As
part of efforts to support sustainable change that will have a far reaching
impact on Ghana’s educational system, Academic City University College, a
premium STEAM and Entrepreneurship tertiary education, has organized a one-day
capacity building workshop for heads and counsellors of senior high schools.
The conference,
themed, “Defining Future Ready”, brought together over 100 heads of schools,
counsellors and teachers from top second cycle institutions across Africa. Also
present were representatives of government institutions including the Ministry
of Education, and representatives from some NGOs.
The
conference sought to provide the platform for teachers and head-teachers to
understand and appreciate the importance of combining theories and hands-on
experience in changing the landscape of teaching and learning.
With
the aid of a virtual reality machine, participants experienced a practical
workshop on the topic “Bridging the Gap” to inspire creativity and teamwork.
Other
workshops on Universal Learning and Communication, Academic City Teaching
Strategies and Understanding the stakeholder helped to sharpen the teaching
techniques of participants.
Speaking
at the conference, Prof. Fred McBagonluri, President of Academic City expressed
the university’s commitment to partnering with relevant stakeholders to improve
the quality of education for Africa’s development.
“Academia
is very crucial in Africa’s exciting journey to industrialization. At Academic
City, we are contributing to this effort by nurturing the next generation of
leaders, focusing on experiential and unified learning, a degree of emotional
intelligence and also helping them to understand the challenges of the real
world,” he noted.
Delivering
a paper on the topic, “What does future-ready mean?”, Dr. Lucy Agyepong, Dean
of the Faculty of Engineering and Informatics at Academic City emphasized the
need for Ghana’s educational system to focus on preparing the younger
generation for the jobs of the future.
“The
jobs of the future will be driven by artificial intelligence, robotics and
biomedical and it is therefore important for education to mimic what is done in
the real world,” she said.
Participants were largely impressed with the event and called for more sessions. Speaking to the media, Rev. Fr. George Obeng Appah, Counsellor of Achimota School, expressed great satisfaction with the presentations and called for the implementation of curricula that groomed entrepreneurs rather than job seekers.