UNESCO-ICHEI Held 2022 International Advisory Committee Meeting
2022.12.19
On December 17th, 2022, 2022 International Advisory Committee (IAC) Meeting of the International Centre for Higher Education Innovation under the auspices of UNESCO (UNESCO-ICHEI) was convened both online via Zoom and in-person at the Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech), Shenzhen, China. The meeting was chaired by Professor Freddy Boey, Deputy President for Innovation Enterprise of the National University of Singapore, and President of the IAC of UNESCO-ICHEI. The meeting focused on topics related to IIOE and IIOE National Centres by concluding IIOE’s three-year achievements, deliberating on its future development plans, and introducing the establishment and operational mechanism of IIOE National Centres. Then, the meeting comprehensively discussed how to ensure the IIOE National Centres play its pivotal role based on the IIOE platform in realizing IIOE’s development goal to benefit over 30 countries, 100 universities and 100,000 faculty members.
The participating experts included (in alphabetical order): Mr. Daniel Tan, Board Member of the eLearning Forum Asia (eLFA); Mr. DU Yue, Director of Division for Cooperation of Intersectoral Follow-Up and Partnership of Africa Department of UNESCO; Mr. LIM Cher Ping, Chief Expert of IIOE at UNESCO-ICHEI, Chair Professor of Learning Technologies and Innovation at the Education University of Hong Kong; Mr. Paul Prinsloo, Research Professor in Open Distance Learning of the University of South Africa; Mr. Shahbaz Khan, Director of UNESCO Beijing Office; Mr. ZHAN Tao, Director of UNESCO Institute for Information Technologies in Education (IITE); Mr. ZHANG Tiedao, Former Vice President of Beijing Open University; Mr. ZHAO Jianhua, Associate Director of the Center for Future Education Research of SUSTech.
Also present at the meeting were Mr. LI Ming, Director of UNESCO-ICHEI, Ms. HAN Wei, Executive Deputy Director of UNESCO-ICHEI, and other members of UNESCO-ICHEI. At the meeting, LYU Feng, Assistant Director and Chief of the IIOE Management Centre of UNESCO-ICHEI, and BI Xiaohan, Assistant Director and Chief of the West-Asia and Africa Programme Office of UNESCO-ICHEI gave special reports respectively.
LYU Feng, Assistant Director and Chief of the IIOE Management Centre of UNESCO-ICHEI, gave a report on “IIOE’s Three-year Achievements and Future Development Plans”. LYU Feng pointed out that as an international education platform initiated by UNESCO-ICHEI together with its global partners, committed to facilitating the digital transformation of global HEIs and refining teachers’ digital competence, the total number of IIOE platform users has exceeded 10,200, covering more than 130 countries. LYU Feng said the future development plans of IIOE will focus on the following fronts: first, upgrading the IIOE platform, establishing a hierarchical curricular system, and creating a certificate training platform for digital competence; second, relying on IIOE National Centres and key partner HEIs to gradually and steadily promote the digital transformation of project countries and HEIs; third, refining IIOE’s governance structure, strengthening the operation of the IIOE Secretariat, expanding the partnership network, promoting multilateral cooperation, and building a sustainable alliance of higher education digital transformation.
BI Xiaohan, Assistant Director and Chief of the West-Asia and Africa Programme Office of UNESCO-ICHEI gave a report on “IIOE National Centres: IIOE’s global initiative for localisation and inclusiveness”. BI Xiaohan pointed out that, with the widening application of digital technology in higher education, global HEIs have become increasingly aware of the importance of digital transformation for teaching and studying. IIOE’s traditional bilateral cooperation model could no longer meet an ever-increasing need for membership and cooperation from more HEIs. The establishment of IIOE National Centres is the proactive response made by UNESCO-ICHEI to the global educational transformation. As for the operational mechanism of the IIOE National Centres, BI Xiaohan said, UNESCO-ICHEI will empower IIOE National Centres by launching and implementing tailored pilot projects, so as to establish a central hub for the IIOE network in the project country, better serving and supporting the digital transformation of the higher education.
Afterwards, the expert members discussed the meeting topics, “IIOE future development plans” and “operational mechanism of IIOE National Centres” by sharing advanced experience and outstanding cases, and providing valuable suggestions.
Mr. Daniel Tan noted that HEIs should think about trends that will make comprehensive differences in future education and make proper responses by improving the future readiness of students, graduates and employees, providing support for employers and education (K12 and higher education, like training and professional development) and meeting the need for thought, leadership, and sense-making. Thus, UNESCO-ICHEI and other HEIs should think beyond the present and do more in the future.
Mr. DU Yue mentioned that in today’s Africa, education resources are very limited. UNESCO-ICHEI and IIOE have played a positive role to promote education in this continent. In the future, he would like to continue to cooperate with UNESCO-ICHEI under the framework of UNESCO in the following three aspects: First, continue the cooperation with UNESCO-ICHEI on the IIOE programme. Second, encourage more African HEIs to participate in the IIOE programme. Third, expand the openness of the IIOE to ensure more HEIs are involved in and committed to the shared future for education.
Mr. LIM Cher Ping made four recommendations: First, enhance the higher education ecosystem building including quality assurance, infrastructure, hardware, software, and other resources. Second, coordinate and facilitate the whole system to empower partners to realize inclusive, equitable and quality higher education. 3. Provide support for the localization through the IIOE National Centres and improve its inclusiveness. 4. Continue to cooperate with top HEIs, like Tsinghua University, to provide solid evidence and support for strengthening the link between research and the practice of policies.
Mr. Paul Prinsloo stressed that it’s important to consider the social, economic, environmental, and political changes, and the cost for students and institutions when talking about the digital transformation of higher education. We cannot ignore the danger that the transformation of higher education relies on collaboration with commercial providers with their learning management systems, analytic services, and a variety of applications. Mr. Paul Prinsloo noted that UNESCO-ICHEI and IIOE have done amazing work in promoting the digital transformation of higher education by sharing their resources and platform.
Mr. Shahbaz Khan emphasized the importance of digital transformation in the development of higher education and talked about the Transforming Education Summit held in New York and the 3rd World Higher Education Conference (WHEC2022) held by UNESCO in Barcelona, Spain. He noted that HEIs play a critical role in narrowing the higher education gap and promoting lifelong learning. He encouraged UNESCO-ICHEI to further cooperate with UNESCO to jointly promote the digital transformation of higher education.
Mr. ZHAN Tao noted that this year marks an important year for UNESCO and education transformation. At the Transforming Education Summit held in New York, UNESCO reiterated the necessity to ensure the realization of education digital transformation and emphasized the topic of equity and accessibility of online education. Besides, Zhan Tao suggested that as the epidemic prevention and control policies change, it is time for UNESCO-ICHEI to enhance communication with the international community, for example, recruiting more international experts. Last, Zhan Tao expressed his willingness to further deepen the cooperation between IITE and UNESCO-ICHEI in more fields.
Mr. ZHANG Tiedao proposed three suggestions. First, a partnership is a two-way relationship. While providing services, UNESCO-ICHEI should also encourage partners to make contributions to the project. Second, UNESCO-ICHEI needs to make innovations in ways of teaching and learning as a response to the changes in education brought by COVID-19. C. As an international organization, in addition to providing education services and projects, UNESCO-ICHEI could also provide publicity services for the UNESCO community through domestic and international platforms.
Mr. ZHAO Jianhua comprehensively analyzed the two topics by posing four questions focusing on IIOE and IIOE National Centres. First, how to cooperate with HEIs nationally and internationally, and how to involve more HEIs and faculty members in the programme? Second, how to prepare the HEIs faculty members to adapt to digital education, and how to make the IIOE network more efficient and more attractive? Third, what other major capabilities of IIOE National Centres harbour, how to ensure they work effectively and is there any stimulus policy that can be used? Fourth, how do the different National Centres cooperate with each other? Through the four questions, ZHAO Jianhua hopes to enlighten the future development strategies of IIOE.
After the discussion, Freddy Boey summarized the experts’ opinions and congratulated the achievements scored by UNESCO-ICHEI and IIOE. He noted that the reports presented by LYU Feng and BI Xiaohan fully illustrated the progress made by UNESCO-ICHEI and IIOE, which encouraged education practitioners. In the past three years, COVID-19 raged through the whole globe. Under the leadership of Director LI Ming, UNESCO-ICHEI overcame difficulties and successfully implemented and extended the IIOE project in Africa and Asia, which greatly promoted the digital transformation process of global higher education.
At the end of the meeting, Li Ming, director of UNESCO-ICHEI, expressed his gratitude to the experts for their comments and gave responses to constructive opinions from the experts. First, UNESCO-ICHEI should keep up with the work schedule of UNESCO by focusing on its own work. Second, due to the huge gap between the digital infrastructure in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and other areas, UNESCO-ICHEI should provide support in line with their development stages and promote localization through IIOE National Centres. Third, considering the fast-changing environment, UNESCO-ICHEI should convene a professional team to support the design and research of inclusive cooperation programmes. For that to happen, all members of UNESCO-ICHEI should improve their professional capacity, adopt the opinions of the experts, and learn from the successful cases and experiences of HEIs.
On December 17th, 2022, 2022 International Advisory Committee (IAC) Meeting of the International Centre for Higher Education Innovation under the auspices of UNESCO (UNESCO-ICHEI) was convened both online via Zoom and in-person at the Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech), Shenzhen, China. The meeting was chaired by Professor Freddy Boey, Deputy President for Innovation Enterpr
