OEB 2015 - The future is only impossible until it’s achieved - Gilly Salmon

(Moderator) We have with us someone
who has been involved

in digital learning innovation
for more than 20 years

Please welcome the University of Western
Australia Pro Vice-Chancellor

of Education Innovation,
Gilly Salmon (0:12)

(Applause)

(Gilly Salmon) So I'm going to talk to you
about the impossible.

So if you're easily scared,
you can leave now or at any time,

that's OK with me.

So I come from the very young country
of Australia.

Most of you know I'm not Australian, but
I've been living there nearly 5 years now.

Probably another 20 .... except me (check)

But in the young country of Australia,
a university that's 100-years old

is very, very, very old.

So, and now, the University of Western
Australia is very, very old.

It's a research-intensive, one with the
most schools and campuses in the world,

on the mouth of the Swan River,
in Western Australia,

and I'm going to show you a 1-minute movie
to get a glimpse of our environment

and also our dreams.

So, you need to watch very carefully,
because I'm going to talk about

the brief glimpse you get of the buildings
because that's where my center is,

the Centre for Education Future.

So, we will move to the movie, please.

(strong-beat music)

(shouts)

(panting)

(narrator) When we start moving forward,
the world starts with us.

(strong wind in branches - panting)

(narrator) So chase your dream.
It's only impossible until it's done.

[Pursue impossible]

[The University of Western Australia]

(Applause)
(Salmon) Thank you. 2:52

We made that movie to try and inspire
our students

but we actually found it inspires us
even more.

So, right at the beginning you saw
some work for

University of Western Australia
are true heritage buildings.

And I -- in there, we've put
a future's observatory

and a learning design studio,
to try and inspire the impossible

in both our faculty members and ultimately
our students, to new design.

So, I've got this weird job title,

Pro Vice-Chancellor
Education Innovation.

I'm sure when I was appointed,
just over 12 months ago,

nobody knew what that meant.

Fortunately, they did allow me to
invent it.

While you're listening to me,
just to say there's going to be

a bit of a poll at the end.

If you got the My OEB app,
you can look it up,

if not, there is a website,
there is a link there up,

so that you can take part in the poll
in a bit.

Now, I actually think an incredible
number of words have been written

about innovation, especially in the scope
of educational innovation

and disruptive technology.

And I did a bit of a survey.

i wasn't as knowledgeable
as some of those people

that you've just heard speaking,

but it was rather odd that probably
one of the very top things

that you can see, was how to promote
innovation

in the changing modes of teaching,

which I think is probably
one of our biggest challenges of all.

And actually, creating an evidence base
for that,

because you all know, in universities,
that's the way it goes:

If you haven't got evidence for it,
it doesn't exist.

And so, we did a bit of a survey;
there were the top universities,

we did some visits as well, in the US
as well as other parts in the world.

And everyone, just everyone has still
really not got into

achieving true innovation.

And so for me, that's
still a bit of a mystery, and I think

it's really rather extraordinary that
everyone in education,

all of you, at every level,
is trying to do this

and yet most organizations,
most institutions

are still striving to reorientate
themselves to an innovation culture.

What will distinguish them,
what will differentiate them?

What they offer their students
and stakeholders.

So, we could very very easily blame it

on the level of dogmatic approaches
and resistance.

And yet, by their nature, don't you think
that most staff working in education

are often the most open to change
and development, would you agree?

So I found it really quite a conundrum
to tackle this.

So, maybe, you heard the first keynote
this morning, David Price.

Maybe we're in denial
that we even need to change, possibly:

that's one answer.

So some of my answers:

I know the university sector best,
so I'll talk about that.

But I do actually think that
this may apply

to many of the other sectors
represented in this room.

The higher education sector,
across the world,

is very compressed but also
highly competitive now,

but also marginally differentiated.

It's mainly differentiated by
.......... (check) research profile,

research orientation,.........
reputation.

And also, everyone is upright

in an increasingly less and less and less
regulated world.

Those of you standing, there's a few
white pods, you can sit on them

in the front here......

if you're not too frightened.

Now, governments around the world
are pressing for larger proportions

of their populations to attend university.

Most of them, not here in Germany,
I understand, but most of us

have made paying for the experience
a lifelong one.

For most students, and even that
has done little

to dampen the enthusiasm
for higher education,

There's more people going to university
than really ever has in our lifetime.

Our children and our grandchildren
are going to go

forward and forward and forward.

So there does appear to be, using
the entrepreneurs' word,

reliable growth in the market place.

So therefore, we need to innovate.

We need to find ways
of reaching that growth.

Second. Of course we know -- it has just
been mentioned in the session just now --

that the number of university campuses
would have to increase

at an incredible alarming rate.

I've heard something like 1 per month
for the next 10 years

in order to meet the requirements
of teaching in traditional ways.

Clearly, that's not going to happen,
it's also not practical to extend

the existing campuses that we have
with physical capacity and real estate.

So therefore, innovation, again,
is needed.

Third. We know much of the way
that we are teaching in Universities

at the moment, will not provide
the citizens of the future

with the right skills,

nor will they graduate with the ability
to undertake multiple careers

during their life times.

We've also heard most babies being born
today will live to over 100.

I mean, we really need to be educating
those people, don't we? Not ourselves.

So in short, the nature of work
is changing.

So whatever our educational purposes,
the need for change is striking.

And everyone of us has
a shared responsibility, as educators,

to innovate to meet these and
many other challenges that we face.

So, why would we turn to technology
to assist us in this conundrum

is one of my questions.

But one of the things I've done,

since I've been at the University
of Western Australia,

and as I mentioned, we put
a physical space.

It's kind of a cross between a space
for the community to gather,

a bit of a makers' space too;

somewhere a bit different,
a bit different from the traditional areas

and it's actually for staff,
not for students.

Most universities in the world
are changing their libraries

and many of their traditional buildings
into informal spaces for students,

so we thought we might do that
for staff too.

And we called it The Future's Observatory.

So why put some technology in it?

Well, many forces, of course,
in our society,

can bring about large scale changes
in economics and societies, but

since the Industrial Revolution, say,
the late 18th, early 19th centuries,

technology has had this unique role,

empowering growth
and transforming economic value.

It has to be technology.

Technology represents in itself
new ways of doing things

and once mastered, creates lasting change

which, applied to universities
and schools, and training of all kind,

we won't immediately unlearn, you know:

our teachers, ways of teaching,
our campuses, physical and virtual,

finally, through technologies, the ideas
become implanted as innovations

and our world starts to move faster.

We can make it faster.

So, the most interesting part of this,
for me,

is that some technologies
have the potential

to disrupt the status quo in education,

-- and we've just been talking about
some of them --

and lead finally to true innovation
in the service of learning

and alter the way we imagine our teaching,
teach our students, choose a curriculum,

assess their ability,
instill new coaches in them,

so they live and work differently
in the future:

in practice, create entirely new products
and services.

And others simply do not.

And for me, things like lecture capture
simply does not,

because it reproduces the ways
we've undertaken learning for centuries.

So I think we need to be very careful
in what technologies we choose

to disrupt and drive our innovations.

Otherwise, we simply embed the old better
than we did before.

And the other thing to say is that
education leaders cannot wait

until the meager, meager evolution that
I've seen in my 20 years in this field

catch up, somehow, and we're not going
to do it with Learning Management Systems

and we'll really not, you know, they're
simply not moving.

I've just chosen a new Learning Management
System

for the University of Western Australia.

I got the best I could,
but the original values

of the way people teach and learn
are still in there,

and we need to change that, we need
to move forward on that.

And we also cannot be held back
by other industries on which we depend.

You know, so the patch defense, going on,
for example, with publishers.

We cannot let that happen,
we do need to change this.

So it's time -- referring back
to this morning --

to stop being 12 white men
sitting around the table,

to stop rearranging the furniture
and actually move on with the world.

And if we don't do it,
no one else is going to.

It's those of you who are here
with me today

that's actually going to do that run
that you saw my students do earlier.

So at the moment, the link definitely
between height and potential

is very unclear.

And of course, there are still surprises to come. 15:03