University Students’ Idea Contest (ALCoB Contest -2011) Subject: What is Future Education and What can we Do? Submitted by: 1) Ms. Sangmukda Geerapong-Udom 2) Ms. Thitapha Plianwong ALCoB-U from Sripatum International College, Sripatum University, Bangkok, Thailand
Thailand is a member of APEC (Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation), which has a primary goal “to support sustainable economic growth and prosperity in the Asia-Pacific region”. To realize this goal, they will definitely need more skilled workers to be the major force of economic development. Twenty-one economies are from different backgrounds, some countries are developed, yet some are sill far behind. The difference of these countries becomes a big obstacle for the merging of economics among the APEC’s members. Consequently, Prof. Dr. YoungHwan Kim, the founder of ALCoB (APEC Learning Community Builder), foresees the significance of reducing the differences between developed and developing countries in order to allow APEC to reach the primary goal. Education is the best tool to overcome this problem.
Previously, ALCoB-U Thailand has tried to follow the determination of Prof. Dr. YoungHwan Kim; which is to build the learning community in our society.
Therefore, we have created many projects, such as, ALCoB Internet
Volunteer Exchange program (AIV), established the Korean Club, K-POP dance contest, providing activities and knowledge to disabled children, etc. As we are a member of ALCoB-U Thailand and also students of Sripatum International College, we have foreseen that the mission and vision of Sripatum USR (University Social Responsibility) project is compatible with ALCoB’s in the way of building the sustainable society and future education. These two organizations are willing to develop and support the project of APEC in growing a sustainable economy and shared prosperity among APEC’s members.
Our idea of future education can be described as following framework:
USR & ALCoB -U
Sufficiency Economy Edutainment
Input
Method
ALCoB-OCW (OpenCourseWare)
Output
Sustainable life and Shared Prosperity
Outcome
Figure 1: Conceptual Framework for our Future Education
The meaning of the framework 1) USR (University Social Responsibility) – Input: USR is a new initiative founded by Dr. Junya Pookayaporn, VicePresident of Sripatum University since 2008. The main idea of USR builds around these concepts: 1) Academic Virtue for Social Responsibility and 2) From Heart to Heart with Sincerity and Friendship. USR understands that the principle role of universities is to educate people. Dr. Junya believes that social responsibility should be the well-grounded basis of all university teaching.
She also believes the responsibility of the society should come
from the volunteers’ mind and soul, not simply because of the compulsion of the organization. The result is therefore fully valued. In the past, one of USR’s projects that have been successful was having volunteers teach lessfortunate and low-educated children in the rural area. USR’s still not widespread in many universities in Thailand so there is still plenty of work available. We have USR as an input because we believe that the project of our future education needs to bring the USR’s concept and university students that possess a willingness to be responsible to their society in order to make better education and allow our country to grow together with other APEC members.
2) ALCoB-U – Input: ALCoB-U is the major force of initiating future education project by supporting university students in many dimensions as we have done before, such as, idea support, monetary support, international connection support, etc. The mission of ALCoB is to drive our project toward the ultimate goal of developing education in support of APEC.
Therefore, university
student’s role is to convert USR and ALCoB’s mission into tangible project as such providing an effective learning environment courses, including language, cross-culture and tradition also knowledge about the changed world today, specific in rural area to provide low-educated children for more opportunities. We are using two below strategy methods as our important tools.
3) Sufficiency Economy – Method: Sufficiency Economy is the philosophy that His Majesty the King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand has given since 1974. In short, concept of Sufficiency Economy is “to live a moderate self-dependent life without greed or overexploitation”. Sufficiency Economy guides the livelihood and behavior of people at all levels from family to community, to the country. His Majesty finds that sustainable economic development is especially important in the world of globalization. Sufficiency means moderation and reasonableness.
His Majesty wishes to ensure that all plans and
implementation are based on knowledge. This philosophy has been successful for three decades with several evidences of His Majesty’s many projects. There are two reasons why we have this philosophy as the method of our model. First, it is because we would like to operate our project by using this philosophy as a model of implementation which means to be based on moderation, reasonable, immunity, knowledge and ethics. Though, it’s still difficult for some people in the community to follow this philosophy as they are unclear about the meaning and propose of sufficiency economy. This leads to the second reason, for the philosophy. We would love to share our king’s philosophy and example of success stories both within our nation and worldwide. We believe that this theory can be adapted to any livelihood around the world, and this will be one of the best methods to support APEC’s members to develop sustainable economic development.
4) Edutainment –Method: Edutainment derived from Education + Entertainment named by Prof. Dr. YoungHwan Kim, the founder of ALCoB. We use Edutainment as our method and strategy of the future education model because we agree that to create future education; we need to use future methods. This method is to educate people by blending academic and social activities together to develop the best way of learning because we believe that people will have
more interested and memorization when they are doing activities, and this method will help them to learn better and faster. Nevertheless, education system in Thailand and many other developing countries still stick with the old way of teaching and learning by just lecturing in the class and never letting themselves to think. Thereby, we are trying to pass the new method of learning to our community through future education models. Then, to broadcast our project course worldwide is considered to be our effective output (ALCoB OCW)
5) ALCoB OCW (Open Course Ware) – Out put: This idea was derived from the success of MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) OCW (Open Course Ware), or MIT-OCW in USA. This advantage has brought us an idea to transfer our project course to impact people worldwide with the least amount of cost and time. The Twenty-one member economics of APEC can exchange knowledge of language, culture and tradition through the online media. Countries can also advance communication, transportation, technology, politics and economics via the online media to generate easy accessible to each member country. Therefore, all the input and method will be operated within each country and can transfer the output of ALCoB-OCW for worldwide impact.
6) Sustainable life And Shared Prosperity – Outcome: Based on what we was previously mentioned to planned to complete the goal of APEC for the sustainable life and shared prosperity among the APEC’s member economics. We are concerned about the impact project has on the future of education. We are trying to change the attitude from the old education system to the next generation of education; including the way of publishing information in order to convince people to learn more effectively to improve their skills and knowledge. If people are well trained and educated, they will be able to be self reliance and force economics to develop together with other APEC’s members. Then, the sustainable life and shared prosperity can work hand in hand. We will become “INNOVATIVE COLLABORATORS”.
In conclusion, as university students and the ALCoB-U Thailand’s members, who would love to see sustainable economic growth and prosperity in Asia Pacific region, so we have brought our idea of future education’ models to share with ALCoB international.
Our future education model starts from
USR and ALCoB work together by applying integration of Sufficiency Economy Philosophy and Edutainment as the strategy methods to create an effective learning environment courses. Finally, we will transform our project into ALCoB e-Learning Open Course Ware (ALCoB-OCW) in order to impact
million of people and tight the relationship among APEC members. This project can be success with the association between organization of Universities and ALCoBs. We are ready to make it happen, now HOW ABOUT YOU??? End of essay