News Story

KMi Director Invited to Speak at two International Conferences on the Same Day!

Kiran Parmar, Monday 31 Jan 2022

On Thursday 27th January, Professor John Domingue was an invited speaker and panellist at two online International Conferences hosted in India and Saudi Arabia.

In the morning (GMT), John attended the 12th International Confluence 2022 Conference on Cloud Computing, Data Science & Engineering organised by Amity University, where he is an honorary Professor. At Confluence-2022, John gave a Keynote “Transforming Higher Education through AI: Ongoing work at The Open University”. The conference discussed the constant pace of change in the technology industry, which is being incorporated in everything and everywhere, including the Higher Education sector. John’s keynote outlined the OU’s emerging AI strategy for teaching and learning, how blockchains could support student learning records and how a combination of both can be an automated career coach able to guide students to find their dream jobs.

Later that day, John participated in a panel discussion on Micro-Credentials at The International Conference on “eLearning for Human Capability Development” organised by the National E-Learning Centre in Saudi Arabia. This conference aimed to align with the Kingdom’s Saudi Vision 2030; enhance digital transformation in education, invest in digital transformation technologies, and ensure the quality of eLearning to become a sustainable and trusted modality of learning and training in achieving the human capabilities development objectives. The panel discussed the importance of Micro-Credentials at this current time and the role of Micro-Credentials in stimulating and closing the skills gap between the academic environment and the labour market. John joined the panel, made up of experts from academia and industry from both the UK and Saudi Arabia.