What is Victoria 2050
Victoria 2050 is a new educational resource, currently in the pilot phase, that draws on aspects of scientific thinking through decision making and design challenges. Using scenario-based learning, students engage in:
- evidence-based decision making
- hypothesising
- innovative problem solving
- critical and creative thinking
The resource is designed to encourage curiosity, exploration of intended and unintended consequences, while demonstrating how systems are interconnected.
Designing Victoria 2050
Victoria 2050 was created using the findings of over 20 parliamentary committee inquiries that identified some of the challenges Victoria will potentially face in relation to growing populations over the next couple of decades.
These reports and references were used to identify fourteen key areas that are important when considering the future of Victoria, as well as produce a list of data and evidence students are able to draw on throughout the activities.
Victoria 2050 encourages young people to respond to the challenge of setting priorities with finite resources, and to consider the need for future-focused, sustainable solutions.
The structure of Victoria 2050
The scenario is split into two parts:
- Making decisions using the parliamentary process of passing a bill
- A future-focused, design-thinking challenge
The parliamentary process
The first part of Victoria 2050 asks students to prioritise a list of fourteen key areas for the future, acknowledging that all areas are important but decisions must be made given limited resources.
Students are given fictional electorates to represent and form their own political parties. Each party decides on their order of priorities, before the government party introduces the Victoria 2050 Bill. The students follow Legislative Assembly and Council processes, including a Committee of the Whole for amendments, before voting on the final bill.
Future focused design challenge
Based on the priorities, determined in the parliamentary process stage, students complete one of two future-focused design challenges for each of the key areas.
Each design challenge asks students to consider a future problem that Victoria may face as a result of growing populations by proposing innovative solutions. Different amounts of information and resources are provided depending on the challenge, with prompts to help students consider their problem from a new angle or represent their solution in a different way. For instance, representing their ideas via:
- Magazine cover
- Restaurant menu
- Billboard
- Wayfinding signs
- Book covers
Victoria 2050 is currently being piloted by the Community Engagement's Education Advisors across a number of settings, and will be published later this year.
