Grow Your Brain

The best leaders have healthy brains

“In essence, every organisation is a product of how its members think and interact.”
— Peter Senge

LAST week at IMD Switzerland, I met brain researcher Terry Small, who posed a very interesting question: “What is the most important part of your body with regards to leadership?”

I immediately answered, “The brain.” Our emotions, intellect, knowledge and expertise all reside in the brain.
“Absolutely,” he answered. And he asked a second question: “So, if your brain is critical to leadership success, how many books on the brain have you read?”

I had to pause for a second as I knew he was right. If the brain is so important to leadership, why aren’t leaders more interested in knowing how to develop and grow a healthy brain? Thus began my exploration of the brain and leadership.

The brain is involved in everything we do. In Primal Leadership: Realising the Power of Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman, Richard E. Boyatzis and Annie McKee demonstrate that leaders appointed solely on the basis of IQ and technical ability, lack the necessary emotional competencies to lead effectively.

They argue that high-performing leaders have both high EQ and IQ levels. Both are directly connected and controlled by the brain. The limbic system in the brain controls your emotions, impulses and drives, whilst your neocortex is the part of your brain that manages IQ, knowledge and learning.

Human emotions are brain-controlled and spread charismatically whenever people are near each other, even with no verbal contact.

When emotionally engaging leaders were observed, their followers harmonised most readily with the leaders’ ideas, and ultimately “caught” the leaders’ moods.

Mental exercise

High-energy and positive leaders like British entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson effortlessly transfers optimism to his followers, while the negative ones wear down their employees.

On the other hand, when a leader perceives a threat or is under stress, their brain acts differently and an “amygdala hijack” is likely to happen, where we act on impulse instead of reason.

A person with high emotional intelligence vetoes this hijack, but an “untrained” brain will not be able to prevent an “amygdala hijack” and there will be a reactionary response.

(The amygdala is the part of the brain that figures how we process and recall emotional reactions.)
Wang Laboratories, a top technology company in the 1980s, was destroyed by a bad decision that was highly emotional by its then leader, An Wang.

A leader’s ability to manage emotions is critical as emotions can compromise or sabotage your ability to make effective decisions.

Recently, I wrote about “gut feeling” and how our life’s wisdom and experiences are stored by the brain and retrieved when we face an emergency complex situation.

World-class leaders learn to develop their “gut feel” by managing an emotional brain part called the basal ganglia.

Interestingly, our brain actually gets better the more we use it. The same with our bodies – the more you use it the longer it lasts.

Since 1986, scientist David Snowdon studied 678 nuns of Mankato, many of whom lived past 100 years. He painstakingly collected data, tested them and dissected their brains after death. Among the findings of this study:

● An active intellectual life prolongs your brain’s lifespan and protects you from the effects of Alzheimer’s disease;
● Those who express the most positive emotions in their language end up living longest;
● The brain retains the capacity to change and grow stronger even in elderly people;
● Those who teach and are constantly challenging their minds live longer than folks who don’t; and
● Strong bonding develops positive emotional intelligence, which leads to a sharper mind.

After the Mankato nuns’ deaths, scientists were shocked to see that parts of the brains that generally wither with age did not do so in the brains of these women. How did these nuns manage to remain sharp and productive even after 100 years?

Researchers have found that intellectual stimulation of only 20 minutes a day can spur new neuron growth. Brain exercises were the norm for these nuns, who lived by the principle that an idle mind is the devil’s playground.

They wrote spiritual meditations in their journals, letters to their politicians and doggedly challenged themselves with quizzes, puzzles, and debates on current events.

Understanding the feelgood factors

Your brain has the capacity to continue to develop and grow. A growing brain keeps mastering the competencies of leadership – everything from self-confidence and decision-making to empathy and persuasion to running effective meetings – until it gets it right.

Our brain thrives on change and challenges. But in most cases, people resist change because of the pain of change. The brain’s main function is to keep you alive and resist pain.

Generally, the brain pushes back when instructed what to do. This is attributed to homeostasis, the movement of organisms toward equilibrium and away from instructed change.

On the other hand, your brain will release an adrenaline-like rush of neurotransmitters when you figure out how to solve a problem yourself rather than being told how to solve it by your bosses.

When I returned to Malaysia 10 years ago and helped in the turnaround of an organisation, one of the methods we deployed was to conduct mini action labs, where employees were given the opportunity to solve a problem, recommend and implement the solutions.

Within a short period, there was high engagement and the turnaround was swift and effortless, driven by the employees.

Compare that with numerous attempted turnarounds when a commanding CEO comes in and dictates the terms of the change.

There is usually huge resistance to the change and failure. Leaders who leverage brain-power will understand the need for engagement and employee participation in any change effort.

Our emotional brain has neural pathways that pump out streams of good feelings when a goal is accomplished and reduces feelings of worry and frustration in achieving the target. Great leaders use this in their change efforts too.

Leadership by reflection

Many leaders still hold on to the old adage of leadership by command and control. Instead, empathy and social intelligence is the way forward. A newly discovered brain neuron, called the mirror neuron, enables leaders to learn empathy.

Mirror neurons, discovered accidentally by Italian neuroscientists monitoring a monkey’s brain, show that the brain has neurons that mirror what others do.

“When we consciously or unconsciously detect someone else’s emotions through their actions, our mirror neurons reproduce those emotions. Collectively, these neurons create an instant sense of shared experience,” wrote Goleman and Boyatzis.

Additionally, mirror neurons enable leaders’ emotions and actions to be mirrored by their followers. This role-modelling was never truly understood until the mirror neuron discovery.

So, a leader’s action is more important than his words. The brain thinks in pictures not words.
Finally, if you really have no time to develop and grow your brain, the least you can do is keep your brain healthy.

Small’s research concludes that by just eating a few prunes a day, you “reduce the chances of Alzheimer’s disease by 92%.”

The brain is 80% water. So, drinking lots of water keeps it hydrated, and listening to baroque music increases your ability to learn by 25% to 400%.

Like you, I am on this new journey of discovering the power of the brain in leadership. For starters, why not invest 20 minutes of doing something outside your comfort zone each day? At least you will grow some new neurons!

Source: SCIENCE OF BUILDING LEADERS By ROSHAN THIRAN
● Roshan Thiran is CEO of Leaderonomics, a social enterprise providing leadership development and consulting services to MNCs. Leaderonomics will hold a “Becoming A Talented Manager” programme on March 24 and 25 at Menara Star, Petaling Jaya. To sign up, call 012-3070326 or login to www.leaderonomics.com for details.

Traders Extremely Bearish on British Pound

Traders make bearish bets on sterling - Bets against the currency more than when Soros beat BoE

COPENHAGEN - Futures traders are more bearish than ever on sterling amid concern that the currency's worst annual start in 13 years will continue as the United Kingdom's budget deficit approaches the Greek shortfall that roiled the euro. 

Wagers on the pound weakening against the dollar outnumber futures that profit on a rise by eight times more than when George Soros made $1 billion betting against the currency in 1992, the year Prime Minister John Major's Conservative government was forced to withdraw from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism. Sterling fell 19 percent that year. 

The pound has lost 6.2 percent in 2010 on speculation a budget gap will skewer the currency: Either record borrowing will push debt costs higher and force policymakers to print more money to buy bonds, or lawmakers will cut spending too fast and trigger a new recession. Prime Minister Gordon Brown's government estimates the deficit will hit 12.6 percent of gross domestic product, almost as high as the 12.7 percent in Greece that drove European leaders to consider a bailout. 

"The risk of a UK double dip is substantial," said Hans-Guenter Redeker, London-based head of foreign-exchange strategy at BNP Paribas SA, which predicts an additional 13.6 percent drop to $1.31 by the end of 2010. "Sterling is increasingly trading like an emerging-market currency with rising bond yields no longer working in favor of the currency." 

Ten-year gilt rates have climbed more than a percentage point in the past year, the fastest increase since mid-2004.

BNP, whose Sept 8 forecast for this quarter is closest to the mark in a Bloomberg survey, is now the most pessimistic of 36 strategists. After reducing their median prediction 2 percent in January, strategists cut it 3 percent this month, the quickest drop since September. Twenty-two strategists see the pound ending the year below 2009's $1.6170 close. 

Brown said on March 10 the economic recovery is "still in its early stages and remains very fragile". His Labour Party is locked in an election battle that may lead to the first parliamentary stalemate in 36 years and reduce the chances of enacting his five-year plan to cut the shortfall to 4.4 percent of GDP, which Fitch Ratings already has called "too slow". 

Sterling was at $1.5167 on Monday, up 0.7 percent for the past week. The currency slid 0.2 percent against the euro to 90.63 pence, down 2.1 percent this year. The pound is the only one of 16 most-traded currencies tracked by Bloomberg to weaken over the past six months against the euro. 

Strategists remain bullish on the pound even after cutting their forecasts. The median prediction of 35 analysts in Bloomberg's survey calls for a 4.9 percent gain to $1.59 per pound by Dec 31, down from a consensus of $1.67 on Jan 28.

The pound's drop may already reflect the deficit. At 4.098 percent, 10-year gilt yields are up 115 basis points in the past 12 months and were 103 basis points higher than German bund rates on Feb 23, the biggest gap in more than four years. 

Greek yields have risen as much as 139 basis points this year and closed at 6.25 percent last week. Gilt rates have risen no more than 22 basis points since Jan 1, peaking at 4.23 percent on Feb 22. British government debt was 55.8 percent of the economy in 2009, less than half of Greece's 113.4 percent, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. 

The UK isn't facing a financial crisis in the "foreseeable future", You-Na Park, an analyst at Commerzbank AG in Frankfurt, wrote in a March 10 note to clients. 

Bloomberg News

Wall Street shenanigans

Recent reports show how manipulative accounting and devious devices were used to enable Lehman Brothers and the Greek govt to ‘window dress’ their debts.

THE use of “innovative” financial instruments to hide a company’s or a country’s bad and deteriorating financial situation has been highlighted in recent cases that illuminate how manipulative accounting contributed to the global financial crisis.

Last week, a US government-directed report on the collapse of Lehman Brothers found that the investment bank used a device known as Repo 105 to hide up to US$50bil (RM165bil) of troubling securities that it held to give a good portrayal of its financial health, just months before it collapsed.

The Lehman failure in September 2008 almost triggered a domino effect of bank failures that could have caused a global financial collapse. This was averted by a desperate move by the US financial authorities to get Congress to agree to massive bail-outs of financial institutions.

A fortnight ago, it was also revealed that the investment bank Goldman Sachs had made use of another device, the derivative known as currency swap, to assist the Greek government in hiding its fiscal deficit which had ballooned above the level permitted by the European Union’s disciplines of being within the Eurozone.

Greece is now facing an enormous economic crisis that has threatened the status of the euro and a bailout is being worked out by European leaders. Goldman Sachs was criticised by German chancellor Angela Merkel for its role in the Greek tragedy and is under investigation by the US authorities.

It is important for developing countries like Malaysia to monitor such cases and learn the lessons. We should be on guard not to allow such manipulative and misleading devices to be introduced or misused either by international or domestic financial firms to avoid similar devastating consequences.

The two recently-revealed cases show how these giant financial firms of Wall Street have been operating with freedom in inventing and using financial instruments that are euphemistically termed “innovative” but which in fact are speculative and earn thumping profits for the firms or manipulative in hiding bad assets.

Attempts by the Democrats in the US Congress to pass a bill to tighten regulation of such financial activities have been stalled by Republican resistance.

This week, key Democrat Congressman Christopher Dodd, is expected to get his bill through an important Senate committee without the support of any Republican.

Meanwhile, German and French political leaders are trying once again to get the G20 to discipline financial speculation through controls over institutions like hedge funds and instruments like derivatives and credit default swaps.

However, they face opposition from the US and the UK which are the centres of hedge funds and speculative activities.

The 2000-page report on Lehman, by lawyer Anton Valukas, which a US bankruptcy court had commissioned, found evidence against the bank’s chief executive and financial managers for breaching fiduciary duties and its auditor Ernst and Young for malpractice.

The bank had used “Repo 105” transactions, which the report called an “accounting gimmick”, to keep US$50 billion of assets off its balance sheet and thus paint a misleading picture that it had less leverage or debt when it was time to publish its quarterly financial reports during the height of the crisis in 2008.

The Financial Times has explained the Repo 105 trade compared to a normal repo trade as follows. In a normal “repo” transaction, a bank transfers assets to a counter-party as collateral in exchange for cash.

The bank agrees to repay the cash plus interest and take the collateral back after a specified period. The assets remain on the bank’s balance sheet and it incurs a liability for the cash it is to repay.

In the Repo 105 which was used to reduce the bank’s portrayed leverage, the transaction is quite similar to a normal repo, except that the bank pledges assets worth 105% of the cash received from the counter-party.


The transaction is also described as a “sale” and the assets are removed from the balance sheet while the cash received is used to pay off liabilities, thus reducing leverage at critical moments such as when a financial report is being prepared.

The report concluded that Lehman’s use of Repo 105 was done to manipulate the balance sheet for deceptive appearance, affected its net leverage ratio and rendered its financial statements “deceptive and misleading.”

The revelations of manipulation have caused disgust even in Wall Street, according to the Financial Times which concluded that the report “sheds a damning light on the inner workings of Wall Street, or at least a part of Wall Street that was hell bent on juicing profits and hiding losses during the boom that led to the crisis.”

As to the Goldman-Greece affair, the New York Times reported on Feb 24 that US Federal Reserve is examining the financial stratagems devised by Goldman Sachs and other big banks to help Greece mask its ballooning debt over the last decade.

As explained by New York Times, in 2001, Goldman Sachs helped the Greek government to quietly borrow billions of dollars by creating a derivative (a currency swap) that essentially transformed a loan into a currency trade that did not have to be disclosed under European rules.

In 2005, Goldman sold the currency swap to the National Bank of Greece before reorganising it into a British legal entity called Titlos in 2008. Such deals – including similar financial transactions used by other European countries – have created an uproar on the Continent, drawing sharp criticism from Merkel and other leaders.

Goldman, however, defends Greece debt swaps. Mr Gerald Corrigan, chairman of Goldman Sachs Bank USA, the bank’s holding company, said it was “consistent” with the regulations of the time.

Greece’s Finance Minister George Papaconstantinou also insisted last week that his country was not the only one using such financial arrangements back in 2001. He added that such deals had now “been made illegal, and Greece has not used them since”.

Source: Global Trends By MARTIN KHOR

Lehman report blames execs, auditor

Failings by Lehman Brothers executives and its auditor led to the bank collapse that unleashed the worst of the financial crisis, according to a report by court-appointed investigator.

Lehman “repeatedly exceeded its own internal risk limits and controls,” and a wide range of bad calls by its management led to the bank’s failure, the report says.

The conduct of Lehman executives “ranged from serious but non-culpable errors of business judgment to actionable balance sheet manipulation,” examiner Anton Valukas wrote in the report.

Valukas, of New York law firm Jenner & Block, was appointed in January 2009 by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York to examine the causes of Lehman’s failure.

The fall of a Wall Street high -flier

Lehman’s bankruptcy filing on Sept. 15, 2008 — the largest Chapter 11 filing in financial history — capped a 95% slide in the firm’s stock price and unleashed a crisis of confidence that threw financial markets worldwide into turmoil, sparking the worst crisis since the Great Depression.
As a credit squeeze caused investor confidence to falter in the fall of 2008 Lehman tried to stave off collapse by painting a misleading picture of its financial condition, the report claims.

Repo 105

In particular, the examiner’s report criticizes Lehman’s failure to disclose its use of an accounting device called “Repo 105″ to make its books look better. Lehman used this device to strip some $50 billion of undesirable assets from its balance sheet at the end of the first and second quarters of 2008, instead of selling those assets at a loss, according to the report.

Accounting rules permitted Lehman to treat this transaction as sales instead of financings, “so that the assets could be removed from the balance sheet,” according to the report.

The examiner’s report included e-mails from Lehman’s global financial controller confirming that “the only purpose or motive for [Repo 105] transactions was reduction in the balance sheet,” adding that “there was no substance to the transactions.”

The report accused Lehman of not disclosing its use of Repo 105, let alone its “significant magnitude,” to government regulators, rating agencies, investors or its board of directors.

The auditor Ernst & Young was aware of the use of Repo 105, but it did not challenge or question it, according to the report, which runs more than 2,200 pages.

The report is highly critical of Lehman’s executives. It says: “Lehman should have done more, done better.”
But it says responsibility for its collapse is shared. A flawed business model that rewarded excessive risk and leverage exacerbated the bank’s problems, as did government agencies.

Lehman’s plight “was more the consequence than the cause of a deteriorating economic climate,” Valukas wrote.

‘Unprecedented events’

Ernst & Young spokesman Charlie Perkins deflected blame from his company, saying that the Lehman’s bankruptcy “was the result of a series of unprecedented adverse events in the financial markets.”
2008 financial crisis: Where are they now?

Perkins, in a statement, noted that his Ernst & Young conducted its last audit of Lehman for the fiscal year ended Nov. 30, 2007, more than nine months before the Chapter 11 filing.

“Our opinion indicated that Lehman’s financial statements for that year were fairly presented in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles [GAAP] and we remain of that view,” he said.

Efforts to reach the attorney for former Lehman CEO Richard Fuld were not immediately successful.
In congressional testimony on Oct. 6, 2008, Fuld said, “I wake up every single night thinking, ‘What could I have done differently?’ ”

Posted by dereglata on Mar 12th, 2010 and filed under General News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry 

China’s priority is its economy

Currency appreciation won’t make any difference in offsetting trade imbalances, says central bank official

BEIJING: China is bent on sticking to what it thinks is best for its economy despite mounting calls from the international community, especially the United States, for the yuan to appreciate.

People’s Bank of China vice-governor Su Ning said China had analysed the relationship between the trade imbalance and its foreign currency policy in considering whether to appreciate or depreciate the yuan.

What it found was that historically the appreciation of one’s currency would not make any difference in offsetting trade imbalances, Su said.

Su Ning

 

“Yes, we are facing a lot of pressure from the outside and such pressure has always been there before and after our currency exchange reforms in 2005.

“But, I think we should deal with this matter based on the laws of economic development in our country,” he told reporters in Beijing recently.

Washington and many of China’s trading partners claim that the yuan has been kept undervalued, giving Chinese exporters an unfair price advantage.

While addressing US senators at a meeting last month, President Barack Obama said the United States would take a tougher stance and put constant pressure on China and other countries so that American products “are not artificially inflated in price and their counterparts’ goods are artificially deflated in price.”

According to the US Census Bureau, the US trade deficit with China widened to US$226.82bil (RM7.5 trillion) last year from US$83.83bil in 2000.

The US dollar fell to 6.8 against the yuan from 7.8 in 2007, and many claim China has decelerated the yuan’s growth rate since 2008.

Theoretically, Su said the appreciation of a country’s currency could resolve the issue of favourable or unfavourable trade balance but this had not been the case for Japan and China.

“The yen appreciated 25.4% in 1985 from the previous year and followed by 25.3% in 1986. But, its global trade surplus still increased from about seven trillion yen in 1984 to 13.7 trillion yen in 1986.

“From the Japanese experience, the yen’s appreciation didn’t address its problem of favourable balance of trade.

“As for China, our currency appreciated 3.35% in 2006, 6.9% in 2007 and 6.88% in 2008 after the currency exchange reform. Our trade surplus continued to grow from US$162bil in 2004 to US$295bil in 2008,” he said.

Su maintained that the imbalance in trade was not mainly determined by foreign currency exchange but rather by whether the domestic demand and supply was balanced.

“Over the past one year, in the face of the crisis, we have done all we could to spur the country’s economic development via domestic spending,” he noted. “We don’t go after favourable trade balance internationally or an increase in foreign exchange reserves. Our priority is to strike a balance between our people’s economic gain and consumption.”

China registered an 8% economic growth last year despite a 16% fall in its exports and this was attributed to the government’s efforts to boost domestic demand to compensate for the lower external demand.

Su said measures and policies such as upgrading farming facilities and technologies and providing subsidies for agricultural products and electrical appliances in rural areas had contributed positively to the increase in people’s wages, which in turn translated to greater domestic consumption.

“Recently, we have seen some good signs; for example, the migrant workers’ salaries have increased. The hike in payroll will increase companies’ operational costs and may even cause a reduction in exports.

“But, on the other hand, giving workers a pay raise will lead to an increase in domestic demand. In the long run, this is a good thing as more companies will be able to increase their production output to meet the domestic demand,” he said.

Su said generally, companies in China had responded well to the needs of the Chinese labour force for a pay rise as they saw more gains than losses in the long term by doing so.

He noted that in the past the salaries of most of China’s citizens were relatively low, adding that if this could not be reversed it would be hard to achieve a balance between demand and supply.

He stressed that by maintaining a stable and healthy economic development, China was actually contributing to the stability of the world economy.

On another matter, Su revealed that this year China would limit new credit availability to 7.5 trillion yuan (RM3.7 trillion), down from 9.59 trillion yuan last year.

Along with other measures such as slowing the supply of foreign currencies and reducing the size of bank loans would keep consumer prices at reasonable levels, he said.

Su also dispelled rumours that the central bank would introduce new measures to discourage housebuyers from purchasing second homes and control housing prices.

By CHOW HOW BAN hbchow@thestar.com.my

China to build high-speed railways in US

BEIJING: China will take part in the construction of high-speed railway projects in several countries in South-East Asia, Europe and the United States.

The Chinese Ministry of Railways, which has the world’s best technology in high-speed rail, had signed a memorandum of understanding with US-based General Electric to advance strategic cooperation in rail projects following US President Barack Obama’s visit to China last November.

Ministry officials said that they had roped in some Chinese companies which signed a separate MoU with the railway authorities in California and would bid for the state’s first high-speed rail project.

The ministry had also penned similar agreements with authorities in Russia and Brazil. The Brazilian authorities and their counterpart had agreed in principle to a deal to build a high-speed rail between Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo.

“After the completion of several high-speed rail projects like the Beijing-Tianjin, Wuhan-Guangzhou and Zhengzhou-Xi’an lines in China, many governments around the world are paying more attention at the development of our high-speed rail system,” Chinese Railways vice-minister Wang Zhiguo told a press conference here yesterday.

“Saudi Arabia, India, Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Poland have also expressed their intention to collaborate with China in their high-speed rail projects,” he added.

By CHOW HOW BAN hbchow@thestar.com.my

Tapping into technology

From podcast lessons to virtual classrooms, the Internet is transforming educational landscapes around the world.

GONE are the days of the school master arbitrarily dictating a collection of facts for his charges to scribble into dog-eared exercise books.

The current generation of students have the opportunity to download entire textbooks, receive examination results through short messaging system (SMS), watch educational programmes on IPTV (Internet Protocol Television) and access media-rich content via sponsored netbooks.

Teachers encourage interactivity in their lessons, and students are coached to become self-directed learners — all as part of the masterplan to embrace the future with technology.

Secondary school student Michelle Tan, however, is not convinced.

Michelle claims that for her Science class, the new computers in the lab seem to act as “glorified blackboards”.

 

It is increasingly becoming the norm rather than exception for pupils to use the Internet to do their homework. — File photo

 

“The teacher just puts in the software for the lesson, and reads through them like a PowerPoint presentation,” she says.

“So, instead of leafing through textbook pages, we’re clicking through the subject with a keyboard.”
Michelle’s experience may be an isolated one, but it poses a crucial question: to what extent is technology being used to meaningfully transform the way we teach and learn?

Holes in walls

One route to harnessing the full power of current and developing technology may be to question the status quo.

Collaborative learning: Students researching and discussing an assignment on campus. — File photo

 

For instance, the question that scientist Dr Sugata Mitra had in mind was whether children were able to pick up useful computing skills unsupervised.

In 1999, Dr Mitra chose to test his theory by placing a touchscreen computer in a carved “hole” on a wall in a slum in New Delhi, India.

Subsequent observation showed that children as young as eight years old were performing basic computer functions by the end of the week. In a month, they were downloading files from the Internet and playing online games.

The Hole-In-The-Wall project has since expanded to over 30 such computer stations in and outside of India, aiming to educate by engaging curiosity.

Dr Iskandar: The iPhone provides an extra dimension in terms of mobility for students.

 

Meanwhile, game designer and researcher Jane McGonigal wondered if online games, particularly alternate reality games and their networking elements, can be used to teach people how to save the world.

Alternate reality games present fictional narratives that take place in a real-world setting, where players’ actions and ideas may have an effect on the storyline.

Following that train of thought, McGonigal developed UrgentEvoke, a game which aims to engage young people in coming up with solutions for world problems such as poverty, climate change, war and education.

Funded by the World Bank Institute, the game was launched earlier this month and will last for ten weeks.

Every week, players are presented with a scenario that takes place within the game, such as famine or water shortage.

Players are then challenged to address the issue by taking action in the real-world, and post up evidence of their work in the form of blog entries, videos or photographs to collect points.

Anytime, anywhere

On the local front, educational institutions are making use of tools that encourage student mobility, thus enabling them to learn on the go.

When Cempaka School’s Cheras campus had to close down for a week of quarantine due to the A(H1N1) flu last June, classes were able to go on as usual online.

As Macbooks have been on the compulsory booklist for the group’s secondary school students for past four years, the transition was seamless.

“During the quarantine, we used the existing platform and followed the roster as per usual,” explains chairman Dr Iskandar Rizal Hamzah.

“But instead of the teachers going to the classroom, they went online to the virtual classroom.

“This meant that teachers were available in real time for the students. Attendance was compulsory, and classes went on as usual.”

Aside from laptops, Cempaka Schools has also introduced Apple iPhones for its International Ladies College students.

“The iPhone provides an extra dimension in terms of mobility for students. For example, on class trips, they will be able to post notes to their project files, record videos or interviews for project work, or access their notes on the go,” shares Dr Iskandar.

However, the gadgets, which are provided by the college, are not allowed in the classroom, so that lessons are not disrupted.

He adds that the objective of introducing such technology into the schools is not just about enabling students to pick up ICT skills, but also to educate them on how to use technology appropriately.

“It also affords us the opportunity to teach life skills for technology — for example, how to behave properly online, the dangers of the Internet, online safety, etc,” he says.

Stressing that the school has a zero tolerance policy for cyberbullying, Dr Iskandar shares that although some parents disagree with their tough stance on the proper use of technology, he feels that it is more important that bad online behaviour be nipped in the bud.

Another institution that has also decided to introduce the Apple iPhone 3GS for their students is Limkokwing University of Creative Technology (Limkokwing).

This enables students to receive real-time updates on their classes and schedule, as well as refer to their notes at any time.

“Basically, it is another way of ensuring our students are on the cutting edge,” says special assistant to the president Tiffanee Marie Lim.

“Everything is being transferred to mobile technology; it is replacing the laptop, which replaced the desktop.
“It makes everything faster, simpler, lighter and cooler.”

Open learning

The educational virtues of the Internet hardly worth repeating, especially in the realm of distance learning.
However, a few Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) faculty members decided to take their content distribution a step further – by making it freely available to anyone with a web browser.

Launched in 2001, MITOpenCourseWare offers syllabi, notes, assignments and audio-visual lecture clips of 1,900 MIT courses.

In an e-mail interview, MITOpen-CourseWare external relations director Steve Carson explains that the idea for the project stemmed from a realisation that the university was not suited to embark on a for-profit distance learning venture.

“This conclusion had a lot to do with the unique nature of MIT,” says Carson.

“The institute is very focused on the residential experience and uses a lot of hands-on experience in instruction.

“The faculty committee then returned to the MIT mission, which reads in part ‘to advance knowledge in ways that will best serve the nation and the world’. They thought about what MIT did best, which was residential education, and what the Internet did best, which was to distribute content widely and cheaply. And it occurred to them, why not combine these strengths?”

It appears that most OpenCourseWare material is used as reference by faculty and students in other institutions, to delve deeply into a specialised topic rather than to study a whole course.

“However, it’s clear that a subset of our visitors use a our courses to learn independently with great success — 43% of our visitors are independent learners,” adds Carson.

MIT’s novel concept has been credited for inspiring other ventures to tap into the Internet’s potential to democratise higher education, much to the delight of self-learners such as Charlie Hartono Lie.

“Due to financial and time constraints, local universities are out of my reach; these new ways of borderless learning have certainly given me hope in preparing for a better life,” says the 29-year-old Indonesian.

Searching for scholarship opportunities online, Charlie came across the University of the People (UoP), which bills itself as the world’s first online tuition-free university.

Currently enrolled in the institution’s computer science programme, Charlie is unfazed by the university’s unaccredited status.

“Of course, accreditation will definitely be a plus point, but my main concern is gaining knowledge,” he says.
UoP founder and president Shai Reshef asserts that many of the institution’s students have a similar resolve.
“We do intend to apply for accreditation, but I think that many people just want to learn; or they don’t have any other alternatives,” says Reshef.

“Plus, we already have the support of leading universities around the world, as well as the United Nations’ Global Alliance for ICT and Development.”

Although tuition is free, students still pay admission and examination fees on a sliding scale based on the economic situation in the student’s country of origin.

Meanwhile, Peer 2 Peer University (P2PU) has opted to radically experiment with the entire model of tertiary education.

As its name implies, the project makes full use of the peer-to-peer learning concept, giving users an online platform to fashion university-level courses from open learning resources.

“The course organisers are responsible for structuring the modules and leading discussions, but everyone in the class will pitch in with their own knowledge and help move the class along together,” says P2PU co-founder Stain Haklev.

“Our main focus is the collaborative learning process; I believe that everybody has the capacity to teach something.”

Source: By PRIYA KULASAGARAN and TAN SHIOW CHIN  educate@thestar.com.my