Mike Ilczynski is the director of education at SEEK Investment and a global investor in ed-tech and higher education. In this conversation with Martin Betts he shares why he invests in tech, and how that contributes to lifelong learning. Mr Ilczynski says significant growth is waiting for providers willing to be 'tech optimists', like SEEK has been. The episode also covers the opportunities for technology and partnerships to help address some of the challenges facing the Higher Education sector.

Chief executive of a United States leadership organisation, the Council on Competitiveness, Deborah Wince-Smith sits down with HEDx's Martin Betts in today's episode to discuss technological innovation.

She was a senior U.S. government official, as the first Senate-confirmed assistant secretary for technology policy in the U.S. Department of Commerce, and assistant director for International Affairs in the Reagan White House.

She is spearheading global efforts towards technological transformation in the Universities Research Leadership Forum of the Global Forum for Competitiveness Councils.

The Council on Competitiveness is a coalition of CEOs, university presidents, labor leaders and national laboratory directors, committed to driving U.S. competitiveness.

Computer science honours student Leo Shchurov told the committee automation was becoming so accessible that even people with no IT skills could use ChatGPT, or other similar platforms, to create a script to do their work for them.

Mr Shchurov said two skills that remained important in an AI workplace were curiosity and adaptability.

Fourth year law and information technology student Raphaella Revis said she would add critical and analytical thinking to the list of key skills in the age of AI.

“What I would like to see is people being taught how to analyse AI itself,” she told the hearing of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Employment, Education and Training, which is inquiring into the use of AI in the education system.

She said that for AI to offer benefits, humans needed to think and analyse.

“I don’t think we should let AI purely automate everything because that takes out a lot of the human elements,” Ms Revis said.

Both students said assessment in the age of AI should not focus on giving students a grade or a number, but instead giving a broader picture of their knowledge and skills.

Mr Shchurov said one of the worst aspects of the education system was year 12 school assessment, which reduced a student’s achievement to one number “without giving a proper multifaceted representation of what each student is capable of”. He said the structure of year 12 destroyed curiosity because if a student became curious about something, teachers couldn’t explore it if it didn’t contribute to the final mark.

“Once the students learn that it’s not worth going out of their way to do cool things because it doesn’t contribute to the final mark, that’s when they start to lose their curiosity and that’s when they stop being able to adapt to new changes,” Mr Shchurov said.

Ms Revis said that there needed to be “purpose-based assignments” and students needed feedback on where they could improve.

“I think there does need to be a bit more emphasis on practical applications and mixing and integrating generative AI into assignments to reflect the future of the workplace,” she said.

Ms Revis said it was important for school and university students to develop their analytic skills and be able to exercise their own judgment independent of AI.

“Then whichever industry they’ll go into, they can look neutrally at the output of the AI,” she said.

Looking at the field of law, Ms Revis said it should not, and would not, automate entirely because, for example, it was unlikely to take into account personal factors or the intent that lay behind a person’s action.

Mr Shchurov said that in the engineering and IT faculty where he studied, tutors were generally neutral or supportive of students using AI.

Ms Revis said the law faculty did not permit students to use AI.

Lecturers needed training in using AI in teaching and assessment, including in how to detect when AI was used by students and “not to just blatantly suspect students of it”, she said.