Singapore

The COVID-19 pandemic invited a new paradigmatic shift in education, transitioning from traditional learning systems to virtual learning strategies guided by technology. Global educational institutions have understood the need for personalized learning tactics to improve learning outcomes. With the assistance of AR and VR, global universities are simulating real-life events so that learners can relate better to theoretical lessons. In an exclusive interview with Education Technology Insights APAC, Tan Shui-Min, Chief Information Technology Officer of the National University of Singapore, shares her valuable insights regarding the best practices in the education industry to address COVID 19, outcomes of differentiated learning, and how technology is contributing to improved learning outcomes.

Please shed some light on the best practices you have used in your workflow to address COVID-19 or other problems that have emerged. 

With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the provision of remote education has gained momentum, and we are focusing on designing personalized learning for our students. Keeping track of the extra-curricular activities, learning behaviour, grades of the learners, and how they interact with peers, we have realized that each student's learning capabilities vary from the other. To cater to the needs of students with different learning speeds, we created a personalized e-learning model that addresses the unique needs of learners by offering custom learning experiences via resources and feedback. We focus on differentiating the teaching and learning amongst our students by abiding by all these parameters.

What are some of the outcomes achieved through such differentiated learning? Would you be able to quantify some of the key outcomes observed through this effort? 

We consistently aim to generate positive outcomes for the EdTech industry. Possibilities abound for customizing learning process to cater to students of different learning needs. For instance, learners can choose to pass through multiple revisions and assignments to improve learning outcomes.

Would you like to talk about some of the best practices in balancing operational and transformational leadership in terms of technical execution?

We focus on a vast spectrum of business domains under education technology. So I need to direct 80 per cent of my effort and energy to transformational work and the rest 20 per cent to focus on operational matters. To restructure the EdTech industry and to offer an innovatively-designed pedagogy, we have ventured into augmented reality and virtual reality. With AR, we have simulated the hallucination of people with mental health conditions so that our nursing students can comprehend them better while relating to the theoretical lessons. In addition, we have also simulated earthquakes in a virtual environment to assist our architecture students in comprehending how to design a building during earthquakes or natural disasters. 

Let us know how technology played a vital role in achieving a specific outcome in the recent past.

Technology has played a crucial role in meeting all our organizational outcomes. Technological advances have promoted us to design a mobile platform recently, named uNivUS, which has garnered multiple recognition and awards in the industry. uNivUS is a customized, one-stop mobile platform that integrates all our mobile apps into a single platform. It is capable of recognizing different persona, be it the user staff or a student or alumni, and the app then morphs according to the persona. We have many mobile applications on this platform, including the ones we have been using during the two years of the COVID-19 pandemic.

As a thought leader, is there any piece of technology that you'd like to see implemented across universities or your institution to enhance any learning possibilities for students? Anything that you believe will have a powerful impact on students' learning outcomes?

I believe the world is transitioning towards AR and VR, and there's a lot of buzz circling metaverse and its potential. I think the metaverse is something that we are looking into currently. I am eagerly looking forward to the day when a large number of universities hailing from different geographical locations can be in the metaverse, and we will be able to interact with each other effortlessly.