This guide is for student advisors at ANU. It explains how the McCusker Institute’s SoCIETIE Initiative courses work — the pathways, the project, the KNoT classes, and how they are taught and assessed — so you can advise students with confidence.
About the SoCIETIE Initiative
The SoCIETIE Initiative is a for-credit, transdisciplinary elective open to students from any degree. Students choose a pathway, do a collaborative project that creates positive change, and build skills through KNoT workshops — assessed on the quality of their thinking against a transparent high bar, with feedback rather than marks. For the full student-facing detail, see the SoCIETIE Hub and the course list. For a student who hasn’t settled on a direction yet, how to choose an ANU elective walks through the questions to ask — including when a discipline elective is the better answer.
Students choose a pathway that is shaped by their learning goals
Every student chooses a pathway to split their time between building skills through our workshops and doing their project.
Skills Pathway
Build broad skills across a range of KNoTs — best taken across a semester.
See this pathwayProject Pathway
Go deep on one project, supported by fewer KNoTs — any semester or session.
See this pathwayStudents work on a collaborative project
Every project is collaborative — with a partner or peers — and geared toward positive change on an issue that matters to the student. A project can come from any of four sources:
Partner project
An advertised project with a McCusker Institute partner.
Community leadership
Advancing a role the student already holds in community.
Student leadership
A student leadership activity they are driving on campus.
Living Lab
A project we organise inside the course — ideal for students who don't arrive with a project.
Students develop skills through our workshops
Our classes, called KNoTs (to Know the Nature of Things), are morning or afternoon workshops that students choose and complete. Each is roughly three hours plus a pre- and post activity. Some topics on offer:
- Collaboration in Action
- Systems and Feedback
- Unravelling Complexity
- Creating Change
- Building your BS Meter
- Inclusive Design
- Respectful Dialogues
- CyberNations
- Developing your Personal Brand
- Presentations that Don't Suck
- Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Ways of Knowing
- …and many more, including on-campus KNoTs
How we teach and assess
Meets students where they are
Any year level, any session — there is no fixed starting point.
Motivated by the work
No marks and doesn't contribute to GPA — the work itself is the point.
No single right answers
We value multiple perspectives and look at problems that don't have right answers
Feedback, not grades
Students revise and resubmit until the standard is met.
Reflection turns experience into learning
Structured reflection is threaded through every KNoT.
Learning is celebrated
We value and celebrate all student learning.
Attend an Information Session
Come along to a McCusker Institute information session — meet us on campus and see how the SoCIETIE Initiative courses work.