Today, so many university graduates and working people have found their skills become increasingly irrelevant in the fast-changing world. Such fact has underlined the need for educational institutes both in Thailand and overseas to adjust their teaching methods so as to efficiently keep pace with the new needs of the ever-changing businesses and industries.
Many universities have now collaborated with the private sector in the hope of equipping their students with currently-required skills and future skills. Among such collaborations is the Innovative Teaching Scholars (ITS) initiative. Engaging Stanford University’s lecturers and focusing on research projects, ITS aims to address the framework of Thailand’s future.
The implementation of ITS seeks to train its participants, provide framework, and offer practical teaching tactics that they should be able to apply to their curriculum. ITS believes that its content will not upset – but complement the participants’ current curricula and course syllabuses. ITS is conducted professionally among university lecturers, who will shape the future generation for the country. Kicking off last September, ITS has already accepted and trained university lecturers from nine universities. During the past nine months, they have been trained to embrace innovations, researches, as well skills and attitudes that will foster innovation-driven economy.
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The nine-month-long extensive training for lecturers has been provided for the benefits of students, who will not only pass exams but also have practical skills for real life. As students are expected to be innovative, ITS seeks to inculcate their lecturers with the right attitudes and perspectives for the creation of educational society whereby new experiments are conducted.
ITS has been supported by the Stanford Thailand Research Consortium (STRC) of the Stanford Center for Professional Development (SCPD) and the private sector including the Thailand-based Southeast Asia Center (SEAC), AP (Thailand) Public Company Limited, Advanced Info Service Public Company Limited and Kasikornbank.
Lately, the STRC has organized an online seminar on “Future Thailand – Innovation in Education and Workforce Development” to discuss opportunities to enhance educational-personnel development so as to deliver student-centric pedagogy.
Prof. Sheri D. Sheppard, a Richard W. Weiland, professor at the Stanford University’s School of Engineering, says the first group of lecturers receiving training under ITS have successfully applied new teaching methods to their class. Their students are given greater freedom during the course of learning. While such approach increases lecturers’ challenges, it significantly raises student participation.
According to Prof. Sheppard, ITS will monitor these lecturers to determine if they keep supporting one another in efforts to upgrade their classes in a new dimension. ITS will also check if they have inspired their colleagues into applying the innovative teaching methods too.
ITS researchers have now worked with participating faculty staff, early-career professionals, and representatives of various industries in identifying skills that look set to be success factors in people’s careers in the future. Also, they have focused on exploring ways to integrate such factors into the curricula of lecturers being trained under ITS.
Dr. Leticia Britos Cavagnaro, an adjunct professor at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, says universities around the world have found inconsistency between their ideal graduates’ qualifications and skills/attitudes required for these students to excel in their career in the future. To tackle such problem, Thai educational staff who are interested in adjusting their perspectives towards the new-age education have collaborated with innovation leaders whose organizations operate at a national level and have joined ITS. These organizations are looking for the new-generation Thais who can make useful contributions to their operations.
To date, ITS has already trained 50 Thai lecturers paving way for them to experiment with new teaching techniques that are designed to secure a successful career for their students. ITS also hopes that the trained lecturers will encourage their colleagues or their institutes to adjust their pedagogy for the same purpose.
“We need to engage business organizations in this collaboration. Mutual discussions will give insight into why there are gaps between what lecturers think their students need and skills deemed as important by companies,” Dr. Cavagnaro says.
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Ruangroj Poonpol, president of Kasikorn Business Technology Group (KBTG), says human-machine interaction skill is going to be very important in the next 10 years because AI (artificial intelligence) will become widespread by then. Employees therefore will be expected to be able to work efficiently with AI. At present, KBTG has already integrated AI to its end-to-end-operation and software development.
In his view, students first of all must learn to work with machines. Given that humans are already taught to develop machines, train them and teach them to work with other machines, they should acquire skills to apply existing technologies as well. In addition, he believes they should have empathy and understanding for other human fellows on top of being able to unlearn and relearn. They should be flexible too, given that the next decade will see Continuous Disruption. Ruangroj foresees that technology will expedite the development of groundbreaking technologies and trigger drastic changes.
Through its collaboration with leading educational and research institutes, KBTG has provided sponsorship for total innovations from the stages of their research to their production. Also sponsored are efforts to gather knowledge for the development new-generation tech personnel so as to ensure the country will get qualified human resources in the fields of Data Science, AI, OCR, and Blockchain.
To support new-generation workforce, it is extremely necessary that lecturers be empowered through innovations and filled with energy. Lecturers, after all, play a big role in creating learners’ experiences. Embracing the student-centric approach, ITS by the STRC aims to achieve the aforementioned goals through its academic researches.
KBTG, on its own, has been building an ecosystem for Tech and Tech Talents via its Tech Kampus. This project has fostered co-research & academic collaborations between KBTG and its nine partners: the National Electronics and Computer Technology Center, the Artificial Intelligence Association of Thailand, and seven higher-educational institutes namely the Asian Institute of Technology, the Chulalongkorn University’s Faculty of Engineering, the Information Technology Faculty of the King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology Ladkrabang, the Kasetsart University, the Thammasat University’s College of Innovation, the CMKL University, and the Mahidol Unviersity International College.
In addition, KBTG offers internship. Students who are interns at KBTG have endless opportunities. The firm has also organized Internship Boost Camp.
Kantima Lerlertyuttitham, chief human resource officer at Intouch Holdings and Advanced Info Service Public Company Limited, says communications have long had much importance. But its role has increased even further as people have changed their work methods. In her opinion, active learning becomes increasingly important too because it is related to one’s job responsibility and one’s ability to adapt to new situation. While employers give their employees’ access to knowledge, it takes employees’ willingness to learn and ability to benefit from the access. Today, digital transformation has been happening in Thailand. Working people need to adjust to keep pace with their organizations’ changing corporate culture. Kantima also underlines the importance of leaders’ ability to drive changes. She points out that in Asia, seniority is still in place while the new generation in fact wants to express themselves and get attention. Executives, she points out, thus should change their style in thinking and leading their team.
The world has been changing all the time, affecting everything fast and furiously. It is therefore of utmost importance that Thais be developed and empowered to ensure their country can move forward and compete well in the digital economy on a global stage.
In the face of ever-changing context, AIS has recognized that human resource development holds key to its success. In response to the educational sector’s changing context, AIS has thus launched AIS Academy and LearnDi as hubs of new knowledge and skills. AIS places an emphasis on both soft skills and hard skills because the new generation needs to keep improving themselves to work towards success.
Vittakarn Chandavimol, chief corporate strategy and creation of AP (Thailand) Public Company Limited, comments that in the future, advanced flexible learning skills will be crucial as people are expected to accept and embrace changes, be understanding, and also be adaptive. As problems will become increasingly complex, one’s emotional-intelligence quotient (EQ) will become increasingly important. According to him, EQ will be the factor differentiating humans from machines at work. Over the next decade, more machines and automotive systems will replace humans. As a result, humans in the workforce will outperform machine only when they can work with others and solve complex problems.
Preparing university students for the world of work therefore must place an emphasis on not only professional knowledge but also analytical skills, problem-solving skills, communication skills and teamwork skills. Vittakarn also believes that one’s ability to fast search for information and to adapt fast and efficiently to new technologies have had significant importance. This executive therefore emphasizes that parties involved should create a learning environment whereby creativity, collaborative culture, and innovation development are fostered. He believes such emphasis will enable the educational sector to achieve its goals at the time the global economy is moving ahead so fast.
“My firm has organized AP Open House to create opportunities for university students to hone the aforementioned desirable skills,” Vittakarn adds.
The commitment to creating opportunities for Thai empowerment and partnerships among government agencies, educational institutes and the private sector is much needed. STRC by Standford University’s lecturers and the Thailand-based SEAC therefore marks a milestone in laying foundation for the tangible enhancement of Thais’ knowledge and capabilities – which promise to drive Thai economy forward in the future.
