Opinions

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’.

Phil Laufenberg is Head of Artificial Intelligence at Macquarie University. His career already spans three continents, and traversing startups in technology companies to executive responsibilities in a public university. He sees a future of AI-enabled universities based on technology accelerating accessible education for all. He is committed to universities pushing the boundaries of jagged frontiers in partnerships with technology companies. He is interviewed in this episode with his friend and tech partner Nils de Vries of Amazon Web Services. Learn about the 4 use cases that have emerged from exploring 50 potential applications at Macquarie University in this episode.

Sarah Bendall of the National Student Ombudsman office, George Williams VC of WSU, Shamit Saggar of ACSES, Paul Harpur of UQ and Hashini Panditharatne of the Australian Human Rights Commission join Cate Gilpin and I in a satellite panel event at the Universities Australia solutions summit. They dissect how we can reframe equity issues and responses to make higher education providers sustainable and thriving. It requires us accepting we are the problem, listening to students, and bringing about culture change as a basis for redesigned processes enabled by technology. Let’s do it.

Simon Biggs of JCU, Kris Ryan and Suzanne Le Mire of UQ and Alphia Possamai-Inesedy of WSU reflect on what they heard in Canberra this week and what it means. Sue Cunningham of CASE and Joe Avison in a personal capacity put it into global context. And tech leaders Nicola Cresp of OES, Katie Ford of Microsoft, Joel di Trapani of Vygo, Charlsey Pearce of MortarCAPS and Mark Sampson of Cenote Solutions see opportunities for tech to deliver the equity all sides of politics are calling for. Time for action now the talking is over.

Professor Damon Salesa is Vice-Chancellor of Auckland University of Technology. He is the first and only Indigenous VC of any university in Australia or New Zealand. A strong sense of commitment to community makes AUT the most likely of places to lead in this way. Damon sets out views of place-based innovation entirely appropriate to a context in South Auckland, at AUT, with a strong sense of its place in NZ and a Pacific Ocean forming a third of the planet. I analyse an interview with him with Veronica Pritchard, Program Director of The Queensland Commitment at UQ after work at NZ TEC. Multiple lessons from international perspectives to drive equity changes we have to make.

Dr Abul Rizvi is former Deputy Secretary of the departments of Immigration and Communtcation. He has a PhD in Immigration Policy from Melbourne and came to Australia as part of a migrant academic family. More than anyone, he sees the link between migration and international education from lived experience, professional expertise and scholarship. He argues, in an episode recorded with Cate Gilpin and I, for Australia to set targets for migration based on long term planning in an era of forthcoming population decline of young people from falling birth rates. And to build migration and higher education policies around that bigger need. He argues the current situation of leaving migrants and students in visa ‘no-mans-land’ is unjust.