The Cafe and the Education Revolution

Greetings from the just opened TASA Cafe in the sport building at the Australian National University in Canberra. TASA adds Philippine cuisine to the selections on campus. I am having the pulled pork with coleslaw on a bun. More importantly, it is just across the road from my office in the school of computing. The campus cafes have an important role for informal discussions.

Already I have scheduled a meeting on exemptions and credit for recognition prior learning and experience, in the cafe. Granting students credit for what they did somewhere else is something academics are reluctant to do. This is partly out of a concern for standards, but also because it is not something part of academic training. Some of this is relatively simple: a course in discrete mathematics is much the same in Sydney or Shenzhen. However, soft skills are another matter: a course where students work in a team is not the same as one where they just read books about working in a team. Is work experience at a computer company in another country equivalent to Australia?