The Bachelor of Creative Intelligence and Innovation (BCII) has had some extraordinary feedback – some spontaneous and some elicited – from students who have gone through the winter and summer school intensives.
Student experience
Here are just a few comments on the learning experience from the student perspective.
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Speaker 1: I would describe this course as an opportunity to learn extremely broadly, and particularly for someone that likes to think outside of the box – to think a bit creatively, to move laterally through topics.
Speaker 2: It’s like this exciting opportunity to just take your brain to places where you haven’t been before and to think about the possibilities that are, like, trapped within the different disciplines.
Speaker 3: I had a lot of conceptual-based ideas, so ideas about the way that, um, society is at the moment, the way that we can change it.
Speaker 4: I’ve experienced over the start of the course – it’s, it’s like a springboard for launching new ideas.
Speaker 5: This course really is about broadening your horizons. Whatever your passion is and your core subject, or in your life in general, they want you to take this further and develop your ideas and learn how to express and communicate your ideas to your wider community.
Speaker 6: Today we are looking for places and times that otherwise remain invisible or meaningless in Kings Cross. Speaker 7: We were looking for things that provoked emotions; things that helped us understand our experience with our environment.
Speaker 8: One of the most important places I think we found for our card would have to be an alley we went through, where one side was completely let up and the other side was in darkness, and it split the residential areas of Kings Cross.
Speaker 9: We’re looking for signs of exploitation or flourishing economic environments.
Speaker 10: We’re applying hugely divergent ideas and theories and it just gives you so much more freedom to, I guess, explore solutions, and really be at the cutting edge of your field.
Speaker 11: It makes you think differently. It makes you – gives you all these opportunities to just think outside the box and completely tear an idea apart. It’s really, really cool.
Anton Mallach
“It’s evident as a result of undertaking a new style of university education as opposed to the traditional style of large lectures, large tutorials and no interaction-based contact with academics, that something is wrong with the methods being taught within the status quo. The interdisciplinary way that the BCII is being taught, as well as the fantastic access to academics, has given students (myself included) a much greater ability to question things being told to us, rather than simply taking them as a blind truth.”
Becky McCreath
“Pick an object, person, place, something. Now take everything you know about it and store it in a neat little box, labelled ‘preconceptions.’ Now – and this is the most important part – step out of that box and open your eyes, your ears, your imagination, to the world as it really is. Take this newfound understanding and sketch it, describe it, picture it, take another discipline’s perspective on it, reinvent the world as you know it: that is the art of the BCII.”
Benjamin Lesui
“I have worked before in groups, but never have I been in a cohort where working with each person introduced a totally new possibility for business ventures. But above all, it is the people with you that make this course more than worth it.”
Eden Lim
“It is not your average course with a linear approach to learning. The singular perspective that can sometimes arise from focusing on a singular core degree for so long is erased by the crazy amount of perspectives and ideas that are thrown at you within a span of two weeks.”
Edward Poropat
“Aspects and lessons from my own life, combined with the required readings, as well as BCII workshops and lectures, came together in the discovery and absolute certainty of the potential of diverse groups of people. This was already something I theoretically ‘knew’ yet here the reality of it all really hit me…Facing real-world problems in a place so close to home, really shows how powerful and useful this degree is going to be in the upcoming years as a catalyst for change in the following generations.”
Jessica Schilling
“The foundation of an Ideas Arena provided a rich resource hub of creativity, innovation, images, ideas, theories and tests. The ideas were abstract. They were fluid. They were full of life, meaning, and purpose. Yet they were disorientating. We were challenged to see the possibilities out there; to think of our own speculative proposals, what-if scenarios, and thought experiments; to act on our own ideas and inspirations.”
Jose Blanco Victor
“With the creation of BCII we are now given tools and methods that range over a broad spectrum. The most important part is how to use each discipline’s methods to be able to see the world through a new lens.”
Luke Dooner
“As an individual my ability to link business information and material to creative expressions and outlets has improved dramatically. The ability to observe the creative process of design students and the methodical reasoning of I.T students has proven invaluable to the end result of this subject, and the beginning of this degree.”
Olivia Kirk
“During the final presentations, I found it quite amazing that such creative and original insights were formed in an incredibly small amount of time. It is especially amazing when there are people whose full-time job it is to create these ideas and plans for a city. I feel that people become caught up in the repetition and monotony of their work, and cannot think innovatively or progress. This is why I love BCII: to be constantly reminded that you must 'think different' in order to excel creatively within any field.”
