On 27 July 2021, the 2021 International Institute of Online Education (IIOE) Asia-Pacific Mid-Year Meeting entitled "Digital Transformation for Inclusive and Quality Higher Education: Mapping the Core Competencies of the Higher Education Workforce" came to a successful conclusion. The meeting was jointly organized by International Centre for Higher Education Innovation under the auspices of UNESCO (UNESCO-ICHEI, Shenzhen, China) and the IIOE Rotating Presidency for 2021 - University of Engineering and Technology (UET), Lahore, Pakistan.

The event focused on identifying core competencies of the Higher Education Workforce including teachers, leaders and support staff and building a supportive university ecosystem. More than 30 delegates, including representatives from UNESCO, Asian Development Bank, Southeast Asia Ministers of Education Organization and ASEAN University Alliance, as well as policy makers, university leaders, entrepreneurs, teachers, and researchers from 13 countries in the Asia-Pacific region, attended the meeting. Ms. Sun Yi, Deputy Secretary General of Tencent Foundation, and Professor Syed Mansoor Sarwar, Vice Chancellor of UET, delivered opening speeches.

The meeting summarized the IIOE mid-year progress and officially released the upgraded "IIOE Competence Framework for Higher Education Workforce in the Asia-Pacific", which has taken into account constructive suggestions made by experts from Asia-Pacific countries and international organizations at the IIOE Mid-Year Pre-consultation Meetings held on July 15th. Professor Libing Wang, Chief of Section for Educational Innovation and Skills Development of the UNESCO Asia-Pacific Regional Bureau for Education, as well as experts from other international organizations and university leaders in the region reflected on the core competencies needed by future higher education workforce, and affirmed the inclusiveness and practicality of the updated framework and its relevance to countries in Asia-Pacific.

Representatives from the University of Colombo, Mongolian University of Science and Technology, Bandung Institute of Technology in Indonesia, UET and its partner university - the University of Gambia, presented their experiences in implementing IIOE and responding to the pandemic from the perspectives of“IIOE co-development and resource sharing", “IIOE innovative course-production”, “IIOE industry-university cooperation” respectively.

At the meeting, a teachers' video where the IIOE teacher users are talking about their experience in participating in IIOE's training sessions and webinars and providing suggestions to further improve IIOE, sparkled a discussion among experts on how IIOE can better serve the actual needs of teachers and provide better services in the future. Representatives from international organizations, education ministries and universities shared their views on how IIOE can empower future higher education workforce.

One highlight of the meeting is the launch of IIOE Course Development Contest in Asia-Pacific jointly by Seewo and UNESCO-ICHEI. The contest aims at guiding university teachers worldwide to learn to use information-based teaching tools and methods. The contest will select those teachers who have performed well in the field of ICT-enabled teaching as best practices to further scale them up to accelerate the process of global digitalization of higher education.

After the release of the contest, Professor Syed Mansoor Sarwar and Director of UNESCO-ICHEI, Professor Ming Li delivered closing remarks and called on more universities and other stakeholders to participate in the future development of IIOE.

The recordings of the meeting are available here.