Transdisciplinary programmes for digital natives

THE Higher Education Ministry (MOHE) is embracing the Fourth Industrial Revolution or Industry 4.0, by transforming the Malaysian education landscape for the future generation.

MOHE director-general Datin Paduka Dr Siti Hamisah Tapsir said since July this year, the ministry has been touring universities to gather feedback on the proposed Higher Education 4.0 Framework.

“We have engaged with at least 3,500 people and will continue to gather feedback until December this year,” she said.

Siti Hamisah said this at the Government Linked Universities (GLU) Management Forum 2017 themed “Integration and Connectivity” at The Everly Putrajaya Hotel recently. The forum was organised by four universities namely Universiti Kuala Lumpur (UniKL), Universiti Teknologi Petronas (UTP), Multimedia University (MMU) and Universiti Tenaga Nasional (UNITEN).

She said the proposed framework comprises of four elements which are flexible curriculum design and delivery, agile governance, research 4.0 as well as talent.

In her keynote address entitled “Higher Education 4.0”, Siti Hamisah said under the flexible curriculum design and delivery, there is a need to have transdisciplinary programmes which include social sciences and liberal arts programmes to nurture creativity of the graduates.

“Computers are machines and do not have a creative streak like humans,” she said, adding that creativity would prepare graduates for jobs in the future that have not been created yet.

“Besides being creative and innovative, students also need to have emotional intelligence. These are the values that we would like to impart to them,” she said.

Siti Hamisah added that the Third Industrial Revolution focused more on the digital aspect, while the Fourth Industrial Revolution is based on cyber-physical systems.

“We have to be ready for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, especially for us in higher education. The backbone to this includes artificial intelligence, cloud computing, big data analytics and the Internet of Things,” she said.

Siti Hamisah pointed out that the new generation of students are digital natives and multitaskers with a short attention span.

“It would take about 15 minutes of their attention during lectures before they start to do something else with their laptops,” she said.

Students then need to be empowered to become co-creators of knowledge and content during lectures to sustain their attention.

She is pleased that in the public and private universities of 75,000 academicians, young lecturers aged 45 and below are teaching through the way digital natives want to be taught.

“They have started to utilise their mobile phones, and use interesting software for