Explorations at Liger
Explorations are Liger’s unique project-based interdisciplinary opportunities that engage our students in the real world and are focused on creating impact. Students develop entrepreneurial leadership skills, working with mentors from around the world who are experts in their field. With an emphasis on divergent thinking, and as part of the curriculum, students create innovative solutions to issues their peers, community, and country are facing.
Designing Explorations at Liger
Identify an Opportunity
It is a complex task to choose an Exploration. There are millions of possibilities. The topics we choose should ideally be created by both learners and facilitators, but before starting to brainstorm and narrow down ideas, we consider:
Look around – view the big picture, do something original
Even though the actual Exploration may be focused on, let’s say the deforestation of a certain forest in New Zealand, the bigger picture is having learners work on the idea and concepts around deforestation in general including all aspects of deforestation and what to do about it.
Keep an open mind
Don’t just take on the latest topic in news, or on social media. Listen and find out about all sides of a potential topic. Stay neutral when possible as learners should have an opportunity to take a strong stand one way or another after gaining considerable knowledge and experience on a topic.
Involve the Community
We get involved in our community and open the door for the community to share its experiences and expertise to enhance the learning of our learners. Explorations offer opportunities to work towards solving real-world problems under the guidance of experts working to do the same.
Community experts offer Liger learners unique perspectives that textbooks and traditional instruction do not. Their firsthand experiences inspire and motivate learners, making learning more engaging and relevant. By sharing their expertise from their career journeys, challenges, and successes, they provide valuable mentorship and guidance, helping learners to take their learning to the next level and helping them to envision their future paths and understand the skills required.
Experts can help in the following ways during each phase of an Exploration.
Phase 1: Acquire knowledege, identify skills needed, assist with validation of ideas.
Phase 2: Host or plan a learning experience, interviewing, networking, feedback rounds.
Phase 3: Evaluate product, reflect, decide on next steps.
Facilitate Inquiry
The purpose of inquiry questions in Liger Explorations are to effectively learn from 3 types of information.
Factual – Knowledge/fact based, content driven, skills-related, supported by evidence.
Conceptual – Enables exploration of big ideas that connect facts and topics.
Debatable – Use of facts and concepts to debate a position and promote discussion.
Inquiry based facilitation develops Liger learners’ natural curiosity. Learners acquire the skills necessary to conduct inquiry and research and show independence in learning. Inquiry is divided into the following phases.
- Planning
- Investigating
- Taking Action
- Reflecting
Create Impact
A vital aspect of Liger’s Exploration programme is to empower learners to develop leadership skills by making a difference for others. Learning experiences are designed around the concept of reaching out beyond the learners themselves to create a positive impact on the surrounding people, environments, policies, etc.
Focusing on impact is based on the premise that strong results will occur when learners learn about and practice being leaders who create positive change, but additionally, learning quality itself such as engagement and long term memory is enhanced by learning experiences that are real, positive, and meaningful.
Explorations at Liger are aligned with United Nations Sustainability Goals (UNSDG’s) and measurement of impact is a part of the Exploration process.
Celebrate Learning
Sharation (sharing/celebration)
Sharations are a time to celebrate and communicate an Exploration’s success with our community. Sharations are important events which elicit a lot of excitement from the learner body and community. They are exhibitions of learning which includes both the learning process and end product and they usually take place on the last Wednesday of each term. It is important not just to celebrate but to allow learners to share their learning and results of their Explorations. Sharations are learner led to create an informative, interesting, creative, and interactive presentation.
Sharations are often open to the public, contact us to attend our next Sharation.
