KUALA LUMPUR: Tertiary education institutions must adapt existing teaching and learning modules as well as assessment methods to the digital environment post-Covid-19 pandemic.
Higher Education Minister Datuk Seri Dr Noraini Ahmad said digital knowledge must be enhanced to provide quality education to students and ensure that the goals of education digitalisation can be achieved.
"Since March 2020, we have faced many challenges. Higher education institutions from both the public and private sectors have to abruptly change teaching and learning methods and, evolve from classroom to online learning and move forward towards digitalisation due to the pandemic.
"We had no choice but to leverage on digital technology to ensure the continuation of classes.
"This was done through Massive Open Online Learning, Open Educational Resources, Flipped Classroom Online and many more," she said in her keynote address at the 2021 National Education and Learning Summit here today.
Noraini said the ministry, under the Data Plan and Device Packages Initiative to Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), had distributed around 200,000 data plans and 4,000 devices to students from the B40 group to ensure that they have access and connectivity to virtual learning session during the lockdown.
"The initiative was launched in November last year by the ministry in cooperation with local HEIs, telecommunication companies and other corporations to help ease students' burden as they need to leverage on digital technology to attend classes."
Noraini said the higher education sector, with 1.2 million students including 130,000 international students, was among those greatly affected by the pandemic and ensuing lockdown.
"In the 2021 Budget, RM50 million was approved for the upgrading of MyREN (Malaysian Research and Education Network), a project to enable students to have better and faster internet access and connectivity.
"It is my dream for all higher education institutions to have a truly conducive digital learning environment, a classroom of the future," she said.
On job-seeking graduates, Noraini said the ministry is looking for ways to put graduates ahead as the pandemic has also affected the employment sector.
"It is important to lend a helping hand to graduates during this challenging time.
One of the initiatives carried out by the ministry is the Career Advancement Programme (CAP), known as Penjana MoHE-CAP, which was launched last year.
"The programme aims to re-skill and upskill participating graduates by further enhancing their existing knowledge and abilities through industry collaborations. The programme consists of three sub-programmes namely place and train, entrepreneurship and gig economy.
"Upon completion of training, participants will stand a chance of securing a job placement in the participating industries.
"It is one of the ministry's many efforts to better equip graduates to face the future," she said.
At the event, KSI Strategic Institute for Asia Pacific president Tan Sri Michael Yeoh expressed hope that there will be more public-private partnerships in education, especially in tertiary education in the future.
"Education standards must be upheld at all times and we must put students first in our education planning and policies.
"I believe that the higher education minister will be able to help guide us on the PPP journey with her experience in the private sector as a former Malaysia External Trade Development Corporation (Matrade) chairman.
"The university-industry partnership must be enhanced and we need to produce future-ready graduates from our universities who are employable right from day one," he said.
Yeoh said three challenges must be addressed urgently, namely the digitalisation of education; diversity in education to ensure women empowerment as well as ethnic and geographical diversity and distinction in education to ensure excellence, standards and quality in policies and delivery.
Malaysian Association of Private Colleges and Universities (MAPCU) president Datuk Parmjit Singh said there must be a change of mindset within the education regulatory framework due to the changes in the younger generation's approach to digitalisation.
"We are talking about Generation Z now, they are digital natives and are not going to accept the traditional mode of education anymore.
"We will have to work closely to look at our current policies and regulations to see how we can accommodate this new generation of the digital native," he said.
Parmjit added that even businesses had to reinvent as consumer behaviour has changed as a result of the pandemic, in the same way the expectations of the younger generation had on their education system.
The 2021 National Education and Learning Summit by KSI Strategic Institute for the Asia Pacific was held in collaboration with the MAPCU and National Association of Private Education Institutions (NAPEI) with the theme "A Future Ready, Pandemic-Proof Education".