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Dr. Chihmao Hsieh’s contribution to the Maeil Business Newspaper How can forthcoming changes in Korean educational policy serve a meaningful worklife? Written by two authors: Chihmao Hsieh, Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship, SUNY Korea Karl Wennberg, Professor of Education and Entrepreneurship, Stockholm School of Economics Education has been a focus in policy-making recently, as experts have called for a shift in the educational system amid forthcoming demographic changes and the “fourth industrial revolution”. This past summer, the Education Committee of Korea’s National Assembly approved a bill to install a new body tentatively called the ‘National Education Commission’ (국가교육위원회). The commission, scheduled to be launched next year, would be responsible for taking the lead in establishing a non-partisan long-term educational policy, while the Ministry of Education would carry out the policy’s goals and make any short-term administrative adjustments. Although education in Korea is culturally tied to anticipated job security and life satisfaction, this renewed focus on Korean education comes at a time when job satisfaction in Korea remains dubious. Between July-October 2020, the JoongAng Ilbo and Teamblind interviewed roughly 72,109 office workers from 9,371 local companies about their work, asking them about their welfare benefits, relationships with colleagues, trust among team members, and work autonomy. Seven out of ten workers in Korea suffered burnout over the preceding one-year period. While it is unsurprising that Korea still has one of the lowest worker productivities among the G20 countries, the data revealed that the two most important factors directly linked to the level of job satisfaction were the meaningfulness of work and the quality of relationships with bosses. We believe that any major educational reform should be designed this time for the long-run purpose of fostering job satisfaction. Ideally the government panel mentioned above will include businesspeople who respect education, alongside educators that respect organizational ‘best practices’ and the economy. Yet we still envision some tactics for educational reform that can support future job satisfaction in Korea. In order to develop a workforce that is more innovative and passionate for re-learning throughout working life, more effort should be put into combining critical thinking with transdisciplinary education. Such a prescription opens the door for unstructured problem-solving, and unfortunately, that’s when student performance assessment starts to become prohibitively subjective by Korean standards. One possible solution is to enlist high-tech companies with their expertise in Big Data and AI to help with assessment. For years, the ‘EdTech’ industry has worked on digital tools that assess knowledge, and these systems are not easy for students to ‘game’ and cheat on. Most importantly, these high-tech companies and educational providers must convince students’ parents that their assessment systems are legitimate. Even today, the meaningfulness of learning via concept acquisition is still emphasized less than rote memorization and standardized test taking. There could be more interaction between EdTech companies and parts of the educational system, designed to address students’ and parents’ potential concern. For example, some of our Swedish university students created a startup called ‘Sqore’ which was briefly the largest in the world for holding student talent competitions, later pivoting into an assessment/student selection service for graduate school programs and companies. Those organizations contracted with Sqore because they saw problem-solving competitions as a good way not only to assess “soft” skills like creativity and interdisciplinarity, but also as a way to market their company in recruiting the most talented students. Korea’s conglomerates could be enlisted to create more problem-solving competitions where winners are awarded with month-long or summer internships. Many large US-based companies as well as NASA have successfully used such ‘innovation competitions’ to attract talented and interested new employees. Such initiatives would send strong messages to both students and parents alike that grades should not be the sole obsession, and that the business world cares about critical and innovative thinking at all decision-making levels. Ideally, such competitions should focus less on narrowly specifying ‘ideal solutions’ or deliverables involving intellectual property, and more about assessing complementary measures of ability (e.g. creativity, interdisciplinary thinking, and communication skills). Lastly, students should be exposed to greater amounts of teamwork at all levels of Korean education, instead of excessive competition and rivalry. Transdisciplinary education ideally should involve combining instructors and students from multiple disciplines into a single classroom environment, and forming teams. Students are then exposed to teamwork environments which include unfamiliar situations, requiring them to develop curiosity. They would also learn about trust and trustworthiness, which are important for effective collaboration and team innovativeness. Of course, team-teaching is risky in Korean education if the instructors end up antagonizing each other’s authority in front of students during class. Teachers should instead take the opportunity to enhance their own learning and building interpersonal trust when interacting with each other. It is here where an instructor’s humility can be promoted to impress students. Certainly, there is no single ‘silver bullet’ for simultaneously improving student outcomes and job satisfaction in Korea. But we see these two as correlated objectives. Improving the educational system to allow for reputable AI-driven assessment solutions; showing parents and students that businesses care about critical thinking skill over test scores; and introducing transdisciplinary teamwork to students, can all naturally lead to a more meaningful, entrepreneurial, dynamic, and exciting career development experiences. Perhaps these three tactics could even be combined synergistically; for example, Korean EdTech companies could host transdisciplinary problem-solving team competitions. Overall, shouldn’t the focus be less about educational and training policy, and more about a broader learning policy? Read More
2021.11.12 Hits 22115
Professor Gerald M. Stokes' contribution to Maeil Business Newspaper Anonymity Written by Gerald Stokes There are even more complicated times ahead. In this ever-expanding age of the internet in which it has become a necessity of life, there is a growing concern about the extent to which individuals’ privacy may be violated. There are certainly many ways privacy can be compromised. As I looked at the range of issues concerning privacy and privacy protection, it led me down a path to the consideration of anonymity in cyberspace. This is becoming another important issue in our highly connected world. When we think of privacy, probably the most intense invasion of privacy is identity theft. This is a burglary of the most personal kind. People that have experienced feel violated and it takes considerable time and effort to recover. It happens in many ways and in varying degrees. It can range from taking over your identity and stealing your money, to assuming your work identity to steal from your employer. While the users of the internet may bear some responsibility for the theft of their personal data, leaks of personal information held by a third party are increasingly common. This may lead to individual identity theft or any number of other questionable activities. In most of the world, identity theft and the stealing of personal data are crimes – as they should be. On the other hand, data mining by internet service providers is considered a legitimate business purpose. Providers, like Google, track our use of their browsers, email, news services, and other apps they may provide. They track not only our usage, but the content of that usage. They examine it and sell the results of their examination to advertisers or use it themselves. While these providers may end up knowing more about us than anyone who has stolen our identity, it is considered a fair trade for the free usage of their services. This data collection is largely information about us. Who we are specifically is less important than our attributes, our gender, our age, what our interests are, how much money we make, where we live and other demographic data. These attributes are connected to an “address” – a place to find us on the internet with ads, offers, or political promotions. Individuals have evolved strategies to deal with this targeting. One is to use the time-honored tradition of choosing your “username”. Some of us prefer to make these usernames similar to our real name, while others choose more exotic aliases or “handles”. Some people will use different identities for different purposes – social media, email, online shopping – thereby compartmentalizing their identity. Many people go beyond this approach and create elaborate sets of identities for their various social media accounts. These are rapidly evolving to graphical representations or avatars. These are what I would call a weak protection of “who I am”. A more complete protection of protecting “who I am” is to become anonymous. This comes in several layers. In literary circles authors sometimes have a “nom de plume”. The American author Samuel Clemens wrote as “Mark Twain”. Authors true identities may or may not be known. For example, here in Korea, who is, or who are, Djuna? Increasingly, we see individuals, particularly in social media commentary simply becoming their alias, remaining anonymous. Anonymity is an extreme form of privacy. A person’s true identity remains private while their alias becomes a social commentor, a political gadfly, or a cultural critic. Most democracies protect people’s ability to speak – commonly called freedom of speech. Generally, freedom of speech is a protection against the actions of the government targeting what we say. However, as we well know, freedom of speech does not protect individuals from “prosecution by the public” on social media. Protection of ones’ private self from this onslaught by using an alias, and remaining anonymous, seems certainly prudent in some cases. On the other hand, the same kind of anonymity can equally protect a bully or a purveyor of false news. Hiding behind their internet identity, individuals feel emboldened to act, believing that they will not be held accountable. This is complicated when one realizes that not all “identities” on the internet are human. The development of bots, artificial users of the internet is becoming commonplace. These can be very simple programs or more sophisticated AI based systems. They are used to amplify and spread messages. These bots never rest and have been used to influence political campaigns and spread false information about individuals, technologies like vaccines or other matters of public interest. Facebook and other service providers are trying to understand their responsibility for these uses of their platforms. Increasingly around the world governments wonder what, if any regulation might be required. Other governments, or parts of governments, wonder how the same tools might be used to advance their national agenda – either by controlling content within their borders or launching cyber based campaigns in, even against other countries. As a student of the relationship between technology and society, I have frequently shared ideas in this column that might address the issues I raise. I have suggested another “law” of robotics that requires more responsible human actions and the use of blockchain to ensure data fidelity in the face of fake news. I have no answer for the privacy and anonymity conundrum. A perfectly reasonable desire to protect “who I am” uses anonymity, but that same anonymity can be used as a cover for individuals who approach the world with malicious intent. Some aspects of privacy concerns are being addressed. Two factor authentication is helping protect against some forms of identity theft. Similarly, there cases where individuals involved in election tampering have been charged with a crime. However, actions are few and the problem is growing. More complicated times are indeed ahead … Click here to read the original article
2021.09.27 Hits 19981