By: Jeanette Teh
With the hope of making the UAE one of the best countries in the world, Vision 2021 aims to develop the UAE into a competitive knowledge economy through the promotion of innovation and research and development.
In an era marked by continuously dipping oil prices, the focus on developing a knowledge economy has never been more pressing for the UAE.
At the India-UAE conference entitled “Building Human Capital for the Knowledge Economy” in Dubai on Tuesday, Shaikh Nahyan Bin Mubarak Al Nahyan, UAE Minister of Culture and Knowledge Development, emphasized how human capital is the true engine of economic growth.
The development of human capital
Human capital, Sheikh Nahyan informed the audience comprising of the business community and Canadian University Dubai students, refers to the “combined knowledge, skills, innovation and ability of a nation’s individuals to meet the task at hand. It is measured in terms of education, training, work, culture, and health”.
He linked knowledge to culture and society because “as society opens itself up to the acquisition of knowledge, the very culture of the community changes and its outlook broadens”, thereby resulting in a deeper understanding of and respect for others.
The UAE itself, through the vision of its wise leaders, is a paragon for how human development is the foundation for sustained progress, paving its way as a leading vibrant, balanced and peaceful knowledge-based economy in such a short-time frame.
The UAE’s definition the knowledge economy, Sheikh Nahyan explained, is one that is similar to that used in the UK – “an economy in which the generation and the exploitation of knowledge plays a dominant part in the creation of wealth.”
The Skills Gap
Another speaker at the conference, Pramod Bhasin, co-founder of The Skills Academy, a social entrepreneurial venture providing training programs, remarked on the staggering low percentage of graduates who are actually employable.
This gap between education and employability is not a novel issue or one unique to India or the UAE. In fact, Andreas Schleicher, OECD Director of Education and Skills, described last week how teachers need to prepare students for “rapid change more than ever before, to use technology not yet invented to solve social problems that have not yet arrived, and prepare them for jobs that have not yet been created.”
Education for the Knowledge Economy
A few of the speakers spoke about the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which the World Economic Forum characterises as building on the digital revolution (the Third Industrial Revolution) and creating a “fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines between the physical, digital, and biological spheres.”
Bhasin pointed out that the role of educators has to change in this Fourth Industrial Revolution to remedy the fact that skills currently being taught are becoming irrelevant to the industries for which they are being trained.
He recommended the use of technology in education by incorporating distance learning and online courses, and focusing on the output of learning rather than the input of how knowledge is learned.
In his speech, Dr. Saood Al Mulla, Former Executive Director of Higher Colleges Technology, also advised on three areas in which education needs to focus:
- Supporting innovation: Last year was declared the Year of Innovation for the UAE. As universities are the best place for innovation to happen, Dr. Al Mulla believes that universities need to provide more support for students who come up with new inventions to help them develop their ideas into feasible businesses.
- Collaborations with industry: He also spoke about the importance of having industry partners provide input and ongoing support on curriculum offered by universities and by providing students with industry experience.
- Interactive teaching methods: Sole reliance on the lecture method should no longer exist. Rather, according to Dr. Al Mulla, students should be active learners and teachers should be “facilitators to guide students and teach them how to learn”.
Learning in the Fourth Industrial Revolution
With robotics technology and wide-scale digitisation, the need for us to engage in low level information processing is increasingly unnecessary. In fact, the disruptive nature of technology is such that many human jobs will soon be taken away by robots. As predicted by an Oxford University study, a third of current jobs in the UK would be automated within 20 years.
To succeed in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, rote memorisation and the mechanical style of learning must be eradicated in favour of active, contextual, reflective, and meaningful learning.
As Sheikh Nahyan had stated emphatically in his inaugural address, the acquisition of knowledge “requires more than simply googling the facts. The acquisition of knowledge demands awareness, understanding, interpretation, evaluation and theorizing. We acquire knowledge because we are seeking meaning”.
This article was originally published on March 17th 2016 at http://ww.gulfbusiness.com
Jeanette Teh is a legal and corporate trainer, adjunct (assistant) professor, non-practicing lawyer, writer, coach, and founder of Kaleidoscopic Sky. You can find more about her at http://linkedin.com/in/jeanette-teh-601115.
Image courtesy of Maialisa from http://www.pixabay.com