KENET HEADS OF INSTITUTIONS ANNUAL MEETING MOMBASA, KENYA, DECEMBER 11-13, 2018 Theme: Achieving and Sustaining High-Levels of E-readiness CHAIR OF THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OPENING REMARKS Paul Tiyambe Zeleza, Professor of the Humanities and Social Sciences, and Vice Chancellor, USIU-Africa INTRODUCTION On behalf of the Board of Trustees and Management of KENET, it gives me great pleasure to welcome you to this year’s Heads of Institutions Annual Meeting This marks the 10th Anniversary of this flagship conference for our sector in Kenya The theme of the conference could not be more timely: “Achieving and Sustaining Institutional E-readiness.” As leaders of universities, colleges, research organizations and public agencies in the higher education space, we have to be in the forefront of reflecting on, planning, and implementing strategies and innovations that sustainably and broadly transform and enhance the traditional and new roles of higher education The current technological and digital revolutions of artificial intelligence, the internet of things, robotics, nanotechnology, biotechnology, and so on mark a historic moment pregnant with immense opportunities and challenges for every sector including ours and for the future of work and even the very meaning of being human As tertiary institutions and agencies we have a responsibility to be at the forefront of discourses and debates about IT in general and in higher education As apex institutions in the educational system from kindergarten to primary and secondary schools, we have to create enabling infrastructures, policies, and support systems We have an obligation to provide students the digital literacies of the 21st century so fundamental for their personal and professional success and ensuring that this generation of Africans, the biggest and best educated ever in African history, is fully equipped with the capabilities, skills, and mindsets to promote our countries’ and continent’s inclusive and innovative sustainable development In my brief remarks, I’ll address the following issues: A snapshot of IT and Higher Education Impact of IT on Higher Education Opportunities and Challenges of E-Learning Conclusion: importance of pursuing E-Learning and Role of Kenet OPENING SLIDE “We are living through a fundamental transformation in the way we work Automation and ‘thinking machines’ are replacing human tasks and jobs, and changing the skills that organizations are look for in their people These momentous changes raise huge organizational, talent and HR challenges – at a time when business leaders are already wrestling with unprecedented risks, disruption and political and societal upheaval.” PWC Workforce of the Future: The Competing Forces Shaping 2030, 2018 Hundreds of thousands of Kenyans in the manufacturing sector could be rendered jobless in the near future due to increased digitization, a new report has warned This, the report by the Kenya Association of Manufacturers and the Overseas Development Institute, as global manufacturing continues to draw capital from developing countries to developed ones The study took an in-depth look at the effect of technology such as artificial intelligence and machine learning will have on Kenya’s manufacturing sector and found the country was ill-prepared for the fourth industrial revolution Frankline Sunday, “More Kenyans tipped to lose jobs to machines,” The Standard, November 29, 2018 “If the work of tomorrow demands more from us, we must demand more from our education— particularly at the college level Consequently, an education for the digital age needs to focus not just on technology and understanding what technology can do but also on what it cannot do—at least for now and perhaps never… We need a new model of learning that enables learners to understand the highly technological world around them and that simultaneously allows them to transcend it by nurturing the mental and intellectual qualities that are unique to humans—namely, their capacity for creativity and mental flexibility We can call this model humanics… Humanics’ three new literacies—technological, data, and human—enable us to network with both other people and machines Even more so, they empower us to use the digital world to its fullest potential.” Robert Aoun, Post-Robot: Higher Education in Era of Artificial Intelligence, 2017 A snapshot of IT and Higher Education Growth of enrollments in technology degrees (computer science, etc) from 1950s-1980s: 36% to 41% in the United Kingdom, 48% to 53% in France, and in the United States from 49% to 82% Facilitated and reinforced the emergency of new fields in the hard, biological, and medical sciences The development of the electronic computer from wartime investments represented a technological watershed In the 1950s and 1960s wealthy universities began investing in computers whose costs dropped sharply as computing power exploded exponentially The invention of the personal computer (PC) in the 1970s was another transformative moment The PC gradually became an indispensable tool of academic communication, research, teaching and learning The development of the Internet and rapid advances in digital technologies from the 1980s that led to the emergence of social media and a vast new set of information-related occupations accelerated the transformative impact of technology on higher education and knowledge production In 2011 and 2012 the academy and to a lesser extent the public was seized by hype over massive open online courses (MOOCS) a Pundits proclaimed the “the end of education as we know it” to quote one writer, who went on to claim breathlessly: “The future looks like this: Access to college-level education will be free for everyone; the residential college campus will become largely obsolete; tens of thousands of professors will lose their jobs; the bachelor’s degree will become increasingly irrelevant; and ten years from now Harvard will enroll ten million students.” b The creation of MOOCs by consortia of prestigious private and public American universities added glow to the MOOC movement The largest were Coursera established by Stanford and Princeton universities and the universities of Michigan and Pennsylvania, and edX founded by Harvard and MIT, both in 2012 c By 2015 the MOOC mania had fizzled A study based on extensive interviews with university leaders, identified six objectives why institutions joined the bandwagon, “extending the reach of the institution and access to education, building and maintaining brand, improving economies by lowering costs or increasing revenues, improving educational outcomes for both MOOC participants and on-campus students, innovation in teaching and learning, and conducting research on teaching and learning.” They concluded that none of the goals were achieved as envisaged Impact of IT on Higher Education IT and Research a Opportunities for ‘big science’ expanded b Capacities for international collaboration grew exponentially c The explosion of information altered the role of libraries as repositories into nerve centers for digitized information communication and raised the need information literacy d Academic publishing was transformed by the acceleration and commercialization of scholarly communication The role of powerful academic publishing and database firms was greatly strengthened The industry that was estimated to be worth $23.5 billion in 2011 and comprised 28,094 active-peer reviewed journals It and Teaching ICT affects all aspects of the learning process from course design, content, delivery and sharing, to communication between learners, instructors and outsiders, to student enrollment, support, monitoring and evaluation, to knowledge creation, management, dissemination and application a Opportunities for technology-mediated forms of teaching and learning from hybrid courses to flipped classrooms to online education grew b This has led to the emergence of a complex mosaic of teaching and learning encompassing: i Face-to-face-teaching model without ICT enhancement ii ICT-enhanced face-to-face teaching model iii ICT-enhanced distance teaching model iv Online teaching model c The earliest adopters of the online platforms were distance education and for- profit institutions In Africa, the World Bank set up the African Virtual University in 1993, and became an intergovernmental institution ten years later with 53 partner institutions in 27 countries by 2015 d Campus-based institutions opted for dual or multi- track strategies, usually offering fully online programs to non-campus students and blended programs for campus students e E-learning gave rise to a new services industry providing course management systems or learning management systems such as Blackboard, a commercial provider, and Moodle, an open source provider IT and institutional operations: In enrollment, advising, and campus facilities a The explosion of data about almost everything that happens in higher education is being fed into new software products that respond with reports, predictions, even conversational answers b There are more data available now about many aspects of college operations than humans can be expected to access, interpret, or act on effectively Data mining and analytics becoming more important than ever c Artificial intelligence is being applied to students’ course-planning and advising Building Institutional Capacities a Human capital: Faculty and E-Learning—Faculty can be divided into four groups: entrepreneurs, risk adversives, reward seekers, reluctants b Provision of sufficient infrastructural, technical, training, and course design resources, and encouragement of peer support, as well as effective incentive systems Opportunities and Challenges of E-Learning As with any new and disruptive technology, the expansion of e-learning has attracted its share of advocates and critics To its advocates these technologies a Provide innovative, flexible, convenient, personalized, self-directed, independent, and interactive learning b Enhance equity, group collaboration, timely assessments, and access to global intellectual resources c Enable more people to access higher education, including working adults and people in underserved communities d Cut travel costs and save time even for traditional students e E-learning erodes the association of higher education with on campus learning for 18-24 year olds and thereby opens new possibilities for lifelong learning But the critics point to a The dangers that the absence of face-to-face and lively interactions with instructors, student information illiteracy, limited student assessment and feedback, and the inadequacy of ICT for practical subjects poses for student learning and progression b The high costs for setting up and maintaining effective ICT infrastructures, and continuously training and retooling faculty c In poor countries and institutions limited access to computers and the Internet make elearning difficult to sustain d The dominance of English as the currency of academic discourse on the Internet presents its own challenges in countries where English is not a language of instruction and knowledges in local languages has not developed strong online presence As in any context with any technology, ICTs in higher education reflect, reproduce, and sometimes reinforce existing social divisions and inequalities of access and participation a Inter-regional divides: the persistent digital divide between higher education institutions in the richer and poorer countries b Intra-institutional divides are reflected in the different ways academic fields within institutions adopt the new technologies c The intergenerational divide is ostensibly between the so-called student ‘digital natives’ and their so-called ‘digital immigrant’ teachers d Class divisions are evident in contexts in which students from different socioeconomic backgrounds enter college and university with unequal levels of digital literacy and enjoy different levels of access to electronic gadgets and the Internet for IT-mediated and online learning e ICT gender gaps in higher education operate at multiple levels, through the underrepresentation of women in IT education, and among IT specialists and administrators Like most institutional contexts and cultures, underlying it is the gendered nature of IT organizations and online environments that are generally unfriendly and unwelcoming to women In 2010, for example, in the United States women held only 21.4% of the approximately 2,6000 executive IT positions in U.S higher education Conclusion Importance of Pursuing E-Learning a Enhancement of traditional roles of higher education: Teaching and learning; Research and scholarship; Public service and engagement; and Innovation and entrepreneurship b Centrality of digital literacies and skills for the workforce and livelihoods of the 21st century Role of KENET a Provision of infrastructural IT capacities and training opportunities for the Kenyan higher education and research community b Promotion of collaboration and innovation in the IT space for the higher education and research communities CONCLUDING SLIDE A Smarter Way to Think About Intelligent Machines By Ed Finn THE NEW YORK TIMES When it comes to the future of artificial intelligence, we seem to be stuck in a loop We tell the same stories about A.I over and over again: society is destroyed (the “Terminator” movies), the machines emulate and replace us (“Ex Machina”), the machines become gods pulling the strings (“The Matrix”) This is a dangerous way to think about A.I., because the stories we tell influence the decisions we make about how such systems should operate https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/15/opinion/killer-robots-ai-humans.html How A.I Is Infiltrating Every Corner of the Campus By Lee Gardner THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION Machines are unlikely to replace most humans in college operations, but they are making those operations more efficient — potentially freeing up people for other activities The new technologies, corralled under terms such as "artificial intelligence," "machine learning," and "the internet of things," involve ways in which machines are able to perform tasks hitherto associated with human intelligence https://www.chronicle.com/article/How-AI-Is-Infiltrating-Every/243022?cid=cp197 CIPD 2018: Language of AI and automation spreads fear By Rachel Sharp HR MAGAZINE A panel at the CIPD Annual Conference and Exhibition discussed how AI and automation will help and hinder HR The language of artificial intelligence (AI) and automation is misused and incites fear among the workforce, according to a panel on day two of the 2018 CIPD Annual Conference and Exhibition http://www.hrmagazine.co.uk/article-details/cipd-2018-language-of-ai-and-automation-spreads-fear Automation affecting both the high- and low-skilled workforce By Rachel Sharp HR MAGAZINE Automation is creating a need to reskill both high-skilled and low-skilled parts of the workforce, said Ravin Jesuthasan, managing director and global practice leader at Willis Towers Watson, speaking at a Harvard Business Review event to launch his new book Reinventing Jobs http://www.hrmagazine.co.uk/article-details/automation-affecting-both-the-high-and-low-skilledworkforce The Open University is in trouble Can it be saved from closure? By Sanjana Varghese UNIVERSITY BUSINESS The Open University started as a radical experiment that disrupted education But now it's in trouble: courses have been cut, applicants are in free fall and that's before you account for online courses https://www.universitybusiness.com/news/open-university-trouble-can-it-be-saved-closure Meet the New Mega-University By Goldie Blumenstyk THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION Spend a little time inside the sprawling former textile mill that houses the key business and academic arms of Southern New Hampshire University’s online college, and one thing becomes abundantly clear: This is an enterprise built to grow… [E]nrollment has gone from 8,600 degree-seeking students in 2008 to more than 122,000 today The president since 2003, Paul LeBlanc, will tell you that it’s just getting started The plan is for the university to nearly triple its enrollment over the next five years https://www.chronicle.com/article/Meet-the-New-Mega-University/245049?cid=wsinglestory_hp_1 ... Enhancement of traditional roles of higher education: Teaching and learning; Research and scholarship; Public service and engagement; and Innovation and entrepreneurship b Centrality of digital literacies and skills for the workforce and livelihoods... planning, and implementing strategies and innovations that sustainably and broadly transform and enhance the traditional and new roles of higher education The current technological and digital revolutions of artificial intelligence, the internet of things,... The theme of the conference could not be more timely: ? ?Achieving and Sustaining Institutional E-readiness. ” As leaders of universities, colleges, research organizations and public agencies in the higher education