FE2021 Videos

In association with Protect Our Planet (POP) Movement
Dec 6, 2021

Perspectives of current generation of students regarding changes needed in the content, pedagogy and delivery systems for global higher education to better prepare the world’s youth with the values, knowledge, skills and capacities needed to meet emerging challenges and opportunities and for global citizenship in an increasingly interconnected, networked world.

Dec 6, 2021

What are the implications of TJD endorsed by WAAS and partner organizations in September 2021 on the need to mobilize knowledge in a more integrated way and extend learning beyond the boundaries of fragmented disciplinary knowledge and allow for greater flexibility of studying; move away from conventional, fixed trajectories towards models based on individual preferences and purposes; and include opportunities for critical learning in study programs to enhance students’ abilities to tackle complex, non-disciplinary problems. What should students, faculty, administration, and funders know about the strategies described in TJD? How will colleges and universities address these strategies: through new curriculum, new departments and centers, or existing structures? What types of relationships are needed? How should we evaluate both progress and success?

Dec 6, 2021

The current education system and existing infrastructure combined with the growing college-age population and rising demand for tertiary education result in an ever-increasing quantitative gap between educational aspirations in society and the capacity of the current system to meet the demand. Global higher education also faces an enormous qualitative gap between the small, elite, exclusive group of world-class institutions and the tens of thousands of institutions with high vacancy rates among faculty, severe shortages of qualified instructors and inadequate on-going training for those in service, underfunded and inadequate facilities, and high student-instructor ratios. What innovative models can be adopted to make world-class higher education accessible and affordable to all who seek it? How can we reduce the gap in quality of instruction, while keeping pace with the ever-accelerating pace of new knowledge acquisition? How will we find the needed qualified instructors and financial resources?

Dec 6, 2021

Higher education that began with a focus on a mere handful of subjects today offers more than 1000 disciplines and subdisciplines. Fuelled by the rapid accumulation of information, this multiplication of disciplines results in a progressive narrowing of field and scope of knowledge in each specialized discipline, decreasing the width and breadth of knowledge even in closely related fields. Over-specialization illprepares youth to understand and adapt to the ever-increasing complexity and interdependencies that characterize our age. Transdisciplinary perspectives, customized and personalized curricula, and contextualized knowledge are essential for relevance and effectiveness in our increasingly complex world. This session explores the contours for a radical shift in pedagogy.

Organized by the Institute for Advanced Studies in Levant Culture and Civilization (ISACCL)
Dec 6, 2021

Traditionally, universities, from the theological to the humboldian and the modern one, developed two actions: teaching and research. The industrial growth of the last centuries gave way to a new concern: services offered on demand which have now become “the third mission” of the universities. Universities are increasingly expected to provide contributions to regional innovation and economic development processes. A large number of specialized periodicals, books and articles debate on the subject, both in its general and applied sense. The European strategic plans for development and societal cohesion highly consider the role that universities play in achieving these goals. The aspects subjected to debate in this panel are the following: 1. Are all universities prepared to respond to the “third mission”? 2. Does the “third mission” sustain the universities’ development? 3. Examples of cases of successful implication of universities in the sustainable development of the regions.

Dec 8, 2021

There is an urgent need to fill the global leadership vacuum in order to address the complex, pressing challenges confronting humanity today. We cannot change the global system or its leadership instantly, but we can rapidly and dramatically improve the education of both existing and future world leaders in national governments, multilateral organizations, business and civil society by imparting to them a knowledge of the complex factors propelling global social evolution and the process by which it can be consciously shaped and directed to address challenges and tap opportunities. This session discusses ways to meet the urgent need to assemble the fragmented perspectives of human knowledge into a comprehensive, integrated perspective of the process of global social evolution and the process and strategies which can be harnessed to consciously lead and more effectively direct its course. An integrated, transdisciplinary education can better equip leaders, diplomats, public administrators and policy-makers to understand and respond appropriately to the rapidly unfolding challenges of our time.

Dec 8, 2021

This session featured presentation and discussion of papers on reimagining education in the post-COVID times. It explored global trends and emerging paradigms and processes in education, the limits of the prevailing concept of rationality, the value of creativity, cultural orientation, and the place of technology in the future of education.

Dec 7, 2021

The COVID-19 pandemic is illustrative of the serious challenges impacting on virtually every dimension of global society today. The 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals itemize these challenges and identify 169 targets for action by the nations of the world. But they do not sufficiently account for their extreme interconnectedness and interdependencies or the necessity for integrated thinking and coordinated action. Nor do they sufficiently communicate to the general public their personal relevance and importance to every person on earth. This session explores the UN concept of Human Security which is designed to provide a comprehensive, integrated framework for understanding and effective action at the local, national and global level.

Dec 6, 2021

The application of an integrated Human Security perspective in education is stymied by the extreme fragmentation that characterizes the present silo-based disciplinary structure of higher education. This session will explore the potential for evolution of transdisciplinary, contextual approaches to interrelate and unify disciplinary perspectives and transform abstract, theoretical forms of learning into terms more suitable for understanding and effective action in the real world.

Dec 8, 2021

In collaboration with Global Governance Forum The UN Charter sought to establish a framework for peace and security so that the international community could focus on “the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all peoples.” We were supposed to set war aside so that we could redirect those resources to poverty alleviation, the improvement of living conditions and creating opportunities for human development. And yet, 75 years after the adoption of the Charter, we face a range of global challenges which cast a shadow over our collective future: accelerating climate change, rising militarism, widening income disparities, widespread gender and other forms of discrimination. This panel will discuss why the failures to develop more effective mechanisms of international cooperation have been hugely costly in development terms and what might be some desirable reforms to our global economic governance architecture. It will seek answers to the question: How can we reform our educational systems to support the required transformations in thinking and values?

Dec 7, 2021

Art and Science are not two separate and incommunicable worlds, but two complementary branches of the same tree that can converse and converge with one another to generate continually evolving knowledge that is greater than the sum of its parts. Science without Art is unimaginative and mechanistic. Art, through a scientific approach, transforms abstract knowledge into concrete applications. Education needs to take serious efforts to accelerate the integration of these complementary perspectives in various forms of knowledge discovery, transmission and application. This session explores the need to integrate the two streams of knowledge to equip students with the skills and capacities to generate holistic and sustainable solutions for the challenges we face.

Dec 7, 2021

Since the first industrial revolution, our education system has been fraught with reductionist, siloed thinking and learning models and frameworks, which have resulted in disastrous outcomes for our living systems and planet. Living systems are a constant combination of multiple forms of communication and interaction between organisms. While it may be possible to capture some of the first order combination and communications in living systems and transmit them to future generations by education, the second and higher orders of communication remain unseen, inseparable, undefinable, and crucial to the trajectories and aesthetics of ongoing vitality. We can only try to capture them by co-evolving learning. This requires the inclusion of Arts in STEM and a commitment to step beyond our learned specialisations, open up to a world that holds space for paradoxes and contradictions as equally valid perspectives, and to empower a world based on reconciliation rather than compromise. This session reimagines a learning framework embedded in co-evolutionary living in the present, such that our current actions regenerate value into the future.

In partnership with GlobalMindED
Dec 8, 2021

STEAM is the integration of Scientific thinking and research with Art in the broadest sense as human creativity, the objective and subjective dimensions of reality, and the rational and intuitive perceptions of knowledge. This session explores the process of integrating the value-free conception of science with the values-based affirmation of humanity, and answers the questions: How can we integrate these dimensions in a manner that enhances understanding and accomplishment, rather than affirming one to the total neglect of the other? What are its implications for education, understanding and thinking processes?

In association with GlobalMindED
Dec 6, 2021

Issues of economic stagnation, inequality and financial disparity have long existed but grew far worse during COVID. This session will explore how to reverse generations of global inequities by exploring what needs to change in academia, business, funding and what the diverse, emergent talent pipeline of global leaders say they most value, want and need as learners, workers and impact-makers solving the world’s toughest problems which they have inherited. Together, the communities of WAAS and GlobalMindED can set a new, inclusive standard of international collaboration by mobilizing uncommon collaborators to move the global levers of access and equity to achieve lasting impact at scale.

Dec 7, 2021

The Academy’s founders were motivated by the realization that science and arts have an imperative responsibility to ensure that the creations of the human mind should promote the security, welfare, and well-being of humanity. The secular values of objective science and the human values of the subjective arts are complementary perspectives that need to be combined and reconciled in order to generate humane knowledge for sustainable human security and well-being. This session will explore the importance of values, ethics, social impact and social responsibility in higher education and seek to identify ways to more fully integrate these subjective elements into the content and pedagogy of all disciplines and levels of learning, with focus on fields such as AI, energy, healthcare, finance, and social political history.

Dec 8, 2021

Societal transformation is the process of making conscious the long, slow haphazard process of social evolution. Societal transformation is possible only when our thinking is integrated. Such thinking in turn requires an integral education. We need to break down the silos of academic knowledge and organize it within a transdisciplinary framework. This session explores ways in which education can instill in youth the capacity to correlate and synthesize, to place isolated pieces of information within a cohesive framework of thought, to think from first principles, to reintegrate abstract thought with the world we live in, and apply it for societal transformation and sustainable development for all.

Dec 8, 2021

This session engages women leaders from diverse cultures and continents who are on the frontlines of dealing with crises of human development, conflict and climate change in their home countries and in the world. They will share their views regarding a ‘new paradigm for the future of education’ based on their direct life experiences in mobilising education to transform the crises and challenges they faced in their communities. They will identify ‘what is missing today and what is needed in education tomorrow’ to not only respond to but to transform those who are ‘left behind’ by the current paradigm: especially women, youth, minorities and disabled who are worst affected by poverty, climate crisis and youth, based on their specific contexts as well as on the global challenges we face as humanity today. They will share how they catalysed the transformative power of education in innovative, collaborative, co-creative ways—despite all odds—to contribute to human and planetary security, through their exemplary and collective women’s leadership.

Dec 7, 2021
Our greatest achievements are products of our minds. So too, the existential problems confronting humanity today are products of the way we think. The discussions in this session seek to consciously enhance our understanding of the analytic, abstract mode of thinking characteristic of disciplinary silos, increase our awareness of its inherent limitations and blind spots, and develop the capacity to think in a more contextual, inclusive and integrated manner outside the confines of our existing conceptual frameworks. The aim of the session is to explore ways to broaden the range and enhance the quality of our thinking by making conscious the implicit assumptions and barriers that confine it within narrow boundaries, the limits to the prevailing conception of rationality, and the creative potential that can be tapped by more integrated perspectives.

In association with Inter-Parliamentary Coalition of Global Ethics (IPCGE)
Dec 7, 2021

The SDGs call for peaceful and just societies; however, the means to achieve that goal i.e. education for a culture of peace and the SDGs has not been specified and UN member states are left to their own devices as to how to bring this about. IPCGE has embarked on efforts to close this gap by promoting initiatives to achieve mandatory education on the culture of peace and SDGs at all levels of education in all UN member states. The session will explore the need for education on a culture of peace and SDGs and means to achieve this goal for future education and global leadership. How can we achieve education for a culture of peace and SDGs on all educational levels within a global perspective? How can we assure that future global leaders are equipped with the basic values of a culture of peace and the SDGs within the framework of higher education?

Dec 7, 2021

In April 2020, colleges and universities around the world closed down due to the pandemic, disrupting the studies of 220 million college students in 170 countries. Environmentalists are clear that the disruption caused by COVID-19 may have been sudden and dramatic, but its magnitude and long-term impact will be insignificant compared to that expected from climate change. We may never be able to go back to relying completely on face-to-face classroom learning. Therefore, we need a system of education that is future-proof so it is not held hostage to future disruptions and imparts to future citizens the knowledge needed to create a sustainable future. This session discusses ways to train teachers, guide researchers and educate students in the increasing complexity and uncertainty of global society and generate a more resilient and sustainable culture.