Opinions

Dr Tim Renick of Georgia State and George Williams VC at Western Sydney are two pioneering leaders and champions of student success on the global stage. They share thoughts and perspectives from the stage at HEDx in Melbourne in a fireside chat with Veronica Pritchard of the Queensland Commitment at UQ. It argues for us getting out of our comfort zones and using AI to overcome process barriers, letting staff do human work to help students in distress. It is followed by an update from the AI in HE project where Michael Henderson of Monash and Margaret Bearman share updates of what students think of it being AI or teachers giving feedback on their learning.

Melinda Cilento as CEO of CEDA leads the national conversation for a shared plan towards Progress 2050. It has pillars of productivity and innovation and the knowledge and skills our future workforce need. In this fireside chat with Patrick Kidd CEO of the Future Skills Organisation she questions if higher education is changing fast enough and keeping up with the world around it. It provides a backdrop to a panel discussion involving Megan Lilly of Jobs and Skills Australia, Sally Curtain of Bendigo Kangan Institute, Yasminka Nemet of Microsoft and Colin Gneil of LinkedIn to explore how we can keep up with the speed of change in skills needs in an Age of AI and how a harmonised tertiary sector will help.

Theo Farrell as Vice-Chancellor of La Trobe University, with his VC Fellow Dr Susan Zhang, join as co-hosts and partners with HEDx in opening the latest HEDx conference at the State Library of Victoria. They outline the importance of collaboration and partnerships for conversations and diverse views to forge shared solutions to challenges and opportunities. And they do so on the biggest topic in the sector of how Higher Education will navigate the Age of AI. It forms an opening session at HEDx with Theo and Susan in a fireside chat with Paul LeBlanc who pioneers what AI means to the future of HE in a way that guides La Trobe being AI leaders in an Australian HE landscape.

John Dewar of KordaMentha leads a panel of public and private university leaders re-examining strategies in the light of opportunities with AI. Pascale Quester VC of Swinburne, Andrew Parfitt VC of UTS, Dan Cockerell CEO of Torrens and Jessica Vanderlelie DVC at Deakin reflect on how AI gives a chance to learn how to be a disruptor, and regain social licence before those seeking to disrupt us, take advantage first. They argue AI is a game changer strategic opportunity and experimentation in changing the way we do things is a chance not to be missed to avoid our Kodak moment.

Professor Danny Liu of University of Sydney built the award-winning Cogniti.ai to enhance student learning in higher education. In this interview with Katie Ford of partner Microsoft and I, he outlines how and why it was built, and how it can be used for active experimentation with AI. He likens it to allowing stunt doubles for those exploring AI experiments in student learning. He describes the importance of setting the culture, rules, access, familiarity and trust in the collaboration we need within and between institutions to stay ahead of the curve of technology advancements. He sees promise in AI helping change higher education for good.

Charlsey Pearce is CEO of MortarCAPS Data Standard. She joins Michael Burgess, formerly of Western Sydney University, and I to describe a new data standard developed to give consistent meaning and understanding to how we all define and use data on the student journey. Financial services and banking would find it impossible to provide service and use FinTech without consistent and interoperable financial data standards. The potential for much more effective data, systems and service for students and higher education needs an interoperable data standard for student journeys.

A/Prof May Lim Sok Mui is Assistant Provost of Applied Learning at Singapore Institute of Technology. She pioneers a coaching approach to competency-based education in Singapore’s fifth and most distinct university from a new campus in Punggol. She leads work into the Skills Future Singapore lifelong learning collaboration between providers, government and industry. Shortly before leaving for a global study tour to UNESCO and EU partners she joined an episode with Patrick Kidd CEO of Future Skills Organisation and I to reflect on the move to a skills agenda so vital for global lifelong learning and a strong theme at the forthcoming HEDx conference on April 2nd.

Lev Gonick the CIO of Arizona State University and Dave Rosowsky Senior Advisor to President Michael Crow are colleagues at the world’s most innovative university. They share their belief that universities can remain relevant by choosing how and why they embrace AI technology. They tell the story of how ASU has done so through bold leadership and culture, a fast clock speed, a commitment to experiment relentlessly, and 300-400 partnerships with technology companies that go beyond a procurement relationship. Ahead of Lev joining HEDx on stage in Melbourne in April they foreshadow lessons others might heed from their experience as we all ‘do the work” to ‘change the model’.