How technology can
help to improve learning?
Emerging technologies are quickly gaining momentum in the
education sector. There are several ways which the adoption of technology can
help to improve learning.
First of all, the Internet made E-learning possible
for students by allowing them access to course materials anytime, anywhere. With
the majority of households and public places having high bandwidth Internet
access, an institution may adopt E-learning as a means of teaching by
developing its own portal for staff and students to access. Lectures may post
videos of their lectures on the portal for students to watch on demand. In this
way, the students may attend lectures in advanced or after they have attended
the same lectures on campus. Having these online lectures allows students to
reinforce their understandings of the topic by learning at the own pace in the venue
of their choice. Similar to online lectures, tutorials and lab exercises may be
posted online for students to prepare them in advanced before attending the lesson
on campus. The answers to these tutorials and lab exercises could also be made
available online after the actual lesson for the convenience of the students.
Besides having learning contents made available online, discussion
forums can be created to facilitate discussions on the learning topics among
the teaching staff and students. The discussion forums also provides a platform
for students to clear their doubts with their lecturers on certain areas of the
learning topics or provide assistance to students who are weaker in the
learning topics. Through the discussion forums, lecturers can easily spot
students who are actively participating in the discussions and award them
additional marks accordingly for active participation. The downside of having
discussion forums is the need for the teaching staff to moderate inappropriate
posts from students.
To enhance the learning process, the portal may also
provide a means to make peer-graded assignments possible. Students
submit their written assignment online for fellow students to review and grade
them according to the rubrics set by the lecturer. In the event of a dispute
arising due to the review or grading, the portal would need to provide a
feature for the lecturer or tutor to intervene and settle the matter.
As students these days are getting more knowledgeable and
outspoken, the portal may provide a blogging feature for them to post
their research or thoughts on the learning topics. With the younger generation
of students being more tech-savvy, writing blog is certainly not an uphill task
for them. It gives them the opportunity to showcase their passion, knowledge
and learning process. The lecturer may consider awarding bonus marks to
students who write blog that provides insightful contents to the learning
topics.
Last but not least, the portal can provide a repository
of past years’ examinations or test papers and also mock exam papers from
the lecturer. Having students attempting mock examinations or tests online
helps the teaching staff to monitor their progress and arrest areas of
weaknesses. The results and data for these mock examinations or tests collected
in the backend can be analysed for the purpose of curriculum planning.
What are the
challenges faced by education institutions in Singapore?
Educational institutions around the world including
Singapore are facing tough challenges. These challenges are results of social,
economic and technology trends.
More evidently in the case of Singapore, like any other
first world countries, faces the problem of ageing population. Due to the need
for Singapore to develop rapidly before and after independence, more
educational institutions were created to meet the demands of the baby boomers
generation. As society progressed and transformed Singapore into a first world
nation, birth rate decreases and on the contrary, educational level of its
people increases. This trend resulted in decrease in schools’ enrolment
which in turn lead to oversupply of learning facilities and teaching staff over
the years. The effect had been felt from the defunct or merging of primary,
secondary schools and even junior colleges in recent years. While there is no
way for these non-tertiary institutions to escape the fate of becoming defunct or
merging due to falling enrolment, tertiary or post-secondary institutions can
try to make up for the shortfall in enrolment by operating Continuing Education
and Training (CET) classes for working adults. In fact, our government
encourages tertiary institutions to transform themselves to support
SkillsFuture, which is national movement to provide Singaporeans with
opportunities to develop their fullest potential throughout life, regardless of
their starting points (i.e. lifelong learning).
With the increasing educational levels of Singaporeans
and demands from employers, more public and private tertiary institutions were
setup in recent years. The increase in institutions naturally created more
competition as students have a greater choice of local and overseas
institutions to choose from. Emerging technologies also made E-learning
possible. One such example is Coursera, which is an online learning platform
founded by Stanford University professors that even offers degree programmes. Although
these degree programmes offered by such online learning platform may not be as
well accredited as those offered offline by a formal intuition, the short
courses they provide are relatively popular among working adults for lifelong
learning due to the low course fee and convenience to access anytime, anywhere.
The evolution of technology introduces new jobs and
eliminate existing ones at the same time. Educational institutions need to run
a race against the technology evolution by constantly creating new courses
and changing existing course syllabuses to meet industries demand, especially
the rate of evolution increases rapidly due to the smart nation initiative. A
good example to illustrate this point is the use of Internet-facing
applications and chatbots to cover the first level of interaction with
customers. The role of the customer service officers would switch to handle
more complex requests or interactions and at the same time help to train up the
chatbots to make them smarter in their interactions with customers.
Institutions providing the customer service related courses would need to
incorporate this new task into their course syllabus.
