approaches involving digital technology for distance and online learning, blended learning options, combining campus and distance experiences, and ongoing learning throughout the working lifetime with new short course and skills-based learning to keep pace with demands of the 21st century workplace. The online learning options of are increasingly sophisticated, social and interactive, they can monitor the students’ development and adaptively respond to their progress. They also open up options for provision of high-quality education to those who cannot readily access it or afford it. If we truly believe education is a tool for bringing prosperity and equality to our world, we must make it as accessible as possible. Offering more flexible learning options is not just about remaining competitive. It is also central to our pledge to serve the local and global community. In due course Australian universities can evolve to reach not just the hundreds of thousands of students who attend our campuses but many millions of students and working people, through high quality distance learning with very different cost points and timescales to those we are now used to. Another aspect of ensuring we remain internationally competitive in teaching and learning is to make high quality education, at scale, a competitive advantage. We cannot and should not try to replicate the models of small-scale research focused institutions such as Harvard, Stanford, Oxford and Cambridge. Australian universities operate effectively on a much larger scale. To respond to this increasing demand for higher education both domestically and internationally we need to embrace academic specialisation which is my 9th point. The 40:40:20 with all of our academics contributing equal time to research and education, cannot respond to the much greater increase in teaching expectations in the digital environment, or relative increase in teaching demand compared to research funding. We need to nurture, reward and promote outstanding scholarly teachers whose primary role is the design and delivery of excellent education whilst at the same time allowing our best researchers to have more dedicated research time than 40%. There will always be a significant proportion of academics who have a balanced load of research and teaching but that does not need to be an inflexible requirement. Developing career pathways for excellence in teaching and learning and harnessing new technologies, will be critical in maintaining our record of educating large numbers of students, both domestic and international. ***
approaches involving digital technology for distance and online learning, blended learning options, combining campus and distance experiences, and ongoing learning throughout the working lifetime with new short course and skills-based learning to keep pace with demands of the 21st century workplace. The online learning options of are increasingly sophisticated, social and interactive, they can monitor the students’ development and adaptively respond to their progress. They also open up options for provision of high-quality education to those who cannot readily access it or afford it. If we truly believe education is a tool for bringing prosperity and equality to our world, we must make it as accessible as possible. Offering more flexible learning options is not just about remaining competitive. It is also central to our pledge to serve the local and global community. In due course Australian universities can evolve to reach not just the hundreds of thousands of students who attend our campuses but many millions of students and working people, through high quality distance learning with very different cost points and timescales to those we are now used to. Another aspect of ensuring we remain internationally competitive in teaching and learning is to make high quality education, at scale, a competitive advantage. We cannot and should not try to replicate the models of small-scale research focused institutions such as Harvard, Stanford, Oxford and Cambridge. Australian universities operate effectively on a much larger scale. To respond to this increasing demand for higher education both domestically and internationally we need to embrace academic specialisation which is my 9th point. The 40:40:20 with all of our academics contributing equal time to research and education, cannot respond to the much greater increase in teaching expectations in the digital environment, or relative increase in teaching demand compared to research funding. We need to nurture, reward and promote outstanding scholarly teachers whose primary role is the design and delivery of excellent education whilst at the same time allowing our best researchers to have more dedicated research time than 40%. There will always be a significant proportion of academics who have a balanced load of research and teaching but that does not need to be an inflexible requirement. Developing career pathways for excellence in teaching and learning and harnessing new technologies, will be critical in maintaining our record of educating large numbers of students, both domestic and international. ***
20180829_-_afr_he_summit_-_chair.docx