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The Digital Transformation of Governmental Higher Education Institutions in the Southern Governorates of Palestine Year of publication: 2023 Author: Randa Ead Shrair The article aimed to identify the level of digital transformation in government higher education institutions in the Southern Governorates of Palestine from the point of view of its faculty members and to reveal whether there are statistically significant differences at the significance level (α ≤ 0.05). between the averages of the respondents' responses about the level of digital transformation in Government higher education institutions in the Southern Governorates of Palestine are attributed to the variables: (gender, years of service, academic degree, and specialization); by using the descriptive/surveying, a questionnaire was designed consisted of (30) items distributed on (4) axes. After verifying its validity and reliability, the questionnaire was applied to a stratified random sample of (123) male and female faculty members. The study concluded that the level of digital transformation in higher education institutions was “high" and there were no statistically significant differences between the averages of the respondents' responses about the level of digital transformation in those institutions due to the variables of the study . 
Harnessing the Era of Artificial Intelligence in Higher Education: A Primer for Higher Education Stakeholders Year of publication: 2023 Author: Bosen Lily Liu | Diana Morales | Jaime Roser-Chinchilla | Emma Sabzalieva | Arianna Valentini | Daniele Vieira do Nascimento | Clarisa Yerovi Corporate author: UNESCO | UNESCO International Institute for Higher Education in Latin America and the Caribbean (IESALC) The International Institute for Higher Education in Latin America and the Caribbean (UNESCO IESALC) is one of UNESCO’s key education-focused institutes and is the only institute in the United Nations with a specific mandate for higher education. Taking a holistic and integrated intersectoral and cross-sectoral approach to higher education, UNESCO IESALC provides support to Member States through policy-driven and action-oriented research and publications, capacity development, training, advocacy and networking. Following the release of a Quick Start Guide on using ChatGPT and Artificial Intelligence (AI) in higher education, UNESCO IESALC is pleased to offer to the wider community of higher education stakeholders worldwide this Primer on AI and higher education. Providing information and tips for developing further thinking and policies related to the use of AI processes and outcomes in higher education institutions, the Primer is a comprehensive and comprehensible introduction to AI. It also serves as a practical tool for guidance and reference with recommendations for its use in higher education. 
Higher Education, Peace & Security in the Eastern Africa Region Year of publication: 2023 Author: Sabiti Makara Corporate author: UNESCO Nairobi This paper stems from issues that were deliberated on at a regional conference titled, Emerging Issues in the Sciences, Climate Change, Peace and Security and Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), organized in Djibouti, in May 2017 by UNESCO Regional Office for Eastern Africa. The paper examines the issues and challenges of peace and security in Eastern Africa region. It puts into perspective higher education in the region, in terms of assess, quality, relevance, knowledge and skill products, and capacity to solve social challenges of society. The May 2017 Djibouti Conference on Higher Education, Peace and Security aimed at placing higher education at the center of understanding the complex regional challenges with regard to peace and security in a broad context, including poverty, climate change and environment, intergenerational transfer of knowledge, colonial/neo-colonial heritage, regional integration, cultural resources, and unemployment. The centrality of education as a tool for social transformation in Africa, and elsewhere is a critical element of transforming society, however that very element is up for debate. Specifically, the impact of higher education as a means of accelerating the sciences (natural and social sciences) is due for robust debate, as to whether or not, it is leading to innovations, creativity, and research-led solutions to challenges of society. The critical issue for the Djibouti Conference deliberations was: could Science, technology and in more recent years, information and communications technology, lead to transformation of society in the region? The other issue was: is it only the natural sciences that have the greatest potential for that transformation, or that the social sciences and humanities are relevant in this context? Besides, since issues of peace and security are complex, could multidisciplinary approaches be appropriate? This paper is not a rapporteur's report of the Djibouti conference. It is a set of reflection and reframing of issues for further debate and discussion. 
Supporting women participation in higher education in Eastern Africa: building sustainable and equitable higher education systems in Kenya, South Sudan and Uganda Year of publication: 2023 Author: Mitullah, Winnie V. | Forojalla, Sibrino | Basheka, Benon | Vieira do Nascimento, Daniele | Jallow, Saidou Sireh | Awol, Endris Adem | Feddal, Scheherazade Corporate author: UNESCO International Institute for Higher Education in Latin America and the Caribbean (IESALC) <Executive Summary>Some takeaways from the Report:Policy frameworks and various legislations have enhanced the implementation of programs aimed at improving women’s education from primary school to university level. At the Higher Education (HE) level, some progress has been made, but the institutions are lagging behind in having gender parity, more so in top leadership positions. Men dominate leadership positions. At lower education levels, progress is hampered by socio-economic and cultural gender inequities, and limited resources. Socio-cultural practices such as Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and early marriages have also had a negative effect on women’s advancement to HE.There are multiple factors that hinder women’s participation in HE and in reaching leadership positions. These include fewer women having PhD, maternal household engagement, limited time for participation in research and related activities that are a requirement for upward mobility as well as lack of child care and women-friendly facilities within universities. Ongoing mainstreaming of gender in HE is improving the situation, albeit minimal. More effort is needed to increase the number of women in HE. In addition, there is limited administrative commitment on the part of the universities to address gender inequality in leadership positions.Overall, HE institutions have not fully exploited opportunities that exist for gender advancement in HE, including potential partnerships for supporting the advancement of women. There is need for effective governance to achieve gender equality and collaboration between HE institutions, and development partners through public-private partnerships. Such partnerships have the potential for making resources available and for funding opportunities to enhance the support to women students, in particular those undertaking STEM courses which require more time for study.In Kenya, higher education has evolved over time from the technical and commercial institute in Nairobi – the Royal Technical College of East Africa – established in 1951 to offer technical courses within the East Africa region. The college was transformed to Royal Technical College in 1961, and later to the University of Nairobi in 1970. From this initial one university, Kenya currently has 32 chartered public universities, 9 public university constituent colleges, 21 chartered private universities and 3 private university constituent colleges.In South Sudan, at its commencement, missionary education did not provide for girls. When schools re-opened in August 1956, the Sudanese government authorities maintained the closure of the girls’ schools, irrespective of whether government or missionary, for the following four to five years. The impact has been the severe retardation of girls’ education for almost a generation. Tradition and tribal customs regarding gender equity are still very strong and dominant in everyday life. Consequently, traditional male stereotypes also dominate within almost all higher education institutions, including the Ministry of Higher Education (MoHEST) itself. This research is in fact the first time an effort is being made to investigate the participation of women in HE and in leadership positions in universities and other tertiary institutions. This explains the very limited response to the questions sent out to the institutions outside Juba. Today, however, a good start has been made in advancing girls’ education in general.In Uganda, under similar circumstances, women do not have good access to higher level jobs, positions, voice and wealth like men. The low representation of women in leadership positions in higher education institutions in the country can be traced back to the late start in women’s enrollment in modern schooling due to a number of factors. 
SDG-Education 2030 Steering Committee: Making Higher Education More Inclusive, July 2020 Year of publication: 2020 Corporate author: UNESCO The rapid expansion of higher education in the past two decades, as well as the growing diversity of providers and technological models for delivering education, have made higher education accessible to more students globally. Yet significant barriers remain for many vulnerable groups, and women still lag behind in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. A better understanding of inequality as well as new paradigms, strategies and a renewed political will for ‘leaving no one behind’ are required. Structural equity policies at all levels throughout the education system, as well as extraordinary measures when needed, should ensure that students from any background with the potential to succeed are fully integrated with equal opportunities into higher education. This policy paper reviews the current literature and sets out findings and recommendations to increase and strengthen equity and inclusion in higher education in a lifelong learning perspective. It provides a conceptual framework for equity and inclusion, analyses the urgent need to improve funding and its efficiency, provides insight into the challenges for teaching and teachers, and recommends policy measures for establishing higher education systems that are more equitable and more inclusive. 
Transforming Knowledge and Research for Just and Sustainable Futures: Towards a New Social Imaginary for Higher Education (Education, Research and Foresight: Working Papers; No.33, 2024) Year of publication: 2024 Author: Leon Tikly Corporate author: UNESCO The paper considers why it is important to transform knowledge and research for just and sustainable futures and discusses the role of higher education in these transformation processes. The paper sets out how knowledge, research, and knowledge systems can be understood and critiques knowledge hierarchies that have emerged in the context of colonialism, leading to the marginalization of the knowledge systems and languages of the colonized. It is argued that there is a need to create new ecologies of knowledge that value and develop synergies between ‘all of the archives of the world’ and that can revitalize and expand the knowledge commons and contribute to more just and sustainable futures. Higher education has a pivotal role to play in the creation of new ecologies of knowledge and a revitalized knowledge commons through promoting socially and ethically engaged research, the decolonization and reorientation of university curricula and pedagogy to foster sustainable futures, and the democratization of universities to better represent historically marginalized groups. Underpinning this role must be a shift from a Western modernist social imaginary of higher education to one based on a new planetary consciousness. 
The 1994 Genocide as Taught in Rwanda’s Classrooms Year of publication: 2017 This blog looks at how textbook and curricula reforms in Rwanda have worked to cover the 1994 Genocide and instill the ideals of tolerance, unity and reconciliation in students. It is part of a series of blogs on this site published to encourage debates around a new GEM Report Policy Paper: Between the Lines, which looks at the content of textbooks and how it reflects some of the key concepts in Target 4.7 in the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).by Jean-Damascene Gasanabo, PhD, Director-General, Research and Documentation Center on Genocide, National Commission for the Fight against Genocide (CNLG), Kigali, Rwanda. The 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi saw the slaughter of more than one million people over the span of three months, and placed Rwanda at the forefront of the world’s political consciousness. Almost 23 years later, Rwanda has rebuilt and become a modern hub of progress and development, putting in place social, political and economic systems that are grounded in national unity and reconciliation – with education reforms playing a central role.The large-scale participation of children and adolescents in perpetrating acts of genocide made it clear that an education system that fails to integrate basic human values, will also inevitably fail the nation. Education was used prior to the Genocide to inculcate fear, intolerance and hatred; and so too is it being utilized by the current Government to foster peace and inclusivity, and combat genocide ideology. Post-genocide Rwanda has used education as a main tool to correct biased perceptions of its socio-political history, and to provide accurate representations of the root causes of the genocide, and preventative measures.With over 60% of Rwandans under the age of 24, the formal education system needs to instill the ideals of tolerance, unity and reconciliation in the next generation. With this realization, the Rwanda Education Board and the Ministry of Education have integrated genocide studies in the curricula of its primary, secondary and higher education institutions so that they are better able to lead a nation that is cognizant of its past. Instead of highlighting difference, the national curriculum of post-genocide Rwanda has been reconfigured to emphasize the politics of inclusion and to encourage a spirit of critical thinking that pursues peace, social cohesion and harmony above all else.Prior to the Genocide, educational resources were used as a tool by the genocidal regime to promote ethnic division, discrimination and propaganda. The biased curricula and teaching methods cemented ethnic segregation within classrooms and fostered genocide ideology. The students who were not expelled from primary and secondary school due to the ethnic and regional quota system were forced to identify themselves as being Tutsi – inherently separate to those who were Hutu or Twa. The pre-1994 curriculum lacked “the essentials of human emotion, attitudes, values and skills” as it continued to promote discriminatory and divisive ideologies that were “imparted through formalized rote learning in history, civic education, religious and moral education and languages.”Post-Genocide Rwanda faced the herculean task of rebuilding its dismantled institutions. With a profound lack of qualified teachers, a huge pool of orphaned children, insufficient funds and inaccurate textbooks following the genocide, many education challenges lay ahead. In early 1995, a moratorium was placed on history textbooks which disseminated biased information, as the country grappled with how and to what extent the nation’s past could be incorporated constructively in the education system, without causing pain or resurfacing conflicts.Rwanda chose a gradual, yet comprehensive, approach. In the years immediately following the Genocide, the history curriculum lightly touched on the subject so as to protect students from their recent past, and prevent division in classrooms based on differing family experiences. Classrooms promoted knowledge based on the essential ideas of unity, peace, tolerance and justice. In 2008 the National Curriculum Development Centre within the Ministry of Education published the new history curriculum which incorporated the Genocide against the Tutsi, coinciding with the renewed emphasis on the unifying and inclusive qualities of nationality, citizenship and patriotism, instead of ethnicity.The current national curriculum was formulated by the Rwanda Education Board in conjunction with varying public institutions, UN agencies and nongovernmental organizations. It incorporates the Genocide into the curriculum of every grade level, and discusses it in various contexts suited to the student’s particular stage in learning. Eyewitness accounts and the presence of elders in the classroom allow for a “multi-generational opportunity” for learning. In understanding how violent conflict erupts in society, it is possible to prevent future atrocities from beginning. Teaching the Genocide in present-day Rwanda aims to provide a more nuanced understanding of the event by using primary sources, encouraging class discussions on genocide denial, the persistence of genocide ideology, and the reconciliation efforts embarked on after the Genocide.Moreover, this change in the curriculum has been supplemented by a shift to transform learning from one based on standard rote memorization to one that encourages discussion and a spirit of critical thinking and analysis. This approach identifies the student as an active participant in the learning experience, not merely a silent recipient of history as “evangelical speech.” By promoting an environment that encourages spirited, objective discussions, the Ministry of Education seeks to redress the biases taught by the genocidal regime, as well as prepare young people to thoughtfully and constructively enter the workforce.Genocide education nevertheless faces some challenges ahead. With genocide denial still present, not only are ongoing revisions of educational resources required, but teacher training is also necessary to ensure that revisions to the curriculum are well presented by teachers.The way conflict and genocide has been taught through textbooks in Rwanda has evolved over time. For Rwandans, learning about the 1994 Genocide is not only vital in understanding the history of their country, but also in developing critical thinking skills that help young people become informed citizens in today’s globalized society. Peace education, as well as tools for conflict resolution and genocide prevention, are now heavily featured. Indeed the initiatives embarked on by the education sector signal a promising start to the continuous pursuit of truth through knowledge of the past.In comprehensively integrating the study of genocide into the national curriculum and by empowering students to become agents of their own learning process, Rwanda offers an ambitious recipe for successfully teaching one’s own history for the better. 
Global citizenship curriculum in higher education: evolving policy and practice and a future research agenda; proceedings of a symposium held on 9-10 December 2013 in Hong Kong Year of publication: 2013 Corporate author: Bath Spa University | General Education Centre (Hong Kong) | Polytechnic University This symposium was an outgrowth of a UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) funded International Networking Project. A collaboration between academics in the United Kingdom/Europe, North America, and Asia, this project responds to the fact that there is an increasing interest in understanding how universities can educate students to become more engaged and globally-minded citizens. The premise is that higher education should contribute to the public good by training more global citizens with cultural awareness, a strong sense of civic responsibility and skills to participate in a knowledge-based global economy. The following report documents the symposium proceedings, summarises the presentations and provides key insights drawn from presentations. Comments made by individuals are paraphrased and/or synthesized. Inclusion, education for sustainable development, adult learning, higher education and research: four international conferences to promote equity, quality, relevance and social responsibility in education Year of publication: 2008 Corporate author: UNESCO This cycle of conferences brings together a wide array of influential stakeholders in the common interest of creating education systems that serve the needs of all learners, address the challenges of today's world and make learning a springboard of development. 
The Achievements and Tasks of the Global Citizenship Education University Course Development Project Year of publication: 2020 Author: Eegyeong Kim | Soobin Min | Semi Lee | Haeryun Kim Corporate author: Korean Society of Education for International Understanding (KOSEIU) This study seeks to analyze the achievements and tasks of the 「GCED University Course Development Project」 promoted by APCEIU. Using such research methods as literature review, workshops, and expert consultation, we analyzed the four-year project surrounding course providers, course contents, and student learning and satisfaction. The findings show that the project has heightened universities’ interest in GCED through 33 courses involving 1,572 students from 21 universities. It was also confirmed that a variety of supports allowed students to have meaningful learning experiences. However, large class sizes, disparity among universities, and the absence of performance measuring tools seemed to limit the success of the project. As a strategy for overcoming these limitations, we suggested the tasks in terms of both quantitative and qualitative aspects.