By adam brimo - August 23, 2017 @ 12:00pm

“A NATURAL leader”, “compassionate”, “critical thinker”, “entrepreneurial”, “responsible”, “has confidence in themselves and pride in their country”.

Who wouldn’t want to be described in such a way? Who wouldn’t want their children or students to exemplify these values?

From Sydney to Shah Alam to Shenzhen —no matter where you are from, we all aspire to develop the right balance between knowledge and skills, ethics and morality. We all strive to give our families the best possible quality of life and the benefits of our most difficult experiences.

In higher education, these values are known as soft skills. They take years to develop and are difficult to measure, yet they are the foundation to a civilised society and a requirement for a knowledge-based economy.

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This is especially so as automation and robotics transform the world. These soft skills are becoming the main differentiator — not just between graduates — but between people and computers.

So, how do we safeguard ourselves from being replaced by robots?

As a parent, you can foster a sense of curiosity in your child from an early age by sharing ideas, learning about philosophy and history, and by reading books instead of only watching TV. You can also lead by example — by using more positive language and “looking on the bright side”, and by being a self-directed, lifelong-learner yourself.

When your child is close to completing secondary school, keep an open mind and encourage them to explore subjects and degrees offered by not just universities, but also the polytechnics and community colleges. Some of the world’s most successful CEOs, artists and entrepreneurs studied social sciences, languages or engineering. Andrea Jung studied literature, Jack Ma was an English teacher and Marissa Mayer studied science.

In the future, jobs will favour a responsive and flexible individual — someone who is able to draw from a wide range of knowledge, experiences and technical skills to solve problems. This then requires a more wholesome and multi-disciplinary approach to education.

For the first time in history, people of all ages are able to join university courses from across Malaysia and around the world for free — they are called Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs for short.

More than 200 courses are now being offered by all 20 Malaysian public universities through Malaysia MOOCs — an initiative by the Ministry of Higher Education, and the world’s first national MOOCs programme — to over 270,000 people from around the world.

You can now enrol in short courses to learn about Sea Turtle Biology from Universiti Malaysia Terengganu (UMT), Introductory Japanese from Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM), English in the Media from Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS) or Computer Programming from Universiti Teknikal Malaysia (UTeM) — all without first enrolling in a university degree.

Have you studied a few MOOCs and would now like a university degree?

The Malaysian Qualifications Agency (MQA) recently launched the world’s first MOOC credit transfer guideline, called APEL(C), which enables you to get up to 30 per cent of a degree through MOOCs or up to 70 per cent of a degree through your prior work experience. Thanks to this programme, you no longer have to study every subject at university to earn credit towards your degree — your prior experiential learning counts!

As a university or polytechnic student, you, too, should equip yourself for the future of work. You can look for opportunities to be more active and involved by joining a society, tutoring your fellow students, volunteering on campus, or by helping out in your local community. Creativity and innovation comes from having a wide variety of experiences and this is the best time of your life to do just that.

More than ever, getting straight A’s alone won’t guarantee you a great job — your academic skills must be matched with industry experience and an entrepreneurial mindset. Your experiences and contributions to the community won’t go unnoticed. These experiences are now being recorded at universities nationwide to produce your Integrated CGPA or iCGPA — which is a holistic measure of both your knowledge and your soft skills.

As a teacher, you hold an important role in society and in your community. Although some people might think that technology will replace teachers, that is not the case — teachers are more critical than ever.

Teaching, more than any other profession, provides the ability and the opportunity to transform the lives of students by designing student-centred courses. Every time you encourage a student to share an idea, to create something new, or to reflect on an experience — you bring them closer to being an entrepreneur, a leader and a responsible citizen.

Developing these skills and changing the way we think is not an easy task. It won’t happen overnight but the groundwork has been laid, the programmes are in place, and the opportunities are there. Preparing ourselves and our society for the future is within our control and we all have a role to play.

The writer is the CEO of OpenLearning.com and can be reached at education@nst.com.my.

Carian oleh : En. Mohd Nasaruddin Ismail

Tarikh Input: 28/08/2017 | Kemaskini: 28/08/2017 | nurmiera