Embracing EdTech for Humanity

My personal highlight from the OpenLearning Conference 2018 which ended 27 November: Co-Writing this keynote speech with Tan Sri Wan Mohd Zahid. He was kind to mention me at the start of his speech today. (Note: there were some off-the-cuff remarks not captured here but possibly in the video which which will be shared soon)

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Keynote Speech

Tan Wan Mohd Zahid Wan Noordin

Chairman of the National Education Advisory Council, Chairman of Management & Science University (MSU) and former Education Director-General.

at the OpenLearning Conference 2018 themed ‘Scaling Quality Education’

delivered on Tuesday, 27 November 2018 at 9.30am

at Connexion, Bangsar South

Title:

Interconnectedness: Embracing Technology to Create the Ambience and Education Ecosystem for Humanity

(INTRODUCTION)

1. Ladies and gentlemen, upon receiving the invitation to deliver a speech at this OpenLearning Conference 2018 which revolves around “education technology”, my “jaundiced eyes” caught the word “education technology”.

2. So, I thought this conference was about promoting technology in education. Period. Nada. Nothing else.

3. I therefore accepted the invitation… and prepared myself to do battle with these technology purists.

4. However, my many years in this world has taught me, in the words of Queen Elizabeth, to “stay calm and carry on”. I was relieved to read on and note that the focus on the conference was to create “a better education ecosystem”.

5. This is the saving grace because the conference organizers are looking at education technology not as an entity unto itself, but rather as an interrelated part of a strong, viable, dynamic and progressive education ecosystem.

6. This is splendid, as it should be.

7. Ladies and gentlemen, I emphasize the word ecosystem because I believe that anything that we do on this earth is interconnected. No matter how “far” our nurture, surroundings and environment take us, we often return to that which makes us human – this is the concept of fitrah, be it in Islam or Urdu, which means innate nature or original disposition.

8. I would add further that at the center this ecosystem is and must be humankind. As Protagoras put it elegantly many centuries ago, MAN and WOMAN must be the measure of all things in that ecosystem. Humankind, therefore, is the ultimate source of our value to retain our humanity for all times.

(THE CHALLENGES)

9. So, you might be wondering: Why do I speak of an ‘ecosystem’ and a ‘humankind’ and of ‘an interconnectedness’? And of all places, why at an education conference? Rest assured, despite my age, my mind is still very sharp. And I’m still many years away from reaching our Prime Minister’s age. (audience should laugh)

10. The answer is simple: I believe that the advancement of humankind, which includes ethics and values, depends on ensuring the interconnectedness of technology within an education ecosystem. Allow me to elaborate further.

11. Indeed, we live in a day and age where speed counts for everything. Thanks to new technologies, we can do things faster, better, easier and what have you. Our efficiency has increased exponentially, what was once impossible is now possible, we are more connected than ever before.

12. Unfortunately, with this great gift of technology, it has also taken us on a dangerous pathway.

a. Firstly, technology can affect our very being. Research shows that technology can be addictive and impacts our mental health - our sleep, our social life, and can lead to aggression or even depression. A recent report found that Malaysians were most addicted to their digital devices. We spend an average of 8 hours and 37 minutes a day on our smartphones! That’s an entire working day and more! I can’t imagine. In South Korea, internet addiction is so bad that there are rehab-camps for teens. And as we know, the internet can be a dark-place – Youtube for instance, is constantly battling uploaders who post fake videos for children with adult elements. I don’t think I need to elaborate further on this.

b. Secondly, it also leads to a phenomenon known as “Popcorn Brain” referring to a situation where our mind gets addicted to new and abundant information, which stimulates dopamine production making us supposedly happier. Unfortunately, this reduces our ability to focus – we are always jumping from one nugget of information to another. It disables us from gaining depth of knowledge.

c. Third, it could exacerbate academic dishonesty – a survey by Common Sense Media found that some 35% of students had cheated via a smartphone. In many cases however, the students did not realize that using a smartphone to find information counted as cheating! The consequence is ethics becomes a lost value, and our youth become more stubborn, over reliant, and refuse to put their devices down.

d. Next, it could create a bigger gap between the haves and the have-nots. According to the UN, in the developed world, over 80% have access to the internet. In the developing world, less than 35% do. As the world splits further apart, you see a lack of empathy and even an elitism reveal itself – as though this wasn’t bad enough, it could worse!

e. Within education systems, technology has been said to cause unnecessary burdens on teachers and students.

i. To teachers, inferior infrastructure takes away valuable teaching time while unnecessary systems distracts from valuable learning.

ii. To students, they may become too reliant on technology, some even unable to write using pens or pencils. Social skills could also be hindered due to the focus on screens as opposed to their friends. So much so that parents are starting to send their children to schools without any technology.

13. And of course, what about our obsession over the 4th Industrial Revolution? Max Weber, a world-renowned social scientist, warned humanity with regard to the advent of the phenomenon of rationalization in the wake of incipient industrial revolution. Revolutionalization, said Weber, would be the enemy that the industrial revolution had heaped on our doorsteps. It would lead to the emptying out of fundamental values and institutions.

(EDUCATION TECHNOLOGY CREATING THE AMBIENCE FOR HUMANITY)

14. Ladies and gentlemen, be that as it may, let us not dwell on just the negatives, otherwise I will start sounding like Ebenezer Scrooge, Mr “Bah Hambug” from a Christmas Carol.

15. Instead, let me quote William Shakespeare, who in his play, Hamlet, once wrote, “We know what we are, but know not what we may be”. Essentially, this quote relates to the struggle of some of the key characters in Hamlet where each character knows who they are, but as the future unfolds and tragic events happen, they don't know what they're capable of.

16. In the context of education technology, I believe that it can have a very positive impact on us. If we harness it properly, it can create what I’d like to call, “the ambience for humanity”. I use the word “ambience” to mean the conditions, the surroundings, or the situation.

17. Let us peel this onion layer by layer, and I believe it will bring us tears of joy.

18. Firstly, technology can create the ambience of comfort for our learners.

a. Emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence has given birth to what we call AI Counsellors. Traditionally, people are shy or hesitant to get counseling assistance – that is why many do not seek help and live in isolation. There is fear of stigma if found out, and they many just don’t trust other human beings – in fact, a 2009 survey by GE found that 28% of patients would lie or omit facts to a healthcare professional.

b. At the University of South Carolina (USC), an AI therapist known as Ellie was created. She is able to observe 66 points on the patient’s face and note whether there are signs of depression. She has interacted with over 600 patients, and they say that they feel less judged by a virtual therapist and are more open to her. Ellie, the AI Therapist, creates a safe place to talk.

c. I imagine that one day AI therapists like Ellie will play a role in our schools and universities. As mentioned earlier, instances of mental health problems are rising due to technology and social media. Maybe it is time we used to technology to address technology.

d. Many of our young people nowadays get societal anxiety. Technology can be the conduit that enables them to build up their sense of confidence, bravery and trust in others.

e. This is a very powerful promise, and one that also ensures that there is consistency in serving and helping our young people.

19. Secondly, education technology can be used to broach the ‘difficult subjects’.

a. The question is what if we used online learning to educate society about sensitive and difficult topics such as death and dying?

b. I was quite pleasantly surprised when informed that OpenLearning had collaborated with Care Search, a palliative care knowledge network in Australia, to create an online course known as Dying2Learn.

c. I was told that Dying2Learn is course which aims to function not just as an educational intervention, but as an opportunity to facilitate open conversations about death and dying, often considered to be a difficult or even taboo subject.

d. What made the course special was that is created a community of learners that supported each other. They could chat with each other online, share how they felt, gave moral encouragement, and even gave each other a shoulder to cry on, figuratively speaking of course, in their time of need when a loved one was going through a hard time or had just passed on. I believe this is a beautiful usage of technology education. This goes towards solving human problems at a higher level.

20. Thirdly, technology can create the ambience and be the conduit for greater social interaction.

a. Let me ask you a question – What do the newspaper, the radio, the television and internet have in common? The Answer: They are all technologies that one point in time were accused of reducing human interaction.

b. However, the exact opposite happened. Newspapers gave people more information which in turn gave them more things to talk about. Radio and television enabled people to call in to share their views with a mass audience. The internet, and by extension thereof, social media, has created a borderless world of information flow.

c. Do you know how much information flows every 60 seconds? There are 350,000 Tweets sent, more than 3.8 million searches on Google, more than 65,000 photos uploaded onto Instagram and more than 29 million messages processed on Whatsapp. That is how powerful 60 seconds is nowadays.

d. Such information vastness and borderlessness requires it to be channeled in a healthy and constructive manner. Remember, the interconnectedness of humankind must be the epitome of purpose.

e. I am heartened to learn that OpenLearning adopts a social constructivism approach within their learning platform. I myself am a PhD in education, and being a former DG, I value good interaction within the education setting.

f. Therefore, today’s learning imperative is to move from a teacher-centered focus to a student- and community- centered approach. Education activities should not be just lectures, rather, it should be filled with activities and interactions.

g. Technology platforms can do that – by approaching education similar to how social media is approached, the constructive interactive elements that young people are so attracted to can be duplicated and replicated.

h. Granted, this means that educators must improve themselves – they must learn about learning design, they must be proactive. How many have actually read our education blueprints rather than just sit and complain about everything the government does? Alas, I digress and better move on.

21. Fourth, technology can aid education and address challenges of scale. This is an important point.

a. My dear friends, do we know how many new students will be entering the education system by 2030?

b. The next decade will see an additional 350 million post-secondary graduates and nearly 800 million more K12 graduates than today. Asia and Africa will drive the biggest changes in education attainment over the next decade. In Asia alone, over 200 million will be looking for education.

c. The question is: How do we cater to this growth?

d. Malaysia has approximately 6 million students and 500,000 teachers. Even then, we are still short of our ideal teaching workforce.

e. Moving forward, we would have to train a few hundred thousand, or even millions more teachers to cater to global needs.

f. And this is where the challenge lies. The orthodox thinking is: Let’s do it. Let’s start recruiting teachers, let’s put up the ads, set the criteria and do the interview and training. Unfortunately, the reality is far from being as simple as this.

g. At the top of the challenges is resources – where do we get the money from? Who will pay? How much can we pay? While it is easy to romanticize the notion that one should not spare any cost for education, it is certainly not a pragmatic reality. Being as former Director-General of Education, this certainly rings true because resources are always limited.

h. Another related concern is, even if we have the resources, will we be able to train enough teachers of a high quality to deliver the education? And this is the biggest challenge. One of Malaysia’s growing pains, back in the 1980s and 1990s was to train enough teachers to meet the growing demand for education.

i. Unfortunately and fortunately, because the economy was also growing rapidly, this meant that many of our best students after the O-Levels and A-Levels, or today’s SPM and STPM equivalent, were more interested to seek careers in engineering, medicine, legal, accountancy and such. There is nothing wrong in this per se. However, this meant that the teaching profession was unable to get the best talent that it needed - Unlike in Finland, South Korea and even Singapore.

j. I am not saying that our teachers lacked quality. Everyone we took into the system worked hard to deliver the best education. But what it meant was that we were not getting the numbers required to deliver the best education ecosystem.

k. As the saying goes, there is always wisdom in hindsight. Perhaps the government back in the day could have invested more money, but alas, we should not dwell on what was in the past, rather, we look to the future.

l. And now, we stand on the edge of the cliff, looking into a new future and new demand.

m. So, what role does technology play here? This is where I believe that technology is the best conduit to enable quality education to be delivered at scale.

n. Let me share an example from Georgia Tech, an American institution. The challenge was that every semester, Professor Ashol Goel, would have 300 students who would send thousands of emails – asking everything from opinions, their mid-term exam scores and whether he was free for coffee with them (he wasn’t).

o. The sheer volume and lack of time meant he couldn’t answer all of it. He had 8 Teaching Assistants and even that wasn’t enough!

p. The dilemma was that research showed dropout rates increased when students didn’t get the support they needed. Good support could reduce dropout rates by as high as 50%. A lot was at stake.

q. So, what did Professor Ashol do? He created “Jill Watson”, an artificial intelligence teaching assistant using IBM technology. Jill Watson was placed among the other 8 human teaching assistants – Professor Ashol didn’t tell his students that Jill was a robot at first.

r. So, how did Jill Watson perform? She was able to answer students emails and even give guidance. By the end of the semester, some students even suggested that she should be nominated for a teaching assistant award!

s. This, ladies and gentlemen, goes to show how education technology can help us scale quality education. Platforms like OpenLearning can ensure quality control, reduce costs, and give access to students all around the world – all they need is a smart phone and internet, both of which are becoming more accessible by the day.

t. Professor Ashol sum it up quite nicely and I would like to quote him. He says: “The way I think about it, there are seven billion people on this earth and about half of them don’t have access to good education”. “If we can take artificial intelligence and provide those people with minimal question-answering, who knows what a difference it could make in someone’s life?

u. I agree with him. Education at its core is about making a difference in someone’s life. And if technology can facilitate it, I think it’s a good compliment to all the real human teachers.

(INTERCONNECTEDNESS AND CONCLUSION)

22. Ladies and gentlemen, I hope the points I have shared above will be able to resonate with you. Indeed, I have always been hard on technology in education, for I don’t believe that it is an ends to itself. But I am glad that today, many of you here see it as a means to something better. For that, I am with you.

23. I sincerely hope we are able to use technology to bring us closer to one another, to create the ambience for a more empowered citizenry, and to produce a society that is learned and imbued with the ethics and values to bring us to the next level of humanity – one that is caring, compassionate and filled with love and care for each other.

24. Thank you again to OpenLearning for organizing this conference and for inviting me to speak. I wish you the best moving forward. Thank you.