Podcast

Professor Paul Harpur of UQ, leader of Universities Enable and member of the Accord Ministerial Reference Group, joins HEDx. He makes the case for role models with lived experience to lead the debate about achieving real inclusion in higher education. In common with this week’s referendum on a Voice to Parliament, the importance of listening to those with lived experience who have a real stake in policy changes, as we seek to undo disadvantage, are the changes to governance we need if a higher education system is to become truly equitable.

Roger Smyth shares his experiences from the New Zealand Ministry of Education in joining an episode of the HEDx podcast with Professor Giselle Byrnes, Provost of Massey University as co-host. As our Australian Universities Accord final report responds to debate among our providers over what form of Tertiary Education Commission to recommend, what can we learn from experience and lessons across the ditch about how such a commission should be set up and operate?

Professor Clare Pollock as Provost and Senior Deputy Vice Chancellor at Western Sydney University (WSU) outlines how a university at the centre of Australia’s growth is pursuing a mission based on local partnerships. Her story and the WSU story are at the heart of the accord process and it’s issues. They provide a great example of a university in serving a local community can make a world-leading contribution on a global stage.

Jason Tabarias of Mandala partners shares details of a new report for the Coalition for Digital Learners of what students of today and tomorrow are looking for in their learning experience through technology. Students clearly have an appetite for more effective technology support to personalise, augment and self-pace their learning and engagement. Is our ability to give equity students in particular, the experiences they need, in danger of being the baby we throw out with the bath water of compliance?

Dr Nadine Zacharias as Managing Director and Founder of Equity by Design, joins Co-CEO of Vygo Ben Hallett as my co-host in exploring the technical, operational and leadership issues associated with responding to the unfolding picture and details of the Support Amendment Bill. With consultation open for a further week or so this is a critical conversation for the sector to ensure it is ready to support growing numbers of students we seek from equity groups, to succeed from as early as January 2024 or face significant penalties.

Caitlin Gleeson, Global Leadership Development Lead at Canva joins Dr Nora Koslowski of MBS as co-host to discuss the changes in lifelong learning for leaders and graduates entering innovative workplaces such as Canva. The increasing scope for horizontal discipline and knowledge needs to be augmented by vertical capabilities in managing ambiguity and change. The case is made for different approaches by employers and new roles for and partnerships for higher education facilitators in meeting these needs.

Professor Rose Luckin of UCL and EDUCATE ventures research, joins with Dr Ant Bagshaw of L.E.K. Consulting as HEDx co-host in this episode. It dissects responses to the recent breakthroughs of AI technologies. It surfaces global best practice in being vulnerable, experimental and proportional in finding higher education problems as starting points to explore how AI will impact us all. It offers a roadmap for practitioners, leaders, institutions and policymakers for the sector in exploring a future for higher education. In doing so it addresses a significant gap in the Universities Accord interim report.

Dr Nora Koslowski as Chief Learning Innovation Officer of MBS joins the HEDx podcast to share insights into how the combination of emerging AI technologies, and the changing world of work and future skills needs of employers are providing fundamental demand-side changes to the supply of higher education. She makes a case for much stronger partnerships between higher education providers and employers and innovative tech companies and outlines ways in which technological innovation will reshape the world of higher education.

Manuela Franceschini of Adobe joins a discussion involving Theo Farrell of University of Wollongong, Tiffany Wright and Rachel Bondi of Microsoft, Matt Kuperholz of Deakin and Sherman Young of RMIT about the missing focus on technology and generative AI in the interim report. How do we best realise a vision of “growth for skills through greater equity” when we are experiencing the equivalence of an “industrial revolution at 10 times the speed”. What is digital fluency and what is the place of ethics? And how will the sector’s eco-system best share experiments and lessons from failing fast from global best practice in a digitally transforming world?

Teri Cannon as Founding President of Minerva University reflects on the journey to build a different type of university that is intentionally global. After 10 years of helping students from 130 countries learn in a rotation through 7 global locations in North and South America, Europe and Asia, Minerva as a private university has been named the world’s most innovative university for the second year running by the World Universities with Real Impact rankings.It does so with no campuses or owned buildings, no research and no facilities of any kind that do not focus on the student experience. And it teaches global students to become global leaders with cities as places of learning and technology as a key enabler.