Opinions

Sarah Bendall as the new First Assistant Ombudsman in the Office of the National Student Ombudsman has a passion for resolving complaints. Six days into this new role she outlines the background to the office and role, and how she plans to provide a route for students to ensure they have a safe, fair and secure experience, and hold universities to account. In a conversation with Cate Gilpin of Welcoming Universities she outlines the short term priorities and long term vision for a key plank of the Universities Accord and the most significant step in caring for students the sector has seen.

Dan Greenstein, Chancellor Emeritus of the Pennsylvania State University system came to the role from time at Oxford, the University of California system, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Boston Consulting. In this episode with Keith Hawkes of Ellucian technologies, he describes the burning recruitment and completion platform that created the need to merge 14 universities into 10 and create shared back and front office systems using technology that transformed student experience and institutional sustainability.

Professor Genevieve Bell joins the podcast as Vice-Chancellor and President of the ANU. She reflects on her journey as a scientist, engineer and humanist, in the US and Australia, in Silicon Valley and leading Australia’s national university. She reflects on short term challenges and the long term trajectory of higher education, the role technology plays in change and goals of providing opportunity for all. An episode at the heart of the HEDx agenda with commentary with Katie Ford of Microsoft.

Ann Kirschner, Former President of Hunter College at CUNY and Aleks Subic, VC at Aston set a scene of innovating toward ominichannel higher Ed. This is before Suzanne Steel of Adobe, Arlene Stewart of OES, Andrew Proctor of AWS and Osama Khan of Aston describe how multi tech-company partnerships can help AI make this real. All described by Andrea Burrows of OES and I following a recent Aston-hosted conference in the UK.

Jared Pearlman is Chief Strategy Officer of VitalSource a global digital content provider for higher education. He and they are very focussed on the challenges students face and the need to find affordable student experiences and business models for providers in partnership with technology companies that make these experiences sustainable. Hear a great summary of the global strategic issues with equitable edtech enabled access to learning dissected in partnership with Dr Christine Levinson of HEDx sponsor and partner Construct Education from the OES group.

Sabih Bin Wasi is the Founder & CEO of Stellic. He brings his lived experience as a recent graduate in design thinking and AI at Carnegie Mellon University to his design of student systems that imnprove student engagement and experience. He does so through STellic named after one of his professor’s as an integrated EdTech platform that brings together academic planning, advising, scheduling, and data analytics. The platform was designed to empower students and improve their
experience when navigating their journey towards graduation. Some investors are quoted as saying “There’s no way these kids can work out the complexity of HE”. Josh Nester of SEEK Investment has another view he shares on this episode.

A final episode from the Future Solutions conference has Kelly Mathews of UQ join me to reflect on the panel she led of data from 8000+ Australian HE students surveyed by the AI in HE project about AI use. And it has two of its DVCA sponsors in Kylie Readman of UTS and Liz Johnson of Deakin, joined by George Williams of WSU, Linda Brown of Torrens and Katie Ford of Microsoft as the sector considers how it will respond to the challenges and opportunities of AI. An overwhelming call to partner with students, the tech company eco-system and each other. Are we brave enough to get out of our lane?

Recent and future hosts of HEDx Conferences are Professors Kris Ryan DVC A of UQ and Jessica Vanderlelie DVC A of La Trobe. A fireside chat with them had them comment on the impact on equity of AI strategies. These are explored by a panel at Future Solutions led by Shamit Saggar of ACSES joined by colleague Ian Li and equity experts in Kylie Austin of EPHEA, Paul Harpur of UQ and Lyndin Francis of Vygo. As Jessica says “equity isn’t just a priority, its the foundation of a future ready university” meaning the implications of AI advances are critical.