The Learning Innovation Festival (LIFE) 2020 brings together speakers, faculty members, and staff members to explore educational issues and challenges, and provides opportunities for faculty members to showcase their innovative teaching practices.
LIFE 2020 is proud to be part of AUN-TEPL and welcomes its partners as we explore innovative and effective technology enhanced personalized teaching & learning.
Our Speakers
Dr. Gerry Hanley
Director, CSULB Center for Usability in Design and Accessibility (CUDA)
Executive Director, MERLOT and SkillsCommons
Associate Professor Lieven Demeester
Singapore Management University
Ms. Melody Chin
Singapore Management University
Assistant Professor
Tracy Zou
The University of Hong Kong
Professor Gina Marchetti
The University of Hong Kong
Dr. Kosmas Marinakis
Singapore Management University
Assistant Professor
Namkang Sriwattanarothai
Mahidol University
Dr. Mores Prachyabrued
Mahidol University
Assistant Professor
Aidan Wong
Singapore Management University
Assistant Professor
Fiona Clare Williamson
Singapore Management University
8 October 2020
Programme (Morning Session, 10am - 11.30am Singapore Time)
- 9.55 - 10.00am Welcome and Introduction to LIFE
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Welcome and Introduction to LIFEDr. Yeo Wee Loon
Centre for Teaching Excellence
Singapore Management University
- 10:00 - 10:05am Introduction by AUN-TEPL Chairman
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Introduction by AUN-TEPL ChairmanAssociate Professor Lieven Demeester
Director, Centre for Teaching Excellence, Singapore Management University
- 10:05 - 10:35am Enabling the Educational Ecosystem for AUN-TEPL's Success with MERLOT's Open Educational Services
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Dr. Gerry Hanley
Director, CSULB Center for Usability in Design and Accessibility (CUDA)
Executive Director, MERLOT and SkillsCommons
Enabling the Educational Ecosystem for AUN-TEPL's Success with MERLOT's Open Educational Services
Sypnosis
Learners’ access to quality educational content multiplies the power of faculty teaching. MERLOT provides free and open access to online educational content across a diversity of academic disciplines and provides the open educational services to enable individuals, institutions, and communities to discover, share, adopt, and curate online educational content. The presentation will demonstrate how MERLOT can be incorporated immediately into your institutional strategies. Through the AUN-TEPL community’s collaborative efforts, institutions and individuals can accelerate their success in educating all they serve.
Speaker Bio
Gerry Hanley Ph.D. is the Executive Director of MERLOT (Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching), and SkillsCommons, which are free and open digital libraries of academic and workforce development teaching, learning, and training resources. At the California State University Long Beach campus, Gerry is the Director of the Center for Usability in Design and Accessibility and Professor Emeritus in the Psychology Department. Gerry’s previous positions included Assistant Vice Chancellor for Academic Technology Services at the CSU Office of the Chancellor.
- 10:35 - 11:00am Forming the AUN-TEPL Resource-sharing Community
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Associate Professor Lieven Demeester
Director, Centre for Teaching Excellence, Singapore Management University
Forming the AUN-TEPL Resource-sharing Community
Sypnosis
Instructors in the AUN+3 Universities design and create many excellent digital resources, especially so during this pandemic period. Since its establishment, the AUN-TEPL Thematic Network has set out to address missed opportunities of not adopting a common approach for AUN+3 instructors to:
1) scan, select, and use digital resources developed at other AUN+3 members
2) review and endorse available digital resources
3) share self-developed digital resources with other AUN+3 instructorsIn this presentation, Professor Lieven Demeester will share the rationale of forming a community in sharing readily available digital TEPL resources within AUN+3. Professor Demeester will also lay out the strategy, support structures and plans in supporting members along this collaborative journey with our partner, MERLOT, and fellow AUN+3 members.
Speaker Bio
Lieven is Associate Professor of Operations Management (Practice) at the Lee Kong Chian School of Business and has been at SMU since 2008. He was Associate Dean for MBA programmes from 2015 to 2017 and he was founding academic director of the IE-SMU MBA programme, offered jointly by SMU and the IE Business School in Spain and delivered through a blended learning format. Lieven has a passion for experiential learning courses in which students are guided by instructors to link theory with practice in challenging projects for external partners. For the last eight years, he has been teaching a course on Managing Process Improvement that is now part of SMU-X and he also coordinates the capstone course in the IE-SMU MBA programme with partners such as Louis Vuitton, ABN-AMRO, GSK, Johnson & Johnson, and Decathlon.
- 11:00 - 11:15am Practical Considerations for Selecting and Applying Creative Commons Licenses
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Practical Considerations in Selecting and Applying Creative Commons Licenses
Sypnosis
Creative Commons (CC) licenses enable creators to share their work and allow others to use their material based on certain conditions. For instructors, adopting CC licenses facilitates making their own educational resources and digital learning objects openly available to other instructors and institutions in a standardised manner. How are Creative Commons licenses related to copyright? What are the different types of licenses and the key considerations? This presentation serves as a practical introduction for selecting and applying creative commons licenses as an essential part of the process for sharing Open Educational Resources (OER) on platforms such as MERLOT.
Speaker Bio
Melody is the Research Librarian for Economics at SMU Libraries. She is involved in designing and delivering library instructional programs to facilitate the broad learning and research needs at the School of Economics. Melody is passionate about Open Educational Resources (OER) and is an active member of Australasia’s Open Educational Practice Special Interest Group (OEP-SIG). She has served as trainer for the ASEAN University Network’s Train-the-Trainer OER workshop and is currently leading the open textbook initiative at SMU.
- 11:15 - 11:35am Q&A and Wrap-up
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Q&A and Wrap-upDr. Yeo Wee Loon
Centre for Teaching Excellence
Singapore Management University
Programme (Afternoon Session, 2pm - 5pm Singapore Time)
- 2:00 - 2:05pm Welcome and Introduction to LIFE
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Welcome and Introduction to LIFEDr. Yeo Wee Loon
Centre for Teaching Excellence
Singapore Management University
- 2:05 - 2:35pm Supporting Personalised Learning Online: A Focus on Inclusivity and Compassion
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Assistant Professor Tracy Zou
The University of Hong Kong
Professor Gina Marchetti
The University of Hong KongSupporting Personalised Learning Online: A Focus on Inclusivity and Compassion
Sypnosis
When designing online learning, it is essential to acknowledge that our learners are from diverse backgrounds with different needs and degrees of access to the learning resources.
Tracy and Gina will share practices and approaches from the perspective of inclusivity and compassion that cater to diverse learner needs and support personalised learning.
Speaker Bio
Gina Marchetti teaches courses in film, gender and sexuality, critical theory and cultural studies at the University of Hong Kong. She is the author of Romance and the "Yellow Peril": Race, Sex and Discursive Strategies in Hollywood Fiction (University of California, 1993), From Tian’anmen to Times Square: Transnational China and the Chinese Diaspora on Global Screens (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006), The Chinese Diaspora on American Screens: Race, Sex, and Cinema (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2012), Andrew Lau and Alan Mak’s INFERNAL AFFAIRS—The Trilogy (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2007), and Citing China: Politics, Postmodernism, and World Cinema (Hawai’i, 2018). Visit the website for more information about her work on Hong Kong women filmmakers since 1997. To register for her Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on Hong Kong cinema, go here.
Tracy Zou is an Assistant Professor in the Centre for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning at the University of Hong Kong (HKU). She has been actively engaged in identifying, collecting, and promoting exemplary teaching and learning practices in HKU and beyond. Tracy is leading a number of teaching and learning initiatives targeting at promoting intercultural learning and inclusivity. One of such initiatives is a UGC-funded, cross-institutional project. Along with her teaching work, Tracy is also an active researcher in the areas of academic development and internationalisation. Her work has been published in journals such as Studies in Higher Education, Higher Education, and Higher Education Research and Development. She currently serves as an associate editor for International Journal for Academic Development.
- 2:35 - 3:05pm The Approach of Educational Filmography
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The Approach of Educational Filmography
Sypnosis
Hear from Senior Lecturer Kosmas Marinakis as he shares his experience with Video lectures used in his Economics class to deliver effective asynchronous lessons. In this session, Kosmas will share the benefits and the challenges of educational filmography, both from his end but also from the student's perspective.
Speaker Bio
Dr. Kosmas Marinakis holds a Ph.D. in Economics from North Carolina State University. He is currently a Senior Lecturer of Economics at SMU. Previously, he has held professorial and research positions at Higher School of Economics in Russia, the University of Cyprus and Wake Forest University in the US. He was elected Best Professor of the Year for 6 consequent years from 2013 till 2018 and Alumni Distinguished Professor for 3 consequent years from 2016 to 2018. He has developed the 16-hour course “Teaching as a Skill”, which he was invited to hold for educators at several institutions. He is passionate about the use of videography in education as a method to enrich traditional learning.
- 3:05 - 3:35pm Engaged and Empowered Learners: Pedagogical Practices Supported by Classroom Response Systems
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Engaged and Empowered Learners: Pedagogical Practices Supported by Classroom
Response SystemsSypnosis
“Learning begins with student engagement, which in turn leads to knowledge and understanding” (Shulman, 2002; p.38).
When the students engage in learning, they actively involvement and put effort into learning resulting in knowledge acquisition, cognitive development, higher-order thinking skills, etc. Therefore, engagement is not just a proxy for learning but a fundamental purpose. This presentation will discuss the pedagogies of engagement to make students become drivers of their learning in an online and/or in the class. Some readily available classroom response applications which can create the learning spaces filled with motivation will be included.
Speaker Bio
Namkang Sriwattanarothai is an assistant professor at the Institute for Innovative Learning, Mahidol university. She studied Biology at Chiang Mai University and earned M.Sc. in Biochemistry and Ph.D. in Science and Technology Education at Mahidol University, Thailand.
With over 10-year experience in research on molecular taxonomy and science education, the majority of her work has been spent in developing innovations for life science learning for formal and non-formal education. Moreover, she has over 5-year experience in professional development with teacher and professor in designing the effective learning instructions integrating technology, pedagogy, and content knowledge.
- 3:35 - 3:40pm Break
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5 Min Break
- 3:40 - 4:10pm Medical Training in Virtual Environments
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Medical Training in Virtual Environments
Sypnosis
This presentation focuses on virtual environments for medical training. One involves the design of a story-driven, stress-inducing environment for inoculating medical personnel to stressors. The other provides vascular access training focusing on visual landmark inspection, correct needle insertion, and haptic sensations when the needle pierces the body.
Speaker Bio
Dr. Prachyabrued is a faculty member in the Faculty of ICT at Mahidol University in Thailand, Director of the ImmerSense Laboratory, and Chair of the MS in Game Technology and Gamification. He received a BE in Computer Engineering from Kasetsart University in Thailand in 1998 and MS and PhD in Computer Science from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette in 2007 and 2013, respectively. Afterward, he joined ICT and served as the Assistant Dean for Digital Media Technology and Learning from 2014 to 2017. His research has focused on virtual environments and 3D interaction techniques.
- 4:10 - 4:40pm Gamification Transformation
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Assistant Professor Aidan Wong
Singapore Management University
Assistant Professor Fiona Clare Williamson
Singapore Management UniversityGamification Transformation
Sypnosis
Hear from Assistant Professor Aidan Wong and Assistant Professor Fiona Clare Williamson as they share how they used Gamelead to gamify their classroom content. Aidan and Fiona will also be sharing their experiences, challenges and feedback from students.
Speaker Bio
Aidan Wong trained as an economic geographer, but in his post-doctoral years has expanded his research interests to include issues of social and cultural concern. At present, this expansion is best reflected in his teaching interests, which include designing and delivering courses on both Urban Cultures and Food Cultures at SMU. His expertise lies in the areas of labour geography, waste management, circular economy, and sustainability. More recently he has taken a deep interest in university-level pedagogy, and debates on heritage and citizenship.
Fiona Williamson is an environmental historian working on intersections between climate & urban society in Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong, in particular the history of nature-induced disasters and weather science during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. She is also currently engaged in a variety of multi-disciplinary projects, concerning the history of urban heat and the Urban Heat Island effect (UHI); extreme weather and climate change. She teaches 'Climate, History and Society' and 'Science, Environment and Empire' as electives under the Core Curriculum.
- 4:40 - 4:55pm Panel Discussion & Wrap Up
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Panel Discussion & Wrap-upDr. Yeo Wee Loon
Centre for Teaching Excellence
Singapore Management University
All timings listed are in Singapore Time (GMT +8).
Please cte [at] smu.edu.sg (contact) CTE at cte [at] smu.edu.sg if you are interested to find out more about the innovations showcased in LIFE 2020.