Phil Laufenberg is the Head of Artificial Intelligence (AI) at Macquarie University. His experience varies from tech-startups to executive responsibilities in public universities across three continents.
His vision is for AI-enabled universities that accelerate accessible education for all, and sees that one way to do that is through universities partnering with tech companies.
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The Universities Australia Solutions Summit brought together university leaders, academics and government together in Canberra last week.
The annual event is run by the vice-chancellor’s membership body UA, and this year’s Summit aimed to support national priorities with an exchange of ideas on everything from workforce productivity to Trump’s America.
This episode of HEDx includes reflections of the event from James Cook University vice-chancellor Simon Biggs, University of Queensland deputy vice-chancellor Alphia Possamai-Inesedy and more.
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Vice-chancellor of the Auckland University of Technology Professor Damon Salesa shares his views about place-based innovation in the context of his university in south Auckland. He is the first Indigenous person to be appointed a vice-chancellor in New Zealand or Australia.
He shares multiple lessons and strategies for driving equity in universities and providing opportunity for a diversity of learners.
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Abul Rizvi was the deputy secretary of the Department of Immigration, then the deputy secretary of the Department of Communication.
He has a PhD in Immigration Policy from the University of Melbourne, and came to Australia as part of a migrant academic family.
He argues Australia’s current visa system is unjust, proposes his alternative to student caps, and says we need to change government attitudes to international students.
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The new First Assistant Ombudsman in the Office of the National Student Ombudsman, Sarah Bendall, has a plan to hold universities to account.
Six days into this new role, she sat down with Martin Betts to outline 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.
Coordinator of Welcoming Universities Cate Gilpin joined the conversation to ask Sarah what her short and long term priorities are and how she expects to action key reform areas outlined in the Universities Accord.
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Pennsylvania State University chancellor emeritus Dan Greenstein joins Martin Betts to discuss his varied career and how it impacts his work today.
The chancellor has held roles at the University of Oxford, the University of California, the Gates Foundation and Boston Consulting.
He explains the recruitment platform that facilitated the university’s major mergers and what front office systems transformed student experience and institutional sustainability.
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Professor Genevieve Bell is vice-chancellor and president of the Australian National University.
In this episode, she reflects on her journey as a scientist, engineer and humanist in the United States and Australia. The professor shares lessons learned in Silicon Valley and leading Australia’s national university.
Professor Bell also identifies short term challenges and the long term trajectory of higher education, specifically in relation to technology and AI.
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Chief strategy officer of global digital content provider VitalSource Jared Pearlman joins Martin Betts on HEDx this week to discuss the need for HE to deliver affordable student experiences and business models for technology providers that make these experiences sustainable.
He provides a great summary of current global barriers to providing equitable, ed-tech enabled access to learning.
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Founder and chief executive of degree management ed-tech Stellic Sabih Bin Wasi used his own student experience of interacting with university systems to improve the student experience.
His platform, adopted by 70 universities, is designed to bring together academic planning, advising and scheduling so his peers can better “work out the complexity of higher education.”
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I drew much inspiration from this morning’s listen to Derrick Bruff’s interview with Jane Southworth about AI across the curriculum. Derrick Bruff’s podcast, Intentional Teaching, gives us bountiful opportunities to learn from the experiences of educators who are transforming educational experiences for students across a wide variety of disciplines and contexts. While the episode did focus on what is obvious from the title, AI Across the Curriculum, I drew a lot of inspiration well beyond just that topic of AI. There are many layers of what they talked about that go well beyond the broad topic of artificial intelligence. Other aspects of leading and teaching within a university context are shared well beyond the particular initiative they discuss.
Jane talks about the difficulty of making such a massive change across a complex institution. She made a few jokes about the difficulties, although she said it was such lightheartedness that I felt such kindness toward her in what must have been such challenging endeavors. Consider what it takes to make something like this happen, and all the committee work that it takes, all the different people that are need to be talked to, all the perspectives to consider. The intricacies, not just to make something work, but to make the fruit of that work visible to students such that they enroll in the program and pursue the educational aims beyond the requirements for their majors. Jane shares examples of them starting an AI certificate program within their curriculum. The mammoth effort that it was to make that technically possible from an operations standpoint, such that someone could take the right classes and that they would go through all the curriculum committees and get that to work within their policies and procedures is one thing. But another layer I found quite fascinating was how do you then make that visible to students such that they’re even aware that this certificate exists and that they find it of interest and worthwhile to pursue further learning.
As Sam Cooke sang years ago, I also “don’t know much about geography.” There’s no doubt in my mind that I have subscribed to some of the myths that Jane described about her discipline of geography. Jane described how in the United Kingdom, when she was in college, that it was the third or fourth most popular degree. Geography graduates found themselves receiving among the highest earnings as they left school, as well as being surprised when they discovered just how much more the field is than studying rocks, like they had initially believed.
In the show notes for the episode, Derek shares a couple of resources that come both from conversations with Jane, as well as from his ongoing collaborations with Flower Darby, co-author of Small Teaching Online: Applying Learning Science in Online Classes and The Norton Guide to Equity-Minded Teaching. The first article linked by Derek in the show notes is Developing a Model for AI Across the Curriculum: Transforming the Higher Education Landscape via Innovation in AI Literacy by Southworth et al. The second article was Building an AI University: An Administrator’s Guide by Joe Glover. I’m grateful, as always, to Derek and all of the opportunities he makes available to those of us interested in teaching with intention.