EdEx: A conceptual education framework developing FTHE graduate capabilities for a post-pandemic "normal”

Abstract

Institutions were battered over the long winter of the COVID-19 pandemic and phenomena which had been increasingly disruptive, the growing digitisation of learning, the application of new approaches to teaching, evolving Foods, Tourism, Hospitality and Events (FTHE) industries and, by association, the requisite knowledge and capabilities of professionals, now had to be addressed, in some cases for institutional survival. With the pandemic abating, this working paper proposes an educational framework that seeks to maintain the momentum of change by integrating seven priorities: pedagogy, learning environments, graduate capabilities, innovation, leadership, quality assurance and the student journey. The framework constructs the development of these capabilities within an application of Biggs' constructive alignment of learning and teaching, curriculum and assessment and learning outcomes in the form of industry-validated graduate capabilities but adds learning environments, the myriad spaces physical, electronic and blended as the fourth critical dimension. This dimension came to prominence for educators when campuses closed, but, in fact, was emerging at pace for a generation prior to the pandemic. The novel contributions of the paper are: a list of Future FTHE Graduate Capabilities from a content analysis of industry leader panels; findings from educators workshops on the utility of six constructivist pedagogies in developing the same Graduate Capabilities within an FTHE-focused institution; and an application of Chism's elements of harmonious learning space design to the myriad learning spaces physical and virtual in the institute to support these very pedagogical and graduate outcomes.