Education Leaders' Forum 2008

Welcome to the Education Leaders Forum 2008 blog!

2008-09-30T15:41:00Z

This is your platform to continue the Forum discussion, find useful resources and information about tertiary education and share successful education projects from your country.

On 7-8 July 2008, 129 Ministers of Education, senior education bureaucrats and policy advisors from 35 countries gathered at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris, France, to participate a working conference on the topic of 'Success and Sustainability: Tertiary Education's Global Challenge'.

Microsoft and UNESCO collaborated to facilitate discussion about tertiary education's role in securing sustainable economic success and challenges and barriers in providing quality education.

The discussion doesn't stop with the event! Let's continue the conversation and use this blog to share successful models for improving education and fostering local innovation.

Two young students from the UK accompanied the 2 day Forum and captured the outcomes by blogging the event live. Featuring already plenty of information and resources, which have been referred to during the Forum, the blog will continue to transform into an interactive resource guide over the next few weeks, providing you a platform to:

Re-live the Education Leaders Forum 2008 and see for yourself what
- speakers, like US Secretary of Education, Margaret Spellings, EU Commissioner for Education, Training, Culture and Youth, Jan Figel, UNESCO Assistant Director General, Abdul Waheed Khan
- 4 innovative Imagine Cup students
  and
- delegates, Ministers of Education, senior education bureaucrats and policy advisors had to say about various topics related to tertiary education.
Present tertiary education projects from your country and share your experiences in overcoming barriers to success
Contribute to discussions by commenting on blog posts from peers in other countries and organisations.
Find links to relevant information and resources helping you to improve and develop tertiary education in your geo.

Final notes: How to use this blog

2008-07-08T12:50:00Z

The intent of this blog is twofold; primarily to provide you with a quick reference guide (albeit, in my own words, with a student bias) to any of the keynotes, workshops and panel discussions you'd like to refresh your memory of, and perhaps gain a slightly differing point of view on; secondly to help you to frame and kick-off your own internal discussions about what the future of Higher Education looks like for the sector, region or even business you represent.

You can view the content of the conference on this blog in one of three ways, whichever works best for you. Most likely, this will be a mishmash of all three.

Under every post, you can also leave a comment, start a discussion and contribute your own thoughts and points of view for others to see. Please make full use of this feature, for the benefit of all. Here's those three ways:

1. Pictorially

Throughout the conference, a talented artiste has been capturing the ebb and flow of the conversation in pictoral form, and each of these are available as high quality images for you to download and view at your leisure. We've put each one under every post, which you can view chronologically (see below).

2. Topically

At the right hand side of this blog, you will notice a 'tags' section. This collection of keywords should go some way towards finding the posts which relate to, and talk about a certain topic which may be of particular interest to you at any one time.

3. Chronologically

Click here for a quick outline of the agenda of the conference, with links to posts relating to each session. Alternatively, just read the blog from the bottom upwards, and you'll progress from the start to the finish naturally.

Thanks,

Ian & Ben

Endnotes: e-Technology, An Ally of the Planet?

2008-07-08T12:29:00Z

Our final talk, from Natarajan Ishwaran (Director of Ecological and Earth Sciences Division, UNESCO) and Rob Bernard (General Manager Environmental Sustainability, Microsoft) concerned that ever present consideration - the environment.

The role of technology

A sobering view of environmental destruction was presented by Mr. Ishwaran. With ever sharper borders between natural (or preserved) areas, and those industrialised, built up areas of land than ever before, we need to understand exactly the consequences of any actions we take - even if those actions are 'just' improving the education of our next generation of students. How long can we sustain these borders with nature with the booming growth rate of developing countries?

"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Albert Einstein

Technology alone cannot be used to bring back wildlife, to reforest areas or to predict changing environments, but it can be utilised well as a tool to help people to do this. Social systems, advanced planning tools and better infrastructure can all bring benefits to this area - as proved by many teams in this year's Imagine Cup - such as Project SOAK, reducing water wastage in Australia.

The parallels with education in all of the above should hopefully be clear, as should the impact of education on the above.

Mindmap of the keynote

Please click to enlarge the photo.

Research

Rob Bernard's key focus was on research and action. Research and action. Research and action.

We know that software uses somewhere between 3% and 5% of total electricity, we know that data centres are taking up more and more energy to fuel, and with distributed learning becoming a major focus for education (as well as the growth of 'cloud' systems in general) this can only grow. How can we use technology to reduce the impact of this? How can we get more output for less environmental cost? How can we cut down on the other 95% of electricity used? More research, more action.

"Environmental sustainability cannot succeed without an education infrastructure in place"

Software is essential to solving the problem, and a challenge now will be convincing the private sector to create usable, useful tools that others can use for the benefit of the environment, rather than for corporate profit.

A secondary consideration is the sharing of knowledge - to take a quote from a previous workshop:

"The future's already here, it's just not evenly distributed"

Many environmental problems have already been solved, and are being solved daily. The same themes and problems will be occurring around the world and an easily accessible, quality assured centre of information and collaboration will do wonders for environmental health worldwide - as will distributed work on solving these problems.

Further Reading

At a summit in Johannesburg, the three pillars of sustainable development were put forth, which provide a strong and thorough overview as to the exact definition of sustainable development, and how it can be implemented.

"UNESCO’s Programme on Man and the Biosphere (MAB) develops the basis, within the natural and the social sciences, for the sustainable use and conservation of biological diversity, and for the improvement of the relationship between people and their environment globally."

The UNESCO MAB programme is well worth reading up on too, as is the Madrid Action Plan for 2008 - 2013.

Strategies To Overcome The Barriers

2008-07-08T11:08:00Z

Themes:

Innovation in 21st Century Learning and Teaching
Building Institutional Readiness

Expert panel speakers:-

Dr. Hoda Baraka
Ministry of Information Technology and Communication, Egypt
Richard Descoings
President, Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris
Dorothy Gordon
Director-General, Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT
Prof. Diana Laurillard
Knowledge Lab, London Institute of Education
Dr. Jim Ptaszynski
Microsoft, World Wide Higher Education

Topics discussed:

Funding

As has been previously discussed, government funding can rarely manage to foot the bill for an entire tertiary education system - and often it's not appropriate for them to do so. Education at the tertiary level provides an over-reaching benefit to society, through research, training of new graduates that can provide public services and value to the economy, and as centres for excellence, innovation and inspiration.

In Asia, public-private partnerships have allowed the training of educators in ICT - allowing not only the educators to improve the learning experience through technology, but also enabling the children to learn to learn, to be able to use technology to further their own learnings. Mobile units in rural villages were mentioned as a way to improve learnings in rural communities - but there's no substitute for training the educators and parents of students, that they can then pass on knowledge, and the art of acquiring it, to their charges.

Educators

Prof. Diana Laurillard was very clear in her strong opinion that technology itself can lend very little to the education of our students.

"What it takes to learn isn't going to change, you can't do transformational, mind-changing learning in a chatroom with your mates"

Mentors and educators, within a formal learning environment were strongly put forward as the key cogs in the machine of education - a view that has been almost skipped over previously in all the excitement about technology, and one that it would be well to keep close to our hearts. Even assuming we were able to perfectly vet the internet, and ensure that it contained all the knowledge that a student wanted to learn, Dr. Jim Ptaszynski reminded us - this would still not be enough for a student to properly understand and implement all that they want to learn. I would go one step further and say that a part of the role of an educator is not only to facilitate students learning what they want to learn - it is to inspire them and exponentially increase the range of subjects about which they have a passion, about which they want to know more.

But this is still a positive, still a strategy for success. We can use technology to invest in our educators (and this doesn't just mean faculty, often parents of students can be major players in their education). Technology can be used to help teachers use their time better, by moving from a variable cost to a fixed cost model through distributed learning, by helping teachers to use their time better - rather than just being used as a presentation model as it unfortunately so often is right now.

Mindmap of the workshop

Please click the picture to enlarge

Peer learning

Dorothy Gordon provided a counterpoint to the above, showing an advocacy for collaborative peer learning, especially when implemented through wiki-like systems. This may seem a turn backwards, until you consider her inspirational statement:

"Online communities eliminate barriers of location and funding, because in a peer-learning community, education is free"

However, it's unfair to our speakers to suggest that any of them believe that only one route is correct, and indeed many of them advocated a blended learning approach. A particularly succinct explanation was 'teacher support peer learning' - combining the new with the old, which is often the only way to merge change into a well established, and currently very successful system. Change and improvement are necessary, important and will be superb to see - but we can't forget that our education systems today are producing many, many great results right now, and have been doing so for decades.

Educator Training

An oft-quoted 'excuse' as to the difficulty of change is that of faculty resistance, faculty readiness or other such terms in a similar vein. It is certainly true that our educators are well training in a current system, and as 'digital immigrants' will almost certainly know less about technologies than their students.

Richard Descoings suggests that faculty should be going out and learning technology if they're merely to keep up with their students, let alone have an edge which they can use to impart knowledge. He also came up with the interesting theory that educators may lose 'credit' with their students if they talk about technology with them and show a lack of knowledge. True - but may they not also learn through these conversations?

We also need to consider the tools which are provided to educators - we've given them PowerPoint and the web and they've embraced and love them, but consider this with the amount of technology often available to the average student. Without investment in our educators, those who facilitate, manage and run the learning for our students, how can we possibly hope to get a significant ROI on those they're educating?

New Business Models

It is important to understand what is driving academics - and according to Prof. Diana Laurillard the thing that is mostly driving them right now is high quality research which brings in big money for the University. What we need is a review of the fundamental business model of a University, in order to ensure it remains sustainable and relevant.

We should leverage the fact that the multi-nationals believe they have not only a social responsibility to invest in our education system, but also that public-private sector partnerships can be strongly beneficial to both sides of the partnership. As Commissioner Figel mentioned earlier in this conference, the research benefits, professional benefits and workforce benefits of a high-quality tertiary education sector can impact all aspects of a society and an economy.

Moving Toward Success

2008-07-07T17:53:00Z

Anoop Gupta, Microsoft Corporate VP spoke of, and demonstrated how technology can be used to solve so many problems today - as well as sharing his learnings from his experiences as an educator at Stanford University.

The case for scale

A point which can never be forgotten, and which has been a recurring theme throughout this conference is that any solution will have to scale out to a much larger number of students than ever before. Not only is there more demand for knowledge workers in industry worldwide, but we also have an exponential growth in non-traditional and digital students.

People will change careers now, and their jobs will develop levels of complexity - technology will lead to skillsets changing even within the course of one role. Now more than ever we have a need for 'lifelong learning', and must teach people to 'learn to learn'. Mature students are becoming much more commonplace.

Whatever we do with technology must meet this increase in our numbers, we will need solutions that can truly scale if we are to meet demand and not leave behind a large chunk of the upcoming generation.

The opportunity for technology

One of the major plus points when it comes to working with technology is that the price is constantly, constantly falling. Laptops for just $200 are becoming commonplace now and networking is becoming cheaper and more readily available for students. But what can we do with our technology?

A major benefit that technology can bring, and an aspect that universities need to consider is that of the quality of the educators. We are often in danger of neglecting the educators, yet these are some of the most important people in terms of what a student might end up doing. Technology can give interactive feedback, measurements and metrics that can be used to improve the quality of those with the most impact on today's students.

"If the bottom 25% of students is taught by the top 25% of teachers, they very soon reach an 'average' level of achievement, or above. If the top 25% of students is taught by the bottom 25% of teachers, they end up at the 'average' level themselves"

Another question to consider is, how can we scale cost effectively? Most institutions think they need to run the IT systems on their own and be independent from everyone else. This is not accurate and it certainly isn't cost-effective. Institutions need education on why partnering with the industry is a good idea, and how it will benefit them.

Carl Wieman was mentioned as a key researcher and innovator in the areas we're discussing, specifically around science education. His various publications make good reading around technology improving education, and he has already had some interesting ideas, such as a collaborative, free, e-learning environment for science students; PhET.

Microsoft technology and Higher Education (Video)

2008-07-07T17:52:46Z

Barriers To Achieving The Vision

2008-07-07T17:20:00Z

Themes:

Access & Quality
Delivering on the Needs of Employability

Expert panel speakers:-

Dr. Suaad Fahad Alharthi
Saudi Ministry of Higher Education
Dr. Bruno Lanvin
INSEAD
Dr. Jan-Martin Lowendah
Gartner
Dr Tarek G. Shawki
UNESCO, Director, Bureau for Science and Technology in Arab States
Dr Stamenka Uvalic-Trumbic
UNESCO, Higher Education Division

Topics discussed:

This 'parade of the nay-sayers' as one of the panel joked, was tasked with discussing the barriers that must be overcome if all of the great ideas discussed can be put into place. I believe the discussion was best summed up by the following quote from Dr. Bruno Lanvin:

"A vision without an implementation is better known as a hallucination"

Disillusionment

One problem raised early on was that youth are disillusioned with learning in general, and have a diminished appetite for any type of formal learning, believing that it will not improve their quality of life, or career prospects.

Globalisation

A particular challenge, that is hard to deal with under our current system is that we are moving into a global world. Although this has been pitched as a benefit by many speakers previously, it is difficult for local institutions teaching their local students to deal with a world-wide industry of flat organisations with flat spreads of people around the globe.

Standards

Change requires flexibility, change requires innovation and improvisation. Innovation and improvisation can only take place within a structured environment - all of our best poetry, music, art, all comes from improvisation within a set of rules. Without some set of structured rules, borders, boundaries, innovation becomes near impossible.

"We Need Standards. Standards enable markets. Standards enable sustainable infrastructures. Standards enable flexibility, the flexibility needed to cope with change."

Education, worldwide, is lacking standards for many, many aspects of education. Standards must be applied to digital objects, to multi-lingualism, to course-content if we are to progress forwards with a distributed approach to education. However, how can we create international, worldwide standards whilst still preserving individuality, choice and cultural influences?

Multi-lingualism

Today's conference features a host of delegates from around the world. Many of these delegates speak English fluently, and for those who don't, there are real-time translations available via headsets so that they can fully appreciate every word.

"90% of content that exists online today is not in English"

The internet is a great resource for those who wish to further their knowledge - but often only if they speak English. To expand content globally, and to allow a global population to collaborate on work, and create content, this is an issue which must be addressed. There are some solutions already, such as automatic translation services, but these are rarely of a quality sufficient for tertiary education.

Mindmap of the workshop

Please click to enlarge the picture.

Quality

A point raised by many of those in the discussion was that of quality control of resources, as we expand towards mediums such as the web. A common joke amongst students is "If it's on Wikipedia, it must be true. If it's not, I'll go put it on there". Controlling the quality of information that is being set out is a major issue which will need to be addressed.

Controlling the quality of institutions is also becoming an increasing challenge, with many 'bogus institutions' offering degrees for little or no work. Many even claim to be certified by, or affiliated with organisations such as UNESCO - and having some kind of standards framework to deal with this is becoming increasingly important.

Infrastructure

There is often no price differential between buying technology in developed countries and buying it in developing countries - especially given how much technology is coming from commercial, private institutions. Poverty at an individual, and national level leads to poverty of infrastructure.

"Only 5% of 30 million Kenyans are even connected to the National Grid"

What do we do with this majority of people in the developing world? How can we possibly address the 'digital divide' when we have so many more basic needs that need to be satisfied before online collaboration can be considered.

An idea mentioned here was that investment in infrastructure could lead to a 'virtual marketplace' which would soon pay for itself through taxes - Ireland has been a strong example of the benefits this.

The Human Touch

"Technology will always be a second-choice medium of interaction for humans."

"If technology is as good as we claim it to be, why did we all fly half-way around the world to come to this conference instead of utilising technology?" asked one delegate, and it was certainly a hard question to answer. Despite the rapid growth of collaboration technologies, and their prevalence in the workplace, university is still a social experience to a great degree.

Most students would choose to spend time with peers and teachers, instead of using a computer for individual learning - however well avatars can represent emotions and however fast graphics can be communicated. How can this be reconciled with a move towards e-learning, distributed networks of education and such ideas?

Faculty resistance, readiness and knowledge

University staff are well versed in traditional teaching methodologies - workshops, lectures but as 'digital immigrants' may often lack the skillsets required not only to implement digital & virtual solutions, but also have the over-reaching problem of simply not 'getting' the brave new world of social networking, collaborative learning vs formal learning and many of the other paradigm shifts mentioned by Mr. Khan.

Faculty resistance is also likely to be an issue with any solution, and will come in many forms. From straightforward resistance to change (fear, ignorance, ideals, tradition), through to a lack of adaptability and even skepticism of the solutions presented, it will be hard for any solution to get off the ground with the backing of those 'on the front line'.

A Community Perspective

2008-07-07T15:33:00Z

Commissioner Jan Figel spoke well of the national benefits of education - and the true benefits to a society that lifelong learning can bring. Autonomy, and responsibility for all of those in the academic space was highlighted as a must, and the twin, key points of accessibility and quality of content were reinforced again.

"Universities should take responsibility for their graduates. They should equip them not only with knowledge, but with know-how, and skills"

Furthermore, we heard more about the need for practical learnings within academia, so that graduates were well-equipped for the world of industry.

Research

A topic which was touched on for the first time was that of the benefits towards society that University research is able to offer. Research training can provide benefits on a national regional and sector-based scale. It is, however, to be noted that funding for Universities, and specifically research, is trending towards being funded less and less by the public purse, and more by the private sector.

"Knowledge ambitious societies should be prepared to invest 2% of their GDP into modernising learning institutions"

It should be commonplace for Universities to work with businesses, to provide relevant knowledge back into their society, and communicate the knowledge they produce not only within their own walls, but to their local area, their country, to the world.

Mindmap of the keynote

Please click to enlarge the picture.

Programs

Through the EQAR (European Quality Assurance Register), students will be able to view exactly the contents of a course they wish to sign up for, and what accreditation that course has gained. This will help to align universities around an International Qualifications Framework, to further reduce the barriers for learning that are associated with the phenomenal choice faced by students looking to enter Higher Education.

The ERASMUS and ATLANTIS schemes also helps to reduce these barriers, by giving students experience internationally - not through textbooks or virtual learning, but by actually living and breathing another culture, another way of doing things, another culture.

"The Erasmus programme, which is arguably one of the best-known Community actions, encourages student and teacher mobility, and promotes transnational cooperation projects among universities across Europe. The scheme currently covers nine out of every ten European higher education establishments."

Panel Discussion, Higher Education Students

2008-07-07T15:30:00Z

A panel discussion put four HE students to discuss their current projects, and also the problems and challenges they've noted in their personal experiences with educations - and some ideas for how to solve these.

Infrastructure

Our four students came from their countries' top universities, and had access at the University to a wide range of wonderful technology, systems and hardware. However, when they came back to their homes, they often had trouble accessing and taking full advantage of these systems off-campus, and this is something I can empathise with - and which is a far greater problem in countries where not everyone can be sure of a computer and an internet connection.

For the principles of e-learning, networked learning, interactive and collaborative learning to be successfully applied, the actual physical hardware and infrastructure is a problem which must be considered and addressed. There is already some great charity work going on to bridge the digital divide, such as the World Computer Exchange.

Collaboration

A great demand was to have a single access point, which students can use to launch all of their tools and collaborate with one another. Simplification of systems is always a good goal to strive for, and too often content in disparate places becomes hard to work with - too much time is spent familiarising oneself with the tools, and moving between them, rather than working with the content itself.

Border barriers

With many traditional barriers, from availability of material through to access to mentors and infrastructure being tackled by technology, one large physical barrier is still an issue for students - that of the physical location of the University they wish to attend. An Indian student wishing to study at an American University must navigate the visa process, pay for their travel and then also pay for fees - often at a rate far higher than US students would normally pay.

Grants and scholarships can go some way towards resolving this - but they are the exception rather than the rule and a plea from the student panel was to reduce these barriers to education. A lot of great work can be done with simplifying the visas process internationally, and access across borders to international students. Anoop Gupta, hosting the panel discussion, was quick to point out that his native Stanford has already gone some way with this, by promising to never refuse a student entry based on financial ability, if they can gain admittance through academic efforts. Unfortunately they've not been able to fix the visa problem yet.

A Vision for Tertiary Education

2008-07-07T13:45:00Z

Themes:

Successful tertiary education
Enabling development that can be sustainable

Expert panel speakers:-

Prof. Datuk Ansary Bin Ahmed
CEO, Asia E-University
Prof. Roberto Carneiro
Catholic University of Portugal
Dr. Diana Oblinger
CEO, EDUCAUSE
Dr. Rafael Rangel
Tecnológico de Monterrey
Dr. Wim Veen
Delft University of Technology

Topics discussed:

Immersive Learning

Children in the developing world are very, very similar to children in the developed world. This seems an obvious concept, but it should be noted that despite the very different resources that may be available, and cultures that may be present - the mechanisms of learning may be very similar. Dr. Diana Oblinger raised the importance of studying the cognitive process - learning how to learn.

Students in the new world are used to having a computer to research, collaborate and play (possibly whilst learning, see below). Hole In The Wall offers just one computer, in a central location, in an underprivileged village, through which children may assemble to draw knowledge and, in the process, engage in meaningful conversation and immersive learning activities that broaden their horizons.

Mindmaps of the discussion

Please click the pictures for an enlarged view.

Networked Learning

Dr. Rafael Rangel, of the Tecnológico de Monterrey set forth the idea of a Virtual University, as implemented in Mexico. Starting from just one campus, information is shared, collaborative environments are set up and students become the teachers. Education is expanded from one central place to become surfaced through 1,862 Community Learning Centres. The cost of learning has been greatly reduced, and this is a great case study for distributed learning, and one we can use in many other scenarios. Further reading on the Mexican implementation and the Pakistani implementation may help.

Emphasis should also be placed in the process of teaching, as well as the distribution of content, we can't simply rely on the magic of new technologies to help students to learn. The system as it is still needs improving - the new needs to run parallel with the old for now, at least to some degree.

Games

In his opening line, Dr. Wim Veen insisted that all the delegates play World Of Warcraft. No, seriously! Whilst I may not entirely agree, it's definitely important that anyone involved in the education of today's children should have an understanding of online, collaborative gaming - and the benefits to be gained through it.

Students of today are inevitably going to be playing one game or another, and this isn't just a way of developing RSI and wasting time. Online games are non-linear, and contain a range of distributed content - but are always focused on problem solving, collaborative learning and active learning.

Carleton offer two basic introductions to the established concept of teaching through games - how and why. There are also some links to more detailed academic documents on those pages, which can help you delve deeper into this environment.

Support

When the question was raised of who the new 'left out' will be, as we move into the networking, distributed learning system a very important point was raised. Support is still needed. Without appropriate mentoring and support from teachers, educators and increasingly, facilitators, students will encounter roadblocks and find it hard to progress. There can be little substitute for personal encouragement - however gratifying finding a solution or learning a skill may be. This encouragement can, however, come from those that students work with, rather than those that they learn from.

Qualifications

In a year's time, I'll have a degree in Computer Science. Want to hire me? No? Me Neither. Let's try again.

In a year's time, I'll have the skills required to solve problems, and integrate myself into your business, providing valuable solutions to your customers. Want to hire me? Good - where do I sign?

Dr. Wim Veen enlightened us as to a program for drop-outs he has recently helped institute. There's no diploma to be had at the end, there's no exams to sit - there's learning for the sake of gaining knowledge. Do educators really want to train people to pass qualifications? I sincerely hope not. Educators want to better the lives of those they interact with, and this system helps those who find it hard to work with the traditional system to still gain from the range of content provided.

Another point was raised from the floor, that education is for life. It is paramount that students are educated for the future, for all aspects of their life. It is equally important that those outside of the traditional education system have access to skills and new information which can benefit them both in their career, and in their life. Education is about improving the quality of human life, not just gaining certification in order to progress into the world of work.

Content

We now have some great ideas for how to share out our information to students, but who creates our content? What content should be created? How should it be created?

Traditionally we've looked at content as objects that are created by academics. In the future, content will be more dynamic and more people will contribute to the content used to educate students. E-learning will help facilitate this, but a major challenge of tertiary education is how to help students to build meaningful material from data and academic resources.

A point was also raised that skills taught in tertiary education should be more directly applicable and relevant to the businesses that students will be moving into. Collaboration with the private sector, and 'practical learning' can help here - but there will always be an ongoing challenge in striving to find a balance between the right levels of academic theory and practical application.

What to teach?

Opposing views were presented as to what content should be created, and how it should be made available to students, versus how it should be recommended to students.

It could be argued that students rarely know all of the skills they will require to achieve their dreams, and that it is important for students to be 'pushed' through the mires of advanced calculus so that they can move on to engineering design. There's still much to be said for incorporating some degree of the 'teacher knows best' attitude that we are moving away from, as the teacher is often an experienced professional in a field.

It could also, however, be argued that utility, 'freedom of education' is King. We will spend our lives learning, and the most important student/tutor interactions are those where the student is taught how to learn, and then studies what they want to study, when they want to study it - rather than being told what they are allowed to study, or should study

An example given in support of this argument was that of Wikipedia.

"As people learn more about content, they can create definitions using their own experience, and we then end up with a shared resource, to which many people have contributed, and that's what learning should be all about."

Changing Contours of Tertiary Education: Role of ICTs

2008-07-07T12:05:00Z

Mr Abdul Waheed Khan, Assistant Director General for Communication & Information, UNESCO reminded us of the key challenges we face with HE. I know that these have been mentioned before, but it's well to constantly have them at the top of our minds - as these are what we must solve if HE is to be improved and sustained.

"if knowledge is the engine of development, then learning is its fuel."

The Challenges Of Higher Education

Access
Quality
Cost
Relevance
Equity

Numbers, numbers, numbers

Mr. Khan helped set up a university in his native India, and in 1987 the institution was proud to boast nearly 5,000 students. In 2000, when he left, there were 1.2 million students enrolled there. Clearly a traditional approach to dealing with such numbers would falter, and it is only through innovation and ingenuity that standards are maintainable.

In India and China, we expect this kind of exponential boom of students, but it is worth noting that this is a world-wide phenomenon. In developed countries there is an Age Participation Rate of over 50%, in developing countries this is as low as 10% but growing exponentially. This trend is confirmed and elaborated on in an interesting document published on behalf of the Australian Education Sector. You can read that here.

Paradigm Shift

There needs to be more than simply improvements, renovations and additions to our current systems. We need a paradigm shift in our thinking. Mr. Khan provided a few examples here which may provide food for thought - think which are most appropriate for your environment.

Supply Driven -> Demand Driven
Taught Learning -> Flexible Learning
Uniform Provision -> Manifold Providers
Institutions -> Networks
Knowledge Transmissions -> Personal Learnings
Formal -> Informal Learning

Mindmap of the keynote

Please click the picture to enlarge

The promises of e-learning

I like lists, do you like lists? Mr. Khan was kind enough to share some of the promises of e-learning, please use these five, very persuasive bullets to stimulate an interest in e-learning in others, that they may take it seriously and look into it fully:

Widen access
Improve quality
Improve effectiveness
Offer personalised learning
Reduce costs

The Kronberg Declaration

Amazing amounts of knowledge are being generated every day - the amount of content produced in recent years surpasses the amount produced in human history. With the children of today born as 'digital natives', plugged in to this wealth of (sometimes) useful information, it is increasingly the job of teachers to guide and focus students - combining the new and the old. More information on how this can work, and the challenges faced by these 'digital natives' can be found in the following Educause Review.

"Knowledge acquisition and sharing will increasingly be technology mediated, and traditional educational processes will be revolutionized, said experts at a UNESCO organized event in Kronberg, Germany, recently."

The Kronberg Declaration is the summary of the event mentioned above, and is highly informative, offering strategic and long-term advice on the two related, and supremely important topics of knowledge acquisition and sharing. You can, should, and hopefully will grab a copy of the Kronberg Declaration here.

Finally

"It is not the strongest of species that survive, nor the most intelligent - but the ones most responsive to change"

How do I learn? (Video)

2008-07-07T12:04:00Z

At The Crossroads

2008-07-07T12:04:00Z

Margaret Spellings, US Secretary for Education led the first keynote with an inspiring talk around education in the United States, and gave some interesting ideas that could be taken elsewhere - as well as alerting us to some challenges faced in the US that could well be faced elsewhere.

Agile and Aligned

In the US, there are 14 million undergraduates. Half are enrolled in part-time courses. There is an increasing amount of mature students in tertiary education. Education needs to become more agile if it is to satisfy these needs, and increased technology is going to be a major factor in allowing this.

"HE must become more agile, informative and Student Centric."

Secretary Spellings emphasised the need for a greater alignment between the education establishments (high-schools, colleges, universities). The process needs to shift its mindset away from one school teaching one set of topics, one college teaching another set of topics...The thought instead should be one student being taught one set of skills. Wherever they are, however they want to learn. An article on aligning the standards of education in California at High School, and how this maps to College (University) entry is available here. Arizona also provides a short case study.

Mindmap of the keynote

Please click the picture to enlarge.

The wrong side of the tracks?

In the US, the gap between students who can afford higher education and the students who are struggling is narrowing, thanks in no small part to $400million grants to needy students in the US. Parents now have better information, and access to resources, that they may help their children make the right choices, and give them the benefits at home needed to set them on the right path. This is great news, and accessibility of education for all can only ever benefit a society.

The other side of the fence

It should be noted however, that getting (and retaining) students in higher education is only half of the battle. Teachers - fully trained, passionate and well resourced teachers, are the second key part of the education process. A scary number of teachers were leaving the US education system after a number of years up until recently, when reforms, programs and budget were brought in to tackle the problem. We must not forget that improving facilities and access for students can never solve a problem on its own - we must always forget the educators who are out there, making that personal connection with the student and inspiring them to learn, to want to learn, to love to learn.

A final thought

I leave you with this, final word from Secretary Spellings

"60 years after the the UN said education is a right for every student, 800 million people cannot read or write (and 2/3 of these are women). 1 in 4 children fail to get to Higher Education"

The US is doing an admirable job in tackling this problem with their No Child Left Behind Act, and associated programs, but the scale of the mountain left to climb is still immense.

The importance of ELF08

2008-07-07T12:04:00Z

A copy of Ralph Young's speech may be found here.

Ralph Young, Microsoft Vice President, World Wide Public Sector gave the second introductory talk, raising some interesting points about precisely why Microsoft feels so strongly about education, and its importance on a global scale.

Rising numbers in education

Ralph elaborated on the point mentioned in the initial speech by Mr. Masuura, that we face the challenge (and opportunity) of rising numbers of students enrolled in tertiary education. In China, for example, only 10% of potential students in China would enrol in tertiary education in 1999. By 2006, this was nearly at 20%. We're seeing so many other countries following this trend and we need to realise it may not be possible to satisfy this demand through traditional mediums.

Rising numbers in technology

"Education is the key to solving many of the problems in this world - technology will enable this by removing limitations, fostering innovations and allowing both students and teachers to achieve their full potential"

So many employers are now demanding at least a basic level of ICT skills from any new hires, and this is a key point to consider. These skills may be developed through the learning experience, in tandem with classical academic studies, through the use of innovative, technology driven learning mediums.

Rising numbers on Facebook

"Learning and teaching are not the same thing. The technologies students use to learn may not be the same teachers use to teach. Which are the most engaging?"

30 years ago, it was unthinkable that students would continually be performing their own research, and collaborating with one another (as they now do through social networking, twitter, facebook, mobile phones...and on) during the learning process. We must accept that this will the case - and we have the option of whether to try and ban and stall these technologies from learning environments, or embrace and incorporate them - utilise their benefits.

Rising stars in the Imagine Cup

Ralph was kind enough to mention a competition that both of us have had lots of fun with in the past, and are continually recommending to our friends. The Imagine Cup is a competition for students, run by Microsoft, which encourages innovation, design and practical implementation of a range of skills from students worldwide.

Not only does this give students the 'real world' skills it is often so hard to teach, it also provides a sense of excitement and hype as they create their own solutions to solve real world problems. This year's theme was 'Imagine a world where technology enables a sustainable environment' and during the conference 370 teams from 61 countries and regions are participating in the finals in Paris, each with their own solution to this pressing and important problems. Over 100,000 students worldwide entered the competition last year.

In 2007, a Greek team by the name of 'Noesis' developed a computer system using RFID (Radio Frequency ID) technology to measure stress levels of autistic students. This then recommended education tailored for that student to keep stress levels down and ensure an optimum learning environment. See it in action here:

Welcome to UNESCO

2008-07-07T10:28:00Z

A PDF copy of the Director General's speech may be found here.

Mr Koïchiro Matsuura, Director General of UNESCO kicked off the proceedings by highlighting the sheer scope of the problems faced, worldwide, in education. But 'problems' is a harsh word, and throughout his speech, Mr. Matsuura emphasised not only the great previous work that UNESCO has performed, often in partnership with private sector companies (such as HP) - but also the superb opportunities for improvement that has been brought about by technology, changing attitudes and international collaboration.

Accessibility

Government budgets for education, we are warned, is continually decreasing, at a time when far more people are being given the opportunities and resources needed in order that they may gain a level of education. Distance education and 'e' learning are critical here, as they can provide a high standard of content with no per human cost, just a 'per document' cost. I recommend looking into the following report on e-learning from CEMCA.

Where physical resources are low and hard to obtain, online resources are key. Give a man a fish (textbook) and he has a fish (textbook) with which to feed (teach) one student. Give a man a net (an 'internet') and he can teach as many as have screens, or the ability to see one.

Mindmap of the speech

Please click the picture to enlarge.

Collaboration

UNESCO has developed 6 regional conventions on the recognition of qualifications from one country, into another, which has been ratified by 100s of countries worldwide. With barriers to travel opening up, and the strong need for education to be relevant wherever a student chooses to work, this initiative is becoming ever more critical.

I'm lucky, I can work in a US company, from the UK, with a UK degree, doing my work over secure connections on the internet. Can the same be said were we to substitute 'UK' and 'USA' for any of the other multitude of countries training students of a high calibre, and hiring those to ensure future economic stability.

"UNESCO conventions are aimed at promoting the recognition of academic qualifications for academic purposes (e.g. to continue studies in a different institution)."

"At present there are 6 regional conventions on the recognition of qualifications (Africa, Arab States, Asia and Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean, and 2 European conventions) as well as 1 interregional convention (Mediterranean Convention)."

For more information and involvement, I'd recommend UNESCO's brief on their conventions.