Conceptualising an integrative doctoral curriculum

Various new forms of the doctorate have emerged in recent decades with the aim of better preparing researchers for employment in both academic and industrial settings . Many such programs have responded to perceptions that candidates need to acquire a wider range of ‘transferrable’ skills and, increasingly, competencies related to entrepreneurship and the commercialisation of research . Efforts to augment traditional doctoral models have meant that ‘hybridized’ curricula have increasingly been adopted.

This presentation reports on work undertaken to conceptualise such a mixed curricular system—that of the ARC Centre in Biodevices, which is an ARC Industrial Transformation Training Centre, funded in 2014. The Centre provides doctoral training in engineering biodevices, diagnostics and other areas of medical technology at Swinburne University of Technology. Its program is unusual in a number of ways, especially in its combination of a ‘biodesign’ focus , an industry-collaborative component and an emphasis on pedagogies designed to encourage entrepreneurship and research leadership. The first year of this doctorate comprises an extended and interdisciplinary topic development process, whereby candidates establish commercial industry drivers for their proposed research in clinical or industrial settings, followed by screening, ideation, design and ‘path to market’ planning stages. These are scaffolded by integrated coursework. Candidates then ‘pitch’ a fully developed proposal and business plan to a pool of prospective business partners before finalising arrangements for the industry-collaborative project they will pursue over their remaining candidacy.