SMU LifeLessons® is a learning framework that takes students beyond the classroom, on a transformative journey that helps them uncover their personal values and purpose. Developed to complement SMU’s four-year academic undergraduate programmes, its aim is to engage undergraduates in co-curricular learning that would better prepare them to be their best, for others.
Modelled after a journal (to encourage reflective writing) the Pathfinder journal is comprised of resources, exercises and questions that could be approached in no specific order, and in a self-directed manner.
All editorial and design decisions were grounded in the tool’s primary principles of being authoritative, yet encouraging towards a learner’s sense of agency.
As such, the tool was dubbed the SMU LifeLessons Pathfinder journal to emphasise the point that one’s learning journey within the programme would not be dictated. Instead, it would be up to each learner to ‘find’ and direct his or her own path.