Themes and Purpose

We are sharing here some preparatory material for the HEDx Higher Education in the Age of AI Conference taking place on April 2nd.

We have designed this interactive and engaging day of activities to be focused on a coherent program of discussions around an integrated set of themes about Higher Education in the Age of AI. Our intention is that your engagement and collaboration with others on the day will help you identify clear actions that you can take to progress the readiness of your institution at this time. We have designed the event to allow you to engage in advance with a curated suite of resources that arise from our engagement as HEDx with speakers there on the day, and other best practice leaders.

 

Strategy and bold, human leadership

This event explores actions we can take for Higher Education in the Age of AI. It begins with the concept of an AI-first university, as coined by our opening fireside chat guest, Paul Le Blanc on a visit to Australia last year. He was a provocateur at an AWS-UTS event that generated responses from various Australian leaders including our co-host in Melbourne, Theo Farrell. A HEDx podcast recording of that event is available here.

 

Paul and his colleagues are about to launch their AI-first university venture in North America in April and Theo and La Trobe have committed to pursuing a similar strategy in Australia. The opening fireside chat, and the panel that follows led by John Dewar of KordaMentha, will update and challenge the concept of an AI-first university in a wider Australian context in the light of the environment all universities are facing as outlined in KM’s annual report.

 

AI impact on work and skills

Our second major section of the event will focus on the impact of AI on the nature of work and skills needs.  Patrick Kidd of Future Skills Organisation, who was in last weekend’s HEDx podcast release, will discuss with CEDA CEO Melinda Cilento, where Australia needs to be by 2050 in the recent national Progress 2050 conversation kicked off by CEDA. It will explore the importance of knowledge and skills to our future workforce, complemented by up to date views from research into AI-impacted skills needs in finance, technology and business from the Future Skills Organisation and analysis by LinkedIn of how the nature of work is changing and how skills first hiring is becoming more prevalent.

These changes will be addressed by sector leaders, partners and stakeholders against the recent tertiary harmonisation roadmap from Jobs and Skills Australia, and explore the impact on school to work transitions where we have recently co-authored a white paper with Year13. Examples of responses beyond those on the stage include “earn while you learn” pilots including those documented by Alumly.

 

AI and student success

The critically important area of focus on student success and engagement, and how data and AI can transform that, will be our after lunch focus including recent HEDx podcast guests in Dr Tim Renick of the US National Institute of Student Success, joining Veronica Pritchard of UQ and George WIlliams of WSU to share updates on conversations to bring such an approach to Australia. Sue Kokonis of OES, who joined UQ and WSU in helping bring Tim to Australia, will then lead a panel exploring how data standards, and better use of data and new AI tools can help address the nature of student complaints most recently raised in Australia through the new office of the National Student Ombudsman. The extent to which students are using and relying on both teacher and AI-enabled feedback will be provided by an update from the AIinHE project team.

 

Priorities on next stages of AI

The final session of the conference will see Lev Gonick share sector leading ambition for AI to support student success from Arizona State University. He will compare approaches with our co-hosts La Trobe University through a fireside chat with Manueal Franceschini of Adobe who have brought Lev to Australia. Lev updated us all on how ASU sees opportunity in this technology to review why and how we might use it for universities to remain relevant through a culture of innovation, and bold human-focussed leadership focussed on equity, in a HEDx podcast just recently.

Australian public university leaders and innovators will follow up their recent more detailed outlines of their thinking in podcast episodes with us as Phil Laufenberg, Danny Liu and Jason Lodge, join co-host Susan Zhang to share thoughts on the priorities for the next stages of AI implementation. AI-first, AI-centric or AI-enabled are three of the variants being mentioned. There are many seeking to guide and advise on the way ahead and they include our partners hAIgherEd who have penned their thoughts on one way forward.

Your call to action

What we invite and challenge all attending to do is find one idea of what one action they will take in response to the provocations of this event in changing higher education for good in the part of it that they serve.

 

 

This will be a focus for how we engage with our audience using the Slido tool and Q&A sessions with Professors Marcia Devlin and Kelly Matthews.