Episode 50: Future Skills: A Classroom Requirement
In recent weeks, my professional feeds have been filled with thoughtful conversations about the need for meaningful change in post-secondary education. Rob Lawless recently posed a provocative question about whether the University of Pennsylvania should offer a course titled “Human Connection: Building Trust, Belonging, and Influence.” At the same time, the Haskayne School of Business is hosting a Lunch and Learn focused on Developing Students’ Transferable Skills using Future Skills modules. Adding to this momentum, my former Dean shared reflections on piloting the Future Skills Open Education resource in his SGMA 591 course, noting both the challenge of returning to the classroom after many years and the overwhelmingly positive student feedback. Collectively, these signals point to a growing recognition that something fundamental in higher education needs to evolve—and that the conversation is no longer confined to the margins.
This brings us to several persistent and uncomfortable questions. How do we encourage educators to move beyond the transmission of information, and even beyond knowledge, toward the development of durable capabilities? How do we motivate students to break free from the familiar cycle of memorisation, examination, and forgetting? And perhaps most importantly, how can institutions ensure that learning results not only in disciplinary competence but also in transferable and “Mad Skills” that serve students across careers, communities, and life stages, regardless of faculty or program?
My Observations
There is no shortage of student demand for this kind of learning. I have seen it repeatedly at the University of Calgary and heard it echoed in conversations with faculty around the world. Yet there are very real structural barriers. Faculty are balancing extensive non-teaching responsibilities, increasing research expectations, and administrative demands that limit the time and energy available for pedagogical redesign. Skill-based learning often requires human grading rather than scalable multiple-choice assessments, which introduces additional cost and workload. As my former Dean candidly shared, returning to the classroom after a decade was daunting, but necessary, to truly understand what students need today.
Compounding these challenges is the uneven support from institutional leadership. During the transition back to in-person learning after the COVID pandemic, I spent considerable time advocating for the retention of effective online practices that had demonstrably improved learning outcomes. That advocacy required substantial pedagogical evidence and emotional labour, diverting time from other responsibilities. While change is frequently encouraged rhetorically, it is not always supported structurally.
My Response
My response to these challenges rests on several interrelated ideas. First, students must be empowered to advocate for an education that meaningfully integrates transferable and essential skills. From their first day on campus, students should understand how these skills shape employability, adaptability, and long-term success, and feel confident demanding that they be treated as core, not peripheral, outcomes of their education. Second, we must encourage students to engage beyond passive class attendance. Skill development accelerates through involvement in student communities, co-curricular activities, and applied experiences. Participation credits, particularly in early-year required courses, can act as a powerful nudge toward deeper engagement and exploration of opportunities that already exist, but are often underutilised.
At the institutional level, post-secondary schools need to reconsider how teaching-focused faculty roles are designed, evaluated, and rewarded. Faculty who invest in course design, experiential learning, and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) should receive recognition comparable to that afforded to traditional research outputs. Importantly, rewards need not be limited to salary. Course releases, flexible teaching schedules, opportunities to convert co-curricular work into credit-bearing experiences, and freedom to experiment with alternative course formats can all meaningfully support innovation in teaching.
Finally, we need to have an honest conversation about assessment. Moving away from traditional grading systems toward credit-based models could help address grade inflation and challenge the persistent myth that employers prioritise GPAs above all else. In my own career, no employer has ever asked about my grades. A credit-based approach also reduces reliance on poorly designed multiple-choice assessments, which too often reinforce short-term memorisation rather than deep learning and retention.
The Challenges
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