Tag: Education

IEEE R10 WiE&Industry Forum

2024-05-14 / Koen / 2 Comments

The leading role of the IEEE in advancing global science and technology development is undeniable. Still, outside the circles of scientists and engineers, people are more or less blind about the IEEE activities. Interestingly, since the leadership of Prof. Gamantyo Hendrantoro and Dr. Agnes Irwanti in the IEEE Indonesia Section, the publication of IEEE’s scientific discourse has been more widely disseminated to the general public. For two consecutive years, IEEE Indonesia has brought the IEEE President to Indonesia, featuring discussions broadcasted on television to improve the interest of the Indonesian public.

The IEEE President of 2024, Dr Tom Coughlin, paid a visit to Jakarta this week, accompanied by IEEE R10 Director Prof. Lance Fung, IEEE R10 Director-Elect Prof. Takako Hashimoto, IEEE R10 Women-in-Engineering Committee Chair Dr Agnes Irwanti, IEEE Malaysia Section Chair Dr Bernard Lim, and IEEE Indonesia Section Chair Prof. Gamantyo Hendrantoro. As part of the leadership activities, an IEEE briefing was held on the morning of May 14, followed by a talkshow broadcasted by TVRI.

The theme of the talkshow was “Shaping the Future: Women’s Role in Industry” — featuring prominent leaders from the industry, university, government, and the IEEE organisation in the region. One of them is a dear old friend of mine, Elysabeth Damayanti, the OVP of Cybersecurity at Telkom Indonesia. The talkshow started with an opening speech by Dr Agnes, and some keynote speeches from Ms Mira Tayyiba as the General Secretary of the MCI, and Dr Laksana Tri Handoko as the Head of BRIN — the Indonesian governmental centre for research.

As one of the speaker of the talkshow, I started by mentioning the implications of Complexity Science: that we always recognise the diversity of the systems we are working on, where different fields, agents, participants, are all interconnected, resulting in emergence: new values, greater values, surprising values. It is how the Internet and our digital world proliferates, and how both natural ecosystems and business ecosystems sustain. This perspective naturally supports the idea of inclusivity, as different agents from various demographic groups are considered crucial for the survivability and innovativeness of all the systems we are living in, including, surely and crucially, the role of women. It is a key reason to reduce and close the gender disparity.

The WEF has released the 2023 Global Gender Gap Report, mentioning Indonesia in rank 87th out of 146 countries in gender gap. Low enough, but still ahead of some developed countries in Asia, including Japan, China, and South Korea. Indonesian score was about 68% of the gender gap closed — including the relatively low gap in health quality, medium gap in economic participation, and high gap in political empowerment.

We believe that digital transformation that we are developing now, could and should plunge down the disparity. Currently we carry out the digital transformation in strategic & business level to alleviate the economy of the people from the eastern part to the western part of Indonesia; by developing platform, making some piloting implementation with the government, national industry, and then expand it. We work to to enhance MSME business, agriculture, industry, educations, etc, even to remote islands in Indonesia. It is evident, that digital platforms have provided women and men quite equally with wider access to knowledge, services, market & business opportunities. But the transformation must be carefully-planned and deployed with proper education.

Digitalisation in work processes allow us to provide better empowerment for women. It may bypass many social challenges, encouraging women to reduce the unfortunate judgement that are still existing from the traditional norms. Business transformation allow better inclusions in workplaces and business in general. It is also an opportunity for women to aggregate their commitment, capabilities, and opportunities. Use digital services to maximise collaborations, to work in partnership, to be brave take the leadership of the community, to lead the change, and to support each other both in personal level, organisational level, and cross -industry ecosystem.

That is the one of the key. Another key is diversity & uniqueness. So, women should keep their own identity, personality, and mindsets, to preserve different perspectives & values; while opening their mindset to new cultures, different ways of think.

I spent the rest of the time to listen from the honorary speakers of this event. It is one of the most valuable day for me this year, to learn a lot from the wisdoms presented today. Hopefully the IEEE Indonesia Section will continue this valuable activities more and more in the future.

IEEE Lecture at Udayana University

2023-11-11 / Koen / 0 Comments

As a part of the IEEE Indonesia Excom & Adcom coordinative meeting in Bali, we also visit Udayana University, to see the Advanced Research Laboratories, and also to carry out some sharing session to the academician and students.

Surely, first we had to meet the famous Prof Linawati, Dean of the Faculty of Technology, Udayana University. With Prof Lina, we established the IEEE Udayana University Student Branch 10 years ago, in my serving time as the Chairman of the IEEE Indonesia Section at that time, after a discussion at Fortech in Bandung.

This is a weekend lecture, so I just briefly discussed about the development of digital platforms as the core in current technology and business ecosystems.

And surely I spent a couple minutes to — again — make an introduction to the Complexity Theory. It’s always fun to tell people about this attractive thing. You can read more about this at the other part of this blog: [URL]

Bali: TALE 2013

2013-08-30 / Koen / 0 Comments

TALE, the IEEE International Conference on Teaching, Assessment and Learning for Engineering, is one of three key conferences of the IEEE Education Society. This year, TALE was held at the Bali Dynasty Resort, a resort on the shores of Kuta Beach, Bali , 26-29 August 2013. Indonesia was recommended to host the TALE Conference by Prof. Michael Lightner (ex IEEE Education Society President), who had observed the way the IEEE Indonesia Section organised IEEE CYBERNETICSCOM 2012, where he was present as a keynote speaker. Despite the obtained recommendations, the Indonesian team should still needed to bid on TALE 2012 at Hong Kong.

The technical aspects of the conference were organised by the IEEE Education Society. The IEEE Indonesia Section needed only to organise the event. The operation was led by Dr. Ford Lumban Gaol as the General Chair. He is also the vice chair of the IEEE Indonesia Section. Some universities provided some supports, especially Bina Nusantara University in Jakarta. TALE was carried out in serial with the APCC.

(Koen with Prof. Castro and Prof. Ken Soetanto)

I arrived in Bali on Monday afternoon, August 26. Ngurah Rai Airport was still in the process of intensive renovation. From the airport, we needed only 10 minuted to reach the Dynasty Resort. The first day of TALE was occupied by tutorials and workshop activities. I attended some workshop sessions, then I spent the afternoon biking along Kuta Beach, until the sunset. At night , there was a Welcome Party, with some introductions to the VIP and committees. Presented at the event were Prof. Manuel Castro (IEEE Education Society, President), Dr Alain Chesnais (ACM, Past President), Prof. Sorel Reisman (ex IEEE Computer Society President), etc. I spent a lot of time discussing with colleagues from Bangalore .

(TALE photo session after the Opening Ceremony 2013 : All in Batik)

The opening ceremony was held on August 27 morning. Opening speeches are presented by Dr. Ford Lumban Gaol as General Chair; Prof. Gerardus Polla (ex Rector of Binus University) who represented Binus as co-organiser; then IEEE Indonesia Section representation — yours truly. I started with the paradox that although almost all technological advances has been initiated or supported by the education, but the ICT has not been widely revolutionised the education field (compared to — for example — the field of communications , transportation, industry , etc.). ICT infrastructure for this purpose could be considered quite ready. But just to convert the education content and interaction into digital forms would be far from sufficient to achieve the expectations of creating a new way to educate more people, anyone, of any age, anywhere, in ways that remain humane and not by separating people with their natural environment. A new paradigm is required for a lifetime process of human education, with the support of pervasive ICT infrastructure. It was actually just the opening for the discussion :). Then the conference was opened by Prof. Gerard Polla with Balinese gong. Booom – booom – booom .

The keynote speeches were delivered by Prof. Manuel Castro of the IEEE Education Society, Prof. Ken Kawan Soetanto, and Prof. Satryo Soemantri Brodjonegoro from Binus Advisory Board. The education field is indeed interesting, encouraging, with a broad impact. Discussions on the keynote sessions were pretty hot, resembling various visions. We easily observed many pros and cons on every aspect of e-learning digital education, and others. But those battles of the titans had made this kind of a conference so much more interesting than just reading the paper stacks 🙂 .

(Prof. Reisman discussed with Prof. Castro and M Chesnais)

The conference continued with parallel presentation sessions. The discussions about education were still as hot as the discussion at the keynote sessions. At night, we had a Gala Dinner session to display the culture of the region: from Balinese Dance to Asia Pacific songs and music.

The last day, August 29th (the same day as the opening of the APCC), Bali was still consistent with its fresh but hot weather. We closed the conference with the awarding session by Alain Chesnais. I presented the closing remarks, and then closed the conference. This time there was no gong. So I closed this extremely important international conference with a bread knife tapped on a white cup . Tinq – tinq – tinq, and TALE 2013 was closed .

(Special photo with Alain Chesnais and Alain Chesnais)

Q-Journal

2013-02-05 / Koen / 1 Comment

Q-Journal is a codename for a suite of digital journal management services, that Telkom Group will prepare and launch this quarter. Q-Journal will support academic transaction in Indonesia by providing global coverage for national journals to international index and high quality international papers to national universities.

Global Publishing Service

Q-Journal opens the opportunity to academic institutions, universities, research centres, and conference organisers, to submit their journals (transactions, academic letters, etc) and proceedings to international index. For this service, Q-Journal has arranged a strategic partnership with Summon.

Global Discovery Service

Q-Journal opens the gates to access thousand international journals for universities in Indonesia. Through our aggregators, papers might be explored and downloaded. The total expense will be significantly lower than those offered by international paper providers. So far, we have arranged partnership with Emerald, Proquest, and still open other partnership opportunities.

Interested?

Talk to me 🙂

Digital Education

2013-01-31 / Koen / 0 Comments

Digital education, in both meaning :).

We might be easily mention the name of the most important innovation in transportation over the last 200 years. We might mention something like the combustion engine, air travel, Ford’s T-model, and others. But we might not that easily mention the single biggest innovation in education. We can read that puzzling question at MIT Technology Review. The question is a gambit used by Anant Agarwal, the computer scientist named this year to head edX, which is the MIT-Harvard effort to stream a college education over the web, free, to anyone who wants one.

It is indeed rare to see major technological advances in how people learn. Internet, the web, and the power of data-crunching technologies should have changed dramatically the education methods. Remote classes have been arranged with video streaming with sophisticated interactive elements. Data and information on students could be processed individually or in group to make them learn more effectively. Online education is not new. In 2010, 31.3% of the US college students enrolled in at least one online course, while 700.000 students study in full-time distance learning.

Still, education is called inefficient and static with respect to technology. It is often cited as the next industry ripe for a major disruption. This belief has been promoted by Clayton Christensen, an HBS prrofessor who coined the term disruptive technology. Disruptive innovations, he said, find success initially in market where the alternative is nothing.

In Indonesia, where education in technology is still a limited priviledge, digital learning may find its way. Besides many limitation on the technology and the experiences, we may improve the efficiency of lecturing. As Agarwal said, the same 3 person team of a professor plus assistants that teaches analog circuit design to 400 MIT students now handles ten thousand students online, and could take 1 million. That is one of the result of the massive open online course, or MOOC. One of other expected results is how the top quality education, could change the world, or at least the nation. Why not? Currently about two thirds of the people signing up for the free online college course carried our in the US, comes from overseas. Means that for good universities, the methods, the curriculum, the materials are expected to spread easily, crossing the nation borders.

But, as implied, MOOC will also be profoundly threatening to weak institutions. Sebastian Thrun, a Google researcher, predicted that within 50 years, there might be only 10 universities still “delivering” higher education. The keyword he chose, somehow implicates another concern: the commodification of education. Or, as Jason Lane and Kevin Kinser warned in Chronicle of Higher Education, McDonaldisation of college classes: the exact same stuff served everywhere.

By working harder, we may change the direction, though. When Prof Gordon Day, then elected president of the IEEE, visited Yogyakarta in 2011, he mentioned the necessity for the engineering profession to expand the activities, by synergyzing engineers from academic world and industrial worlds, and supporting more roles from professionals in developing countries. That is the point that we will do these years. By synergyzing the academic and industrial world in the region, we will support Indonesian education institutions to grow and strengthen the education methods through digital technologies, to leverage the reputation of Indonesian education institutions globally, and to intensify the research and innovation to develop a breakthrough in education technology.