a sector, Australian universities do not engage with the employability benefits that systematically accrue from embedding diversity in their mainstream employability offerings. This presentation will share the application of key principles and findings from national research to the employability development needs of students with disability (SwD). The agile thinking arising from this approach and its relevance to all students will also be discussed.

Dr Li Xie-Carson & Dr Valeria Stella Cotronei-Baird, FBE, University of Melbourne
Hannah Sinclair, Arts, University of Melbourne

Preparing graduates for a complex and uncertain workforce requires universities to integrate employability skills into disciplinary curricula. Yet little is known about how academics understand employability skills, particularly in quantitative-focused disciplines. Drawing on a multi-method study of mathematics and finance, this presentation examines academics' conceptualisations of employability skills, the importance of their integration, their roles in fostering them, and how these perspectives are reflected in teaching and assessment. The findings reveal a discrepancy between academics' intentions and practices, leading to the development of a framework that explains this gap and provides guidance for integrating employability skills into curriculum and assessment.

Kathy Ryan, Louise Kellerman & Suzie Haslam, Careers and Employability, University of Melbourne

Students want clear pathways, real experience, industry connection and confidence about what comes next. This session will explain how academics can work with Careers and Employability to bring practical, scalable career learning into the classroom. Demonstrating through the use of the Culture Wizard platform, participants will learn how to help students link their studies to their ambitions, build career confidence and take practical steps towards uncertain futures.

A/Prof Stuart Barber, Science, University of Melbourne

Australasian veterinary degrees require 52 weeks of Work Integrated Learning (WIL). COVID‑19 prompted iterative development of virtual WIL using VR platforms for learning.  This was the largest change in veterinary WIL in fifty years. Student feedback demonstrated the potential benefits of virtual WIL and the need for further preparatory material. New online modules were co‑created with DVM students and industry. Further virtual modules equivalent to two weeks of WIL are being developed for review as pre-WIL modules to improve the student experience. Their use will require both University and external regulatory approval in a time of significant change in the WIL space.

Dr Matt Holden & Dr Elena Balcaite, Arts, University of Melbourne

This case study of Grattan Street Press, a teaching press at the University of Melbourne that is structured as a Work Integrated Learning (WIL) experience for students in the Master of Publishing and Communications and Master of Creative Writing, Editing and Publishing programs, explores how a critically reflective teaching practice in Work Integrated Learning settings can help teachers develop strategies that will have a positive impact on students’ learning, fostering their creativity, agency, ethical thinking and entrepreneurship and preparing them for learning throughout their lives beyond the university.

Carolyn Cracknell, MDHS, University of Melbourne
Prof Robyn Woodward-Kron, MDHS, University of Melbourne
A/Prof Joanna Tai, Deakin University
A/Prof Christy Noble, Griffith University
Prof Elizabeth Molloy, MDHS, University of Melbourne

Student work-based placements are increasingly seen as a cornerstone for learning in higher education. Feedback is one of the key mechanisms available to students to help them understand how they are tracking and what they can do to further improve. Very little is known about how to prepare students to navigate feedback within placement settings. This study, funded through an ARC Discovery Grant, involves the implementation of a novel simulation-based pedagogy to develop students’ feedback literacy. Through the research we aimed to understand what students learnt through this immersive simulation, and the extent to which they could translate the learnings to their feedback practice on placement.

Mell Chun, Arts, University of Melbourne

How can students meaningfully contribute to the redesign of a journalism capstone internship in the master’s course? How can these contributions help the capstone to better meet the changing conditions of the industry?. Considering the emergence of genAI, Media and Journalism Industry has been subject to fast changing conditions in recent years and our curricula has not kept pace. our curricula may be failing to adapt fast enough to prepare our students. This presentation, thus, examines how the journalism capstone internship can be redesigned in the context of the whole course renewal to better prepare students for the industry in the state of uncertainty. Specifically, the presentation explores how students’ self-reported accounts can be used to facilitate this transformation.