Prof Rupert Ward Contributes to A publication to Address Learning Fitness Launched by UNESCO-ICHEI

Prof Rupert Ward, Executive Dean of SBC, was invited to share cutting-edge insights on Cloud (The Seven Issue 2024.3, a special issue about micro-credentials). Cloud is the quarterly publication launched by the International Centre for Higher Education Innovation under the auspices of UNESCO (UNESCO-ICHEI).

This article, Artificially Intelligent: How a Universal Micro-Credential Framework Can Help Our Education Systems in Better Supporting, Facilitating, and Evaluating Learning and Earning, is co-authored by Prof Ward and Canadian, Australian and American experts.

It is about learning fitness, the capability-competency chasm between what we are providing in education and what is required in the workplace, and the Universal Micro-credential Framework (UMF) that bridges this chasm through skills profiling and change management techniques for taking granular components of learning and incorporating them into traditional qualifications. Especially in the accelerating age of AI, we must adapt quickly to a fully technology enabled semi-automated society by harnessing human potential and evaluating human performance more effectively, where many of today's job roles can, and most probably will, be done by or supported by AI and robotics. The UMF provides a mechanism to enable us to improve our learning fitness, by evolving and adapting to meet changes in our environment and by better representing individual achievement, as a solution to support and prepare key stakeholders in the education and skills ecosystems: employers, educators, and learners, also bring in governments and edtech organisations into the system to better support individuals with navigating transitions.

The International Centre for Higher Education Innovation under the auspices of UNESCO (Shenzhen, China) was established on June 8th, 2016, and is the tenth Education Sector UNESCO Category 2 centre in the world. On November 13th, 2015, the 38th General Conference of UNESCO approved the establishment of UNESCO-ICHEI in Shenzhen, China, which is the first Category 2 centre for higher education in China.