04 Oct 2024 /
Evelyn Levisohn
This article was originally published on LinkedIn.
University leaders dining in Melbourne at Society restaurant
This year, a series of high-profile dinners is bringing together university leaders in Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand. Hosted by Studiosity, these events have become pivotal occasions for exploring how generative AI is transforming higher education - and exactly what HE is doing about it.
At these dinners, Vice Chancellors, DVCs, PVCs, Provosts, and Deans engage in cross-institutional discussion about keeping up with student expectations but balancing degree validity; that is, harnessing the power of GenAI while safeguarding ethics, reputation, and academic integrity.
University leaders dining at Rothwells in Brisbane
Regional highlights:
- 🇸🇬 Singapore: Prof Beverley Webster from Monash University Malaysia introduced Laurence Liew from AI Singapore, who shared insights into AI Singapore's initiatives. The discussion focused on building AI capabilities, nurturing local talent, and developing an AI ecosystem. This sparked a productive conversation about the future of education and employability.
University leaders dining in Singapore
- 🇦🇺 Australia: In Melbourne, Brisbane, and Perth, Jason Lodge from The University of Queensland dived into exactly what has been happening over the last 12 months, in universities, in classrooms, in government, and in society - and what are the key factors that university leaders need to know to continue to inspire their institutions to success. In Sydney, Prof Alex Steel from UNSW led guests through some of the challenges and unknowns, as well as the strategies in place at leading institutions currently. In Newcastle, Steven Warburton provided a few interesting and entertaining 'provocations' for guests to discuss.
- 🇳🇿 New Zealand: Ian Watson from The University of Auckland facilitated conversations in both Auckland and Wellington about LLMs, memory, student modelling, and multi-modal reasoning, reflecting on how the technological advancements could and should fundamentally reshape the student and staff experience.
University leaders dining in Auckland, NZ
Each of the dinners was attended by representatives from almost every university in that state or region, keen to participate in a broader national conversation about AI in education.
"AI is creating some complex issues, but there are so many great minds focused on coming up with practical, scalable solutions and, importantly, sharing ideas and approaches with other institutions. We will adapt more effectively by working together."
- Assoc. Prof Jason Lodge
University leaders dining in Newcastle, NSW
Key takeaways for university leaders
- AI and academic integrity: Universities must look for evidence and use approaches that maintain academic integrity and degree validity.
- Learning first: AI should be used to enhance, not replace, human cognitive efforts in educational settings.
- Strategy level: Universities need more than just AI policies. They must address the practical impacts of AI at scale, as part of institutional management and strategy.
- Continued connection: the opportunity granted by these dinner events for cross-institutional discussion, comparison and listening is extremely rare. Leaders need more occasions to connect and engage with one another in an informal setting, fostering collegiality and gathering them in a collective higher purpose, 'bigger picture' conversation.
Thank you to all our university partners, special guests, and speakers for helping to make this leadership dinner series such a success. Bringing together ideas and insight from across institutions provides many benefits for the higher education sector across the Asia-Pacific region, and we're delighted to continue these crucial conversations into 2025.