‘We need to go back to interdisciplinary higher education’

Established in 1965 as an engineering school, Siam University is today one of the leading comprehensive universities in Thailand, with 13 schools and over 10,000 students.

It has reoriented its mission towards helping the world achieve social transformation and sustainability – the objectives of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals – through close engagement with the local community.

The university’s president, Dr Pornchai Mongkhonvanit, is trying to pioneer implementation of this approach, which involves working with real people on real local problems in an interdisciplinary way and has required changing how students are taught, the way they learn and how they are assessed.

Mongkhonvanit is convinced that this revolutionary approach will better prepare young people to play their part in achieving more sustainable development and improving the health of our planet.

In the audio interview at this link, he talks to University World News correspondent Kalinga Seneviratne in Bangkok, and begins by reflecting on how historically bad flooding in Bangkok in 2011 inspired the university to engage more with the local community.

Duration: 13 mins 53 seconds



Transcript of the interview:

Mongkhonvanit:

The floods came along this area: if we pass the water out then it will go to many houses and residences of our community. Instead of doing that, I think the best way was to do a sort of social contract with the community. The campus could be the place where the people could do the exercise and even came in to use toilets – they had a problem with toilets.

Seneviratne:

Dr Pornchai Mongkhonvanit, president of Siam University in Bangkok, recalling how his university embarked on a new relationship between the surrounding community and the university.

Mongkhonvanit:

At that time it was difficult to go to supermarkets so we contacted supermarkets to have university as community market so people around campus can get what – like rice and also some kind of preserve food for their family. We ordered the food and other necessities and let people of campus to use come here …. They used the toilet and buy some things.

Seneviratne:

Dr Pornchai is today the coordinator of the International Association of Universities’ Higher Education Sustainable Development cluster for Sustainable Development Goal number 11 on ‘Sustainable cities and communities’.

Under its policy of “Sustainable University, Sustainable District”, Siam University is moving towards including sustainability as a vision for all its 13 schools with their target groups being 3 S’s – students, staff and surrounding communities.

Siam University has over 10,000 students and in order to ensure that the university accomplish its sustainability mission a ‘Center of Sustainability’ was officially set up with Dr Pornchai heading it.

University World News was able to catch up with Dr Pornchai at his office in Bangkok, and I started the discussion by asking him if he was trying to change the image of universities as working from ivory towers divorced from the communities.

Mongkhonvanit:

What we teach students even in four-year degrees, I think we should teach not really the contents because contents could be obtained very easily. You can’t teach all the contents; the students can find it themselves. What we should teach the students is the skill to solve the problem, skill to work with the community … in this way I try to include teaching into a new role of higher education because I believe that it’s the skill not the content that universities should provide.

If the community has a problem with the quality of the water, we can test the water and find solutions. Our university is like the community university … so we try to expand scope of learning, not only memorising, not only making the research or paper.

Seneviratne:

I have taught at university for many years … what I have found with students in Asia but Australia as well: You allocate the text books, give the lecture and students learn from the books and reproduce it at exam time. They don’t really go into the community and gather knowledge and present it as their knowledge. They are afraid to do that … You are trying to change that concept of education?

Mongkhonvanit:

I like to change that because I have realised only the textbook cannot be very relevant to the work and life after they graduate, such as if I’m a mechanical engineer I studied that … I had to spend a lot of time studying heating systems in the building, but I never use heating in the building … just because it is taught there I have to do that … it is better if you can study what is relevant and I try to make teaching and learning more relevant.

Right now, if you look at the new generation, I think they can study by themselves; they don’t need even to read all the textbooks. Because they can go to Google, go to many knowledge providers and find the knowledge. What they really need is the skill to solve the problem and the skill to transform the place they are in, whether it’s a community or an organisation they belong to. So this is why I think community is a good level for teaching and learning for students.

Community would make our students to work together, our faculties to work together, because if you have to solve a problem, you can’t solve by single discipline; you have to work together.

Seneviratne:

So the concept you are talking is not exactly the university going out and educating the community, but students going out to the community gathering knowledge?

Mongkhonvanit:

I mean this is a learning space to working together – in this way it’s fun for me. I think if you were the student and you try to solve the real problem and you try to learn more skills like negotiation skills and also project management skills, I think it will be good because at the end we have to assess the student as well … what they have done for the community, what type of skills, what type of competency they have learned.

Seneviratne:

For students to get a degree, the normal system is credit points system. In the new concept you are talking about, do you think that (the assessment) system has to change because you are not taking into account the work with the community for assessment?

Mongkhonvanit:

I think that system needs to change, not only to give the credits but (with) students working in the community (to) try to assess the skill they have learned after they working with community. What I’m trying to do is that the university has to try its best to go back to interdisciplinary … I think in the past the universities were also composed of many disciplines working together … but during the Industrial Revolution we took them apart – you do this and that person does that – like a line of production.

Right now, with the change in digital technology, we don’t need that kind of production-based universities. We need to go back to universities where many disciplines can work together.

If you are a civil engineer with only the knowledge of civil engineering, you can’t even build a building because you need to know the law and also you need to know the people because you need to understand the needs of the ones who are going to use your building. Then you need to know the environment and sustainability, otherwise it may not be a good building anymore. You can’t do (that) by the single discipline anymore.

So I try to make the university education as test bed for the people to solve the problem and learn the skill along the way to solve the problem.

Seneviratne:

So when you try to change the system, do you come into problems with government accreditation authorities?

Mongkhonvanit:

Right now in Thailand we are trying to focus on outcomes-based learning – how the student can perform rather than only the process. We try to have our curriculum as the module – one curriculum with three courses and students can choose the module across the discipline as well.

So that if a student wants to set up a coffee shop, they should learn a module in admin, marketing in food tech and another module in digital communication. In this way (the) mechanism of the curriculum needs to be transformed as well.

For accreditation they have the core course, the general requirements and the major requirements. Within the core course, if we can try to stick on just only the core course, then (the) student has more scope to choose across the disciplines as well.

But when you ask about accreditation, I try to think like this. In the new paradigm for accreditation, we need to revisit that as well. Because students right now are lifelong learners and they can study by themselves. They don’t like the professor who just teaches the details. They want the freedom to learn and the freedom to learn what they like to know. Instead of assessing the contents, in the future we need to assess the competency, assess the skill of the student.

Even if we can stick with the present accreditation, I think we have to come up with some type of structure. I think in the future these need to be changed because accreditation mostly came with the process rather than the outcome. Mostly it came in the mass production period. I think that world has changed.

Seneviratne:

That was Dr Pornchai Mongkhonvanit, president of Siam University in Bangkok.

This podcast was produced by myself Kalinga Seneviratne for University World News.