Weaving complexity and accountability: approaches to higher education learning design (HELD) in the built environment

The role of built environment professionals—planners, construction and project managers and property professionals—is to develop efficient cities improving social, environmental and economic outcomes. Professional practice that strikes a balance between the built and natural environment requires graduates with multidisciplinary skill sets, dictating the need for cross-disciplinary practice in undergraduate study. If we want alternative approaches to development, we must nurture professional capabilities that allow for a change in the way we see and act. In the light of this, we seek to enfranchise the many stakeholders engaged in the professional education programs offered in higher education. Higher education plays a central role in the development of professionals with the ability to recognise and mitigate the environmental impacts of traditional practice. This paper presents how courses in two Schools at RMIT, Global, Urban and Social Studies and Property, Construction and Project Management, have developed a transferable framework through which environmental capabilities may be embedded into undergraduate education. It explores the role higher education plays in the development of graduate capabilities and presents a conceptualisation of processes to realise this, through the Higher Education Learning Design Framework for development, and renewal, of traditional courses. The paper offers with a detailed exposition of the HELD framework against two courses. We explore this framework in relation to knowledge themes, professional and generic skills and assessment design.