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Capability Commons

Student Agency

Learners as co-designers of their own education, not recipients of it.

“Why does learning stop when the syllabus ends?”

Student organiser, Conversation 01Sample content

Discussions & evidence

Ideas in this theme

Portfolio-based assessment, piloted alongside exams

Sample content
  1. idea
  2. exploring
  3. prototyping
  4. testing
  5. validated
  6. recommended
Problem
High-stakes exams certify memory of covered content, not capability. Employers discount the signal; students optimise for the wrong target.
Intervention
Run a term-long pilot where a cohort maintains an evidenced portfolio of real work, assessed against a published rubric — alongside, not instead of, existing exams — and publish the comparison.
Feasibility: highOrigin conversation →

A public, student-maintained curriculum review

Sample content
  1. idea
  2. exploring
  3. prototyping
  4. testing
  5. validated
  6. recommended
Problem
Curricula lag the world they prepare students for, and there is no standing channel through which learners can flag the gap.
Intervention
A public review of the curriculum, maintained by student communities and updated every term — what is stale, what is missing, what deserves to exist — addressed to the bodies that own curriculum decisions.
Feasibility: mediumOrigin conversation →

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