University Students’ Idea Contest (ALCoB Contest -2011)

Subject: What is Future Education and What can we Do?

Submitted by:

1) Ms. Sangmukda Geerapong-Udom

2) Ms. Thitapha Plianwong

ALCoB-U from Sripatum International College, Sripatum University,

Bangkok, Thailand

Thailand is a member of APEC (Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation),

which has a primary goal “to support sustainable economic growth and prosperity

in the Asia-Pacific region”. To realize this goal, they will definitely need more

skilled workers to be the major force of economic development. Twenty-one

economies are from different backgrounds, some countries are developed, yet

some are sill far behind. The difference of these countries becomes a big obstacle

for the merging of economics among the APEC’s members. Consequently, Prof.

Dr. YoungHwan Kim, the founder of ALCoB (APEC Learning Community

Builder), foresees the significance of reducing the differences between developed

and developing countries in order to allow APEC to reach the primary goal.

Education is the best tool to overcome this problem.

Previously, ALCoB-U Thailand has tried to follow the determination of

Prof. Dr. YoungHwan Kim; which is to build the learning community in our

society. Therefore, we have created many projects, such as, ALCoB Internet

Volunteer Exchange program (AIV), established the Korean Club, K-POP dance

contest, providing activities and knowledge to disabled children, etc. As we are a

member of ALCoB-U Thailand and also students of Sripatum International

College, we have foreseen that the mission and vision of Sripatum USR

(University Social Responsibility) project is compatible with ALCoB’s in the

way of building the sustainable society and future education. These two

organizations are willing to develop and support the project of APEC in growing a

sustainable economy and shared prosperity among APEC’s members.

Our idea of future education can be described as following framework:

Input Method Output Outcome

Figure 1: Conceptual Framework for our Future Education

USR & ALCoB -U Sufficiency Economy ALCoB-OCW

(OpenCourseWare)

Sustainable life and

Shared Prosperity Edutainment

The meaning of the framework

1) USR (University Social Responsibility) – Input:

USR is a new initiative founded by Dr. Junya Pookayaporn, Vice-

President of Sripatum University since 2008. The main idea of USR builds

around these concepts: 1) Academic Virtue for Social Responsibility and 2)

From Heart to Heart with Sincerity and Friendship. USR understands that

the principle role of universities is to educate people. Dr. Junya believes

that social responsibility should be the well-grounded basis of all university

teaching. She also believes the responsibility of the society should come

from the volunteers’ mind and soul, not simply because of the compulsion

of the organization. The result is therefore fully valued. In the past, one of

USR’s projects that have been successful was having volunteers teach less-

fortunate and low-educated children in the rural area. USR’s still not

widespread in many universities in Thailand so there is still plenty of work

available. We have USR as an input because we believe that the project of

our future education needs to bring the USR’s concept and university

students that possess a willingness to be responsible to their society in order

to make better education and allow our country to grow together with other

APEC members.

2) ALCoB-U – Input:

ALCoB-U is the major force of initiating future education project by

supporting university students in many dimensions as we have done before,

such as, idea support, monetary support, international connection support,

etc. The mission of ALCoB is to drive our project toward the ultimate goal

of developing education in support of APEC. Therefore, university

student’s role is to convert USR and ALCoB’s mission into tangible project

as such providing an effective learning environment courses, including

language, cross-culture and tradition also knowledge about the changed

world today, specific in rural area to provide low-educated children for more

opportunities. We are using two below strategy methods as our important

tools.

3) Sufficiency Economy – Method:

Sufficiency Economy is the philosophy that His Majesty the King

Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand has given since 1974. In short, concept of

Sufficiency Economy is “to live a moderate self-dependent life without

greed or overexploitation”. Sufficiency Economy guides the livelihood and

behavior of people at all levels from family to community, to the country.

His Majesty finds that sustainable economic development is especially

important in the world of globalization. Sufficiency means moderation and

reasonableness. His Majesty wishes to ensure that all plans and

implementation are based on knowledge. This philosophy has been

successful for three decades with several evidences of His Majesty’s many

projects.

There are two reasons why we have this philosophy as the method of

our model. First, it is because we would like to operate our project by using

this philosophy as a model of implementation which means to be based on

moderation, reasonable, immunity, knowledge and ethics. Though, it’s still

difficult for some people in the community to follow this philosophy as they

are unclear about the meaning and propose of sufficiency economy. This

leads to the second reason, for the philosophy. We would love to share our

king’s philosophy and example of success stories both within our nation and

worldwide. We believe that this theory can be adapted to any livelihood

around the world, and this will be one of the best methods to support

APEC’s members to develop sustainable economic development.

4) Edutainment –Method:

Edutainment derived from Education + Entertainment named by Prof.

Dr. YoungHwan Kim, the founder of ALCoB. We use Edutainment as our

method and strategy of the future education model because we agree that to

create future education; we need to use future methods. This method is to

educate people by blending academic and social activities together to

develop the best way of learning because we believe that people will have

more interested and memorization when they are doing activities, and this

method will help them to learn better and faster.

Nevertheless, education system in Thailand and many other

developing countries still stick with the old way of teaching and learning by

just lecturing in the class and never letting themselves to think. Thereby, we

are trying to pass the new method of learning to our community through

future education models. Then, to broadcast our project course worldwide is

considered to be our effective output (ALCoB OCW)

5) ALCoB OCW (Open Course Ware) – Out put:

This idea was derived from the success of MIT (Massachusetts

Institute of Technology) OCW (Open Course Ware), or MIT-OCW in USA.

This advantage has brought us an idea to transfer our project course to

impact people worldwide with the least amount of cost and time. The

Twenty-one member economics of APEC can exchange knowledge of

language, culture and tradition through the online media. Countries can also

advance communication, transportation, technology, politics and economics

via the online media to generate easy accessible to each member country.

Therefore, all the input and method will be operated within each country and

can transfer the output of ALCoB-OCW for worldwide impact.

6) Sustainable life And Shared Prosperity – Outcome:

Based on what we was previously mentioned to planned to complete

the goal of APEC for the sustainable life and shared prosperity among the

APEC’s member economics. We are concerned about the impact project

has on the future of education. We are trying to change the attitude from the

old education system to the next generation of education; including the way

of publishing information in order to convince people to learn more

effectively to improve their skills and knowledge.

If people are well trained and educated, they will be able to be self

reliance and force economics to develop together with other APEC’s

members. Then, the sustainable life and shared prosperity can work hand in

hand. We will become “INNOVATIVE COLLABORATORS”.

In conclusion, as university students and the ALCoB-U Thailand’s

members, who would love to see sustainable economic growth and prosperity

in Asia Pacific region, so we have brought our idea of future education’ models

to share with ALCoB international. Our future education model starts from

USR and ALCoB work together by applying integration of Sufficiency

Economy Philosophy and Edutainment as the strategy methods to create an

effective learning environment courses. Finally, we will transform our project

into ALCoB e-Learning Open Course Ware (ALCoB-OCW) in order to impact

million of people and tight the relationship among APEC members. This

project can be success with the association between organization of

Universities and ALCoBs. We are ready to make it happen, now HOW

ABOUT YOU???

End of essay