Winding down for a wonderful 2019

As 2018 is coming to an end soon, I checked to see how many email messages I've shared and the number stands at 44, excluding this one ka!

I also take this opportunity to reflect on this passing year to find the following:

1. Efforts and development of internationalization (IZN) of higher education in Thailand, GMS, ASEAN, and Asia are evident and I couldn't be happier! 

2. My keywords consistently used are 'Future Trends', 'New Normal', 'Autonomy', 'Vision and Missions', 'Generations', 'Quality', and 'Sharing'. Added ones are 'Purpose', 'Empathy' and 'Ethics' as part of the key attributes to focus and instill into our higher education and society. Obviously, I see the chance for IZN to help promote all these issues through its crucial mechanisms like exchanges and collaboration, which need at least semi-structured approaches.

From a few forums I attended, I think I'll strongly emphasize to our higher education the need to collaborate, not to compete among our own selves or even with others across our borders in order for us to sustain productively and healthily.  Since I just listened to another recent book summary on, 'Bring Human to Work', I also wish to urge our community to care for and enhance our own 'being human' especially in the era of AI and Machine Learning! 

By the way, owning 'Alexa' turns out to be my learning highlight this year too kaaa!

3. Volunteer activities have brought so much learning, hope, and joy. I hope to do more whenever I can with friends and networks.

4. Besides strong family ties that I always feel blessed, projects I've been involved and the US trip this year proved that decades of relationships with friends and networks have genuinely warmed my heart and soul!

My 2018 has been real busy yet rewarding in many ways. May I thank you all for the invites, advice, opportunities, cooperation, and friendship na ka. 

I hope 2019 will be brightened with our joint efforts and caring hearts to heighten quality of our own selves and the circles we belong, both morally and academically. 

See you all in 2019 ka.

Gen Y's world

Hello Thursday to everyone with a little story to share ka.

Two weeks ago, I had lunch with a Fulbright alum who stayed and taught in a school up north for 6 months. It was a fun to follow her thinking and life after she left Thailand.

In fact, it started from her keen interest in taking vdo's about her English camp and other related activities while teaching. When she went back to the US, IIE (representing the State Dept in recruiting Fulbright students and English Teaching Assistants -- ETA) asked her to help promote the ETA Program and so she flew to different States and attend some important functions. This has in part, increased her own passion in technology. 

She now owns a small company doing, 'Website Designer & Marketing Consultant and Women's Empowerment Speaker'!

We talked about the location of her office. She said, 'Pakistan'! My first surprise!

When asked how many times she has been there. She answered, 'Never'! My second surprise!

My Fulbright alum said she was lucky to find one young lady there who wanted to work with her and she was the one managing the office in Pakistan (very eager to learn more how this Pakistani lady has become so competent and excelled in her management in her country na ka!) Things work out well with long-distance leadership from the US! From time to time, she still gets online requests for her to offer advice or lead a camp. 

After our get together, she went to Samui to work with her team in Pakistan on their US clients from Thailand!! It turned out to be a real digital world of work ka.

Then we discussed family life and she asked me if I used, 'Tinder' a very popular matchmaking app. You can guess it must have been a 'No' ka. I told her I was afraid if any Fulbright kid found out, it'd become talk of the town:))! Seems it's something quite common for our Y gen.

Has our education been up to this form and other digital ways of work and life ka?

IZN of Higher Education Platform (final)

My last mail to summarize the IZN of Higher Education Platform ka. 

My own version of the overall learning is:

• IZN is here to stay and can be a great mechanism for mobility, partnership, collaboration, and benchmarking. Go for cooperation, not competition at all levels from local to regional and international.
• The speed of the digital world is much faster than imagined and our higher education institutions must adjust fast. Prof. Sacco’s emphasis on teaching students ‘to learn how to learn’ is crucial.
• Quality has to be integrated in all the IZN steps and processes.
• The sessions have also confirmed my talk in several key aspects ka.

1) There’s a real need to bridge the gap between national authorities and universities to build mutual understanding of the policy directions on IZN to ensure that the implementation will work for our younger generations and our more stable future. Universities need to have their autonomy to manage their IZN elements as seen most responsive to their respective contexts. 

2) Internationalization at Home (IaH) must be on our agenda to allow the mass to have intercultural understanding even when without any mobility opportunities. Virtual mobility should be seriously explored as well. 

3) While we see younger ones who are digital natives, the older generations (particularly faculty and staff) must turn themselves into Gen ‘C’ (Gen Connected) to keep up with them and the new normal world.

4) We need to nurture the attributes of ‘empathy‘ and ‘ethics’ before the third generation (ASI— Artificial Super Intelligence) of robots take over the mass! In other words, retain our human qualities not to be robotized as robots are being developed to be more and more humanized!

On another matter, I felt upset to see many empty seats after the morning of the first day and again the second day. It was such a great opportunity to have the Platform organized in Thailand for us to benefit but I guess priority given to IZN wasn’t high enough along with other reasons.

Anyway, it means much more work has to be done more seriously before we run out of time and in fact, time is limited ka!

Let’s keep learning and fighting!

IZN of Higher Education Platform (3)

Happy Monday na ka. 

On this Platform, there were many invited speakers from international/national organizations, national authorities, and universities, whose contributions enabled us to see their thinking and focuses. 

It's really obvious that mobility stands out when discussing IZN and it could mean different things to different countries, e.g. for Unesco, it links with SDGs while Australia could see it on the more commercial side and DAAD sees it as friendship and peace. 

In this gathering, it was great to discuss research and how each country/university has been striving to excel in more collaborative research projects. China, Japan, and Malaysia seem to have a strong grip on them. I'm glad to learn more about a Unesco project on IZN that is being undertaken with Japan and Mahidol has also conducted quite a bit about it. We should see some common IZN indicators we can pick and choose from.

Another speaker I really liked and in fact had talked with him personally was Professor Tan Tai Yong, President of Yale-NUS college. Both institutions agreed to create a liberal arts college from scratch to produce graduates for the future world. It isn't like many others that are set up with domination of one institution or to serve as a satellite campus or franchise type of thing. The college has been extremely particular with recruitment of faculty and selection of students. For students (all required to stay on campus throughout the 4 years), potential applicants are asked to write 5 essays and the college interviews each and every student they've pre-screened (face-to-face, skype, etc.) Half of the students (250 for each class) will be Singaporeans and the rest will be for ASEAN and others (not sure if it's around 25% each). Students are required to take 1/3 of the courses both in science and social sciences that the college finds needed, 1/3 electives, and 1/3 for their majors. The designs of curriculums and facilities is all to promote learning which go along with the college's vision on 'A Community of Learning....'. Students design their projects together with their professors that can include study abroad too (80% of students go abroad). Professor Tan said the college tries hard to inculcate desirable attributes especially empathy and to lessen their egos and entitlements. How I wish I could visit his college some day soon!

Two more issues I'd like to share here too ka! Many sessions mentioned ranking with frustration. As the ranking race needs abundant resources, some universities jumped in or had to (because of their national standing) for funding support and didn't think it was favorable. It confirmed Jamil's belief to go for benchmarking, not ranking. 

When a Japanese speaker shared that the IZN related  funding support  has led to unnecessary competitions among local universities, I thought about it a lot and the role of ministries has to be reconsidered in terms of the use of funding that could cause backfire.  

Will be back with my reflection as the conclusion for this Platform tomorrow ka.

IZN of Higher Education Platform (2)

Let me now share with you what Dr. Jamil Salmi, the second keynote speaker talked on 'IZN of Higher Education toward World-class Universities' na ka.

Jamil Salmi worked at the World Bank for over 25 years and I always love his presentations as they're always concrete with simple yet powerful analogy and pictures. This time was no difference ka. Simply fantastic and insightful.

He touched on the meaning of 'world-class universities', which could be defined by 'self declaration', 'reputation', and 'rankings'. He used his three overlapping circles to explain his thoughts about it, saying that the cores must be 'top graduates', 'dynamic knowledge', and 'leading-edge research'. To reach those three core results, universities need talents, governance (with management autonomy and freedom from civil service rules), and resources. He showed stats to compare endowment funds of leading universities and GDP of Thailand along with many others (113 countries have GDP lower than Harvard endowment).

On IZN, he said it could serve as an accelerating factor for development and leadership is important to inspire communities with its new vision, yet, it needs to have proper duration of leadership terms to make it work.

Jamil cautioned the audience about 'rankings', pointing out that 'it's totally useless' (against multidisciplinary research, pointless to focus on academic reputation......my own version na ka). He urged that we focus more on 'benchmarking' which would heighten quality of higher education.

He said universities must dare to be different with niche programs, to challenge themselves with the sense of urgency, and to have their strategic planning with managerial innovations and the use of benchmarking.

I just got a link to his blog from my former colleague:

http://blogs.worldbank.org/team/jamil-salmi

in case some of you are interested to learn more about his perspective and insights ka. 

To be continued kaaa!

IZN of Higher Education Platform (1)

You can tell from my subject with (1) to show I'll write more than once about it ka.

For the past two days, I had an opportunity to participate in the very first Internationalization of Higher Education Platform (IZNHEP), organized by OHEC and Mahidol University, aiming at sharing and discussing futuristic issues and IZN.

Here are what I've learned from the first keynote speaker ka:

- The first keynote speaker was Prof. Al Sacco, Dean of Engineering from Texas Technological University. He was the one who brought us out of this world kaaa! He worked as a NASA's astronaut and took 2 trips to space, spending 31 days altogether! He shared pix of earth from space for us to observe that developed and less developed countries through the glittering lights with more advanced ones having more energy to turn on lights while many others were dark. He called it, 'Enlightened vs Un-enlightened worlds' and added that much more help is needed.

Having had direct experiences in the areas of science and technology, he realizes that current ways of teaching could never catch up with the speed of progress  and so for his students, he said all had to 'learn how to learn' in order for them to be able to live their life in the future of uncertainty. I was really glad to hear him mention about the 'A' in 'STEM' as 'STEAM' and for him there must be a 'blend' of intelligence and integration of humans and human society'.

On the whole, there're two major aspects to share further ka. 

1. His school has managed to develop confidence in students, lead them to learn how to learn, and to have courage to take educated risks with systems thinking and from international exposure for at least 6-8 weeks of exchanges while recognizing students' mixed learning styles (not all will go for MOOCs) and offering learning spaces.

2. He projects that these are the four key areas to focus into the future: energy, infrastructure, engineering and medicine, and water.

More to follow ka!

Book chapter is published!

Happy Monday ka, everyone.  I had an opportunity to give two sessions to a group of university administrators in Thailand and Myanmar under the network funded by OHEC and coordinated by MFU- Mae Fah Luang University.  As always, the Myanmar side was very eager to learn and after having met for the third time, more questions were asked....even the newcomers were so enthusiastic. Since it's a president/rector level, most out of 7 came and if not, their pro-rectors were super active to learn and share. They'll advance so fast because of their thirst for new knowledge and experience ka. From our quick evaluation, the results showed their intention and commitment to pursue internationalization (focusing on research as top priority) at their respective universities. The next move will be to ensure that they havequality assurance in all the steps of their processes. On another note, after almost 4 years, the book entitled, "Education in Thailand, An Old Elephant in Search of a New Mahout" is published ka.  My colleague and I wrote a book chapter on "The Internationalization of Thai Higher Education over the Decades: Formidable Challenges Remain!" and I'm glad that there's at least one reference about how things have been done. I'm happier to see that IZN has become better known and been proactively implemented with much progress in many institutions in Thailand and hope more IZN research will be conducted.  If you're interested, the description is as seen below with the link to see the table of contents ka…very thick 744 pages ka (and expensive--$179)! My only joy to see it published is that we can now quote what we wrote with reference to the book chapter ka. Cheers. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-10-7857-6#toc Abstract of the Book: This interdisciplinary book offers a critical analysis of Thai education and its evolution, providing diverse perspectives and theoretical frameworks. In the past five decades Thailand has seen impressive economic success and it is now a middle-income country that provides development assistance to poorer countries. However, educational and social development have lagged considerably behind its globally recognized economic success. This comprehensive book covers each level of education, such as higher and vocational/technical education, and such topics as internationalization, inequalities and disparities, alternative education, non-formal and informal education, multilingual education, educational policy and planning, and educational assessment. The 25 Thai and 8 international contributors to the volume include well-known academics and practitioners. Thai education involves numerous paradoxes, which are identified and explained. While Thailand has impressively expanded its educational system quantitatively with much massification, quality problems persist at all levels. As such, the final policy-oriented summary chapter suggests strategies to enable Thailand to escape “the middle income trap” and enhance the quality of its education to ensure its long-term developmental success.   Abstract of our book chapter ka: Since 1990 following the formulation of the First 15-Year Long-Range Plan on Higher Education (1990–2004), Thailand’s efforts to internationalize have gradually shown some favorable results, especially in terms of the numbers of international students, programs, and partnerships. This chapter describes the 25-year evolution of internationalization examining factors speeding up or hindering progress; influences of national, regional, and international trends and partners; internationalization links; the rankings race; and quality assurance. The role of OHEC in providing leadership for and facilitation of internationalization is carefully reviewed. Four factors significantly influencing internationalization are examined, namely, Thai education reform, the cultural traditions of Thai educational administration, the development of global education internationalization, and the realization of the ASEAN Economic Community. Several other crucial factors are also discussed such as visionary leadership, engagement of millennials, benchmarking, and lintegration. Much improvement needs to be made in order to realize more in terms of the quality dimension – the key to a successful internationalization process. This will in turn ensure that the alignment and integration of policies from a broad framework with consistent elements as well as the maximization of resources available will lead to the collective implementation of the desired goals. ReplyForward

Student Mobility and ASEANness

Happy Monday na ka, everyone. I now no longer have 'Monday blue' as quite a few Mondays of mine are left free and I sure love it ka!

Again, lots have happened the past weeks with workshops and talks. Just looked back and forward, all were and will be in English......Thai higher education goes more 'inter' na ka!

Last week, I was in Hanoi conducting two sessions for SEAMEO RIHED. It had over 130 participants in one and over 70 in the other and both were meant to be interactive. It was tough to prepare a workshop to stress on 'ASEANness'  to member universities of the ASEAN International Mobility of Students Program (AIMS) and even tougher to conduct it ka......thank goodness, I survived ka!

Our region has had mobility programs here and there but intra-regional mobility has been high on the agenda because of AIMS though challenges persist when Japan and Korea are added on!

We've discussed ASEANness for decades and I could recall the earliest back to the time when there was an attempt to create an ASEAN University to become 'ASEAN University Network' we've seen. 

Content-wise, not enough understanding have we had about our being ASEAN in terms of characteristics and shared values (not just the facts and figures about our ASEAN region)and that could be one of the reasons why we have yet to integrate this aspect in our mobility program, especially before and after the activities are over.

Management-wise, challenges lie in the facts that many think of it as a 'check-list', meaning that we cross out the activities we've already completed without much attention being paid to 'how' things were done and 'how' to improve them strategically, not just incrementally.

Several lessons learned I'd like to share ka:

1. More emphasis has to be placed on repeating objectives and links to the projects/activities we're doing. I can't help but think of a few Japanese and Thai CEOs who said they continued talking about history and philosophy in meetings at all levels. It could be because we could remind ourselves why those activities and projects are selected to be carried out.

2. The use of 'To-do list' is helpful as a good reminder but we may have overused it as a 'Feel-good list' to see we've done all with 'yes' to all items. Within each item, they could be much more steps that include necessary content or tools to assess them which would allow following steps to be smoother and more fruitful to participants. Need to ask more questions about 'what could have been done better/differently?// and how to be responsive to the objectives'

3. International Relations Officers (IRO) and faculty members don't always have one same picture and shared objectives even when both groups work on the same project. While IRO tended to focus on the processes of sending out/receiving students, faculty members could gear toward credit transfer. 

Some missing links to be filled were mobility meaningfulness to students as individuals and for others to share the learning, faculty, IRO, and the institutions. These could happen at any process of the mobility from program mobility to selection, orientation, support during the exchange, debriefing, and use of reflections for improvements. 

4. One question that was a big challenge for faculty and IRO to answer their university presidents was, 'What is the ROI of the mobility project?' As in some dimensions of the experiences, it takes time for participants to know for sure what they've got out of the exchanges, I'd love to have a little roundtable to come up with concise and sensible responses for all to answer their bosses (and bosses to be included in the discussion too). Thinking of a big survey of ERASMUS and Fulbright loei ka.

Ideas and comments welcome ka!

Loyal shopper

A story to share kaa!

Yesterday, my sis-in-law and her daughter went shopping at the supermarket at Central Chidlom. After all was done, they went to the taxi stand offered by the store. My sis-in-law tripped over an uneven pavement and fell siting down. 

Almost immediately, a man who was at the car park booth as well as several store staff approached her to see how she was doing. One saw it as he was in the booth there while two others saw it from the store's CCTV ka. My niece told the staff that they were thinking of either stopping at Payathai hospital or rubbing some ointments at home. They all insisted that she went to see a doctor to check her bones, noting that she is over 60+. 

The staff with one customer service member took my sis-in-law and my niece to Bumrungrad and saw through the whole process there. Fortunately, it was a sprain with no broken bones.

Both felt real touched by the service and I'm sure their loyalty to the Central brand has grown deeper.

Cheers to caring store, caring people and services ka.

fun and nervous finale in the US

I’ve already been back home after almost one month away and it wasn’t a smooth trip back as expected ka.

Seattle was the port of my departure to Narita. The very morning I left Montana early at 7.30, feeling happy to have about 5 hours in between for my international flight. Little did I know it turned out to be an unusual long journey to arrive Bangkok.

To make the long (wrong:)) story short, low visibility at the Seattle airport hindered my flight to land and so by the time we were there, my flight had already gone.

Because it was check-through baggage, I had to track down where it was while rebooking a ticket. Life was more complicated when each staff told me different things which made me walk around the airport without much success. Finally, all was done once I found my way to the ANA office. While staying overnight at a hotel provided by the Alaska Airlines and was on a call with my travel insurance what and how to claim for some relevant items.

This experience from missing the international flight has made me give even more priority to life skills, English proficiency, and cross culture interpretations ka. 

For the cross culture interpretations in particular, when I tried to ask for more info from Alaska staff, the guy said, 'I can't help you now as I'll have to board all the passengers.'  Another one when I asked two ladies at an ANA counter, 'I need your help.'. One answered almost right away, 'I can't help you.'  These two cases showed different reasons ka. The first was about his priority though my question could be just one short answer while the second was that the ladies had no idea about ANA process as they were an Air France team ka. With some sound interpretations, I wasn't angry but was able to think of other options for my next steps to get to what I wanted to know ka.

Happy to be home ka:))!

Elderly living

About 8 years ago, I was in Montana visiting my American friend's family (Mom and Dad) at MIssion Ridge, Billings, Montana. I recall that I was very impressed with the place as it looked like a great one for the elderly to do activities together in this senior center as it offered a whole lot from a chapel, special concerts and talks, nice meals, and shuttles to the city, etc. 

My second time at this place has given me some different things to learn. 

Dad passed away three years ago and so Mom who is 92 continues to stay there at her apartment, managing her own life without much need to move to another type of 'assisted housing' (offering help on medication from nurses and closer attentive services).

Mom said after having lived there for 15 years, she found that it was time for her to move out. It wasn't the financial issue as it is affordable for her (though services and other fees have been much higher and in fact, this place is sort of hiso and expensive ka.) She said it was sad to learn and see people dying there and she had been writing so many 'with sympathy' cards that made her feel depressed. She also thought that it was getting harder making conversations when many had stories about grandchildren and pets to share while she had neither. Having lost her husband is definitely one of the factors added up to her feeling much less happy staying there.

Another factor I didn't think of was health issues. Some elderly could become quite stubborn when they got sick. This place had to put them in quarantine not to spread the disease to others. Everyone at the old age has to stay as fit as possible so they get nervous when someone is sick and mingle with them.

Much earlier on, I thought having various activities would be great. I think this place needs more younger ones to offer more life to it ka. Even the staff here are mostly young, the turnover is high just like other places in the US and they are around to finish their tasks, not to really be with the residents working on some projects together. When I came over, I could contribute a little by bringing to them a new face and some different stories to share ka.

I hope Mom will be happier as luckily, my friend has placed Mom as her first priority in life already moved from another state to take care of her mother. They will stay at one nice home together with the main floor for her Mom and the den for herself to give each other some space. 

There're so many factors Thais need to think when building a community for the elderly na ka.

Pets

Hello from Montana where it snowed yesterday and the weather is warmer now at 4 degree Celsius today ka. 

On this trip, I've learned a lot about pets and it seems that many more have kept pets and here are what I'd like to share:

- Petsitters (especially for dogs) have become common and it isn't an easy job. Besides taking care of them, petsitters have to learn how to handle unhealthy dogs....like how to feed sick dogs using syringes, how to offer medicine like Fosamax (for stronger bones) which would have to make sure the dog won't lie down for 30 minutes, etc.

- Training dogs to be 'therapy dogs' is something real new to know. I feel people are much lonelier and pets are their real friends. I met a dog who is 'therapy dog' visiting homes and hospitals to make people feel less stressful ka. Too bad I didn't get to ask how the training is and what the therapy dogs have to do. One thing I know is that therapy dogs look cute and friendly ka.

- Keeping a pet means costs and commitment. An American friend of mine has a dog 'Lucy' who is over 13 years old. She spent a lot on Lucy's health from bringing her to the vet to buying special food for Lucy as she needs to be on a special diet. In addition, Lucy has hearing difficulties along with other weaknesses. All cost her a lot in the thousands and she said, 'It's a commitment'. Another friend said, 'it's responsibility.' In some cases I'd think that pets could be more well taken care of than family members who  live far away too ka! 

What do you think when we compare the situations with those in Thailand ka?

Digital life?

Good afternoon from a wet New York city ka.

When I started thinking seriously what I wanted to learn from this trip, it wasn't that easy to answer. I only told myself that I'd get ready to 'learn, unlearn, and relearn' whatever I got to see and do. One thing that popped up, though, was about the change from analog to digital!

In Seattle, Nong A, a Fulbright alum insisted that I go to 'Amazon Spheres' and I'm glad we both made it there. It was exciting to see how Amazon has tried every possible way to boost creativity and innovation using nature as its key theme. The three glass domes with over 40,000 plants looked spectacular, serving as lounge and workspace for its employees. Since it isn't open to public that day, we enjoyed learning the thinking and construction from the exhibition instead. 

A Fulbright alum is working there and had I called him, we could have been allowed to visit his office. I decided not to so he could focus on his work. 

When mentioning about alums, I failed to add one more word onto my yesterday's list ka. A senior alum said I've been alumming. I gathered that it could mean I met up with one alum after another.....our American friends in this group may jump in to help if my understanding isn't correct na ka. 

Closer by was 'Amazon Go' that Nong A and I visited. It was a supermarket with not that many varieties to choose from. It could become a 'New Normal' for us some time soon. When it looked similar to other supermarkets, we were allowed to go in only when one of us had its app that is tied to a bank account. After Nong A was done with it, we both walked around to 'feel' it. We saw lots of sensors on the ceiling and thought that those could help track the products people took out of the shelves. All customers would bag the stuff themselves and leave the place without any need to go through cashiers......all paid digitally through the app they've had on their smart phones. Awesome mai ka?

There were a few things like Amazon Go that I read about and didn't quite get it until I saw it with my own eyes. Starbucks Reserve was another I wanted to visit. It sounded so hi-so from what I read but I didn't feel so when I went there.....stunned only because of the huge place with different counters offering coffee, tea, bakery, and  liguor. Coffee tasting area and coffee processes were good to see too ka. I now hope I can see any CVS MinuteClinic for minor illnesses as well. Wonder if it goes highly digital in some ways or not?