In this book we respond to a higher education environment that is on the verge of profound
changes by imagining an evolving and agile problem-based learning ecology for learning. The
goal of doing so is to humanise university education by pursuing innovative approaches to
student learning teaching curricula assessment and professional learning and to employ
interdisciplinary methods that go far beyond institutional walls and include student
development and support curriculum sustainability research and the scholarship of teaching
and learning as well as administration and leadership.An agile problem-based learning (PBL)
ecology for learning deliberately blurs the boundaries between disciplines between students
and teachers between students and employers between employers and teachers between academics
and professional staff between formal and informal learning and between teaching and
research. It is based on the recognition that all of these elements are interconnected and
constantly evolving rather than being discrete and static.Throughout this book our central
argument is that there is no single person who is responsible for educating students. Rather
it is everyone¿s responsibility ¿ teachers students employers administrators and wider
social networks inside and outside of the university. Agile PBL is about making connections
rather than erecting barriers.In summary this book is not about maintaining comfort zones but
rather about becoming comfortable with discomfort. The actual implementation is beyond the
scope of this book and we envisage that changing perceptions towards this vision will itself be
a mammoth task. However we believe that the alternative of leaving things as they are would
ultimately prove untenable and more distressingly would leave a generation of students afraid
to think feel and act for themselves let alone being able to face the challenges of the 21st
century.
