Thomas C. Reeves, Ph.D. Concurrent Sessions 1  Learning by Design: The Importance of Alignment 27 Feb (Wed)  1530 to 1700 hrs

Synopsis
The success of using technology to enhance teaching and learning in higher education is largely determined by the degree to which there is adequate alignment among seven critical factors: 1) goals and objectives, 2) the nature of the content, 3) instructional design, 4) learner tasks, 5) instructor roles, 6) technological affordances, and 7) rigorous assessment. Evaluations of the application of educational technology in academe across multiple disciplines indicate that misalignments among these factors are all too common. For example, although instructors may have high level goals, superb subject matter expertise, advanced instructional designs, and access to cutting-edge technologies, most assessment strategies tend to focus on what is easy to measure rather than what is important. This presentation will focus on the importance of alignment when employing technology-based innovations in higher education. Case studies of higher education courses infused with authentic learning designs and reliable and valid assessments will be described.

Prof Henk Schmidt Concurrent Sessions 1  Bringing real-life problems to the Curriculum – Effects on Teaching and Learning 27 Feb (Wed)  1530 to 1700 hrs

Synopsis
Those who advocate problem-based learning in higher professional education with its emphasis on interesting problems and student activity (more student involvement in their own learning, small-group collaboration, use of technology, fewer lectures, early participation in professional practice) articulate high expectations of the professional competencies of the graduates produced by such programs. Students graduating from such schools are, for instance, expected to be more skilled in interpersonal communication, are thought to be better problem-solvers, and would be better prepared for self-directed, lifelong, learning. In addition, some claim that graduates also are better able to retain relevant knowledge. But is this true? This contribution will provide an overview of studies aimed at testing these hypotheses. Depending on the number of participants, the talk will contain interactive elements.

John Larkin Concurrent Sessions 1  Moving On ~ Web 2.0 Tools for Teaching and Learning 27 Feb (Wed)  1530 to 1700 hrs

Synopsis
Educators of all persuasions have often found it challenging and time consuming dealing with software applications designed for building and publishing web sites. Not only did they have to figure out how to create and populate each page with text, images, video, hyperlinks and forms they also had to unravel the intricacies of file transfer protocol (ftp).
These hurdles are no longer issues with Web 2.0 technologies. Via the use of web based tools such as Wordpress and WebNode teachers and students can construct and design functional, purposeful and elegant web sites. These web sites may be used to support teaching in the classroom, house student projects and provide avenues for professional development.
To top it off, Twitter can be utilised to broadcast your discoveries to and seek guidance from other educators. These tools will allow teachers to augment their current teaching and learning practices through the use of these emerging information and communication technologies.
Participants will be given a quick demonstration of each tool and then provided with a hands-on opportunity to work with the tools and actually take those first steps in creating a presence on the web and making their own mark in the world of web 2.0 and online education.

Concurrent Sessions 2 
Technology and Learning ~ Tools to Enhance and Enrich
28 Feb (Thu)  1100 to 1230 hrs
SCE MMLab 3

Teachers and academics from all levels of the education spectrum have considered the possibility of developing projects that allow their students to create collaborative web based curriculum projects. The plans and goals are in place but how is it possible to achieve them given the intricacies of web page construction, online publishing online and image processing?
These barriers are no longer as imposing with Web 2.0 technologies. Teachers and students can now tap into web based tools such as Pageflakes, Wkis, Picasa, Flickr and WebNode to create, build and maintain online projects and classroom support materials.
Projects can be constructed within a collaborative framework providing opportunities for team building, decision-making and critical thinking as both teachers and students work together in an immersive learning to achieve their goals. These tools will allow teachers to augment their current teaching and learning practices through the use of these emerging information and communication technologies.
These collaborative projects can be used to establish and nurture learning communities on a local, regional or even broader scale. There are bridges to be built, bridges to be crossed and barriers to be broken and these tools allow those milestones to be met in a user friendly and forgiving manner.
Participants will be given a quick demonstration of each tool and then provided with a hands-on opportunity to work with the tools and actually take those next steps in creating a presence on the web and making their own mark in the world of web 2.0 and online education.

Tan Seng Chee Concurrent Sessions 1  Online Learning Communities for Schools 27 Feb (Wed)  1530 to 1700 hrs

Synopsis
This presentation aims to clarify the concept and boundary of research on online learning communities in schools, identify the major trends of research, and suggest pertinent issues for future research. Few online learning communities, including Knowledge Building communities, Quest Atlantis, Virtual Math Team, and Web-based Inquiry Science Environment will be reviewed. The design principles and characteristics of these learning environments will be compared in terms of cognitive, social, and technological dimensions. Potential implementation and research issues will be discussed, including the contradictions with traditional school cultures and practices and the issues of authenticity versus simulation approach in schools.

Westley Field Concurrent Sessions 2  Skoolaborate: A global initiative - Teens and teachers collaborating in a Virtual World 28 Feb (Thu)  1100 to 1230 hrs

Synopsis
Learn the strategies that worked in establishing a successful global collaborative initiative in teen second life - from admin to practice
This presentation will explore the learning and subsequent heuristics used to make this project a success.  Participants will learn about practical strategies and administrative considerations that make these projects work.  Participants will view video footage of student experiences as well as interact with students and partners during the presentation. 

Dr Marissa Wettasinghe & Mr Lim Kin Chew (Co-facilitator) Concurrent Sessions 2  What’s the buzz with web 2.0? Infusing 2.0 Technologies into Online Activities and Using the Aggregated Sum of the Content to Expand Learners’ Experiences 28 Feb (Thu)  1100 to 1230 hrs

Synopsis
Web 2.0 has become a buzzword in education and it has been infused extensively into teaching and learning. However, if the affordances of such tools are not realized effectively, learners may not be engaged or motivated within the online environment. In fact, learners will not be motivated to use these online tools if there is nothing for them to gain in the learning process. Hence, exploring and focusing on the affordances of these technologies and linking them to your learning outcomes can greatly increase learner motivation. This would just be the start of the learning process for an educator. The next step would be to assist learners in leveraging on the aggregated sum of content on the site to move towards knowledge generation as a community.

Concurrent Sessions 1:
Show and Share - Sharing of Innovative Teaching Practices
27 Feb 2008 (Wed) 1530 to 1700 hrs (LT 11)

This concurrent track seeks to feature NTU academic staff who have adopted innovative methodologies or use of eLearning technologies to enhance and enrich the students’ learning experiences in NTU. This session will cover the areas in the use of video content, Learning Activity Management System for content design and development. There will also be sharing on the use of Neurofeedback in educational context.

Assistant Professor Bates Roderick W. Concurrent Sessions 1  Show and Share - Sharing of Innovative Teaching Practices Spicing up Chemistry Teaching with IT 27 Feb (Wed)  1530 to 1700 hrs

Synopsis
Chemistry poses difficulties for students straight from JCs and polytechnics. The concepts of chemistry require us to visualize things that we cannot visualize as they are so much smaller than anything we can see, and work in ways beyond common comprehension.

More immediately, as Chemistry is a very practical subject, we require students to take laboratory courses, immediately using equipment that is unfamiliar to them, and instruments of daunting complexity.

The time-honoured way to teach these ideas is to draw a diagram, but this lacks potency and vibrancy of the electronic images that surround our students in every day life. This sharing will describe some of the efforts that we have been making in the Division of Chemistry and Biological Chemistry to catch up, and to use modern technology to teach students both concepts and practical methods without comprising standards.

Our biggest effort has been in the preparation of lab videos to replace the old style of lab briefing and to reinforce printed information in the lab manual. Using the adaptive release capability available in NTU’s learning management system, edveNTUre, these have been combined with existing elements of our lab course to make an integrated package.

Kevin Anthony Jones Concurrent Sessions 1  Show and Share - Sharing of Innovative Teaching Practices Use of LAMS for content development 27 Feb (Wed)  1530 to 1700 hrs

Synopsis
The CPE207 Software Engineering course has been changing almost every year since I became Course Coordinator in 2004, with new material and new teaching initiatives to enhance the learning experience for the students.

Background.  At the time I became coordinator, the student experience with the course was satisfactory at best.  They perceived the course as too conceptual, and there were no guest lecturers to give the connection to industry.  The lectures have always been very intensive “force-feeding” sessions, where there is a non-stop barrage of concepts and diagrams; generally, they did not fulfill their purpose of trying to positively motivate as well as inform.

Initiatives.  Four fundamental changes in the course were put into effect by the first semester of 2005.

• Pegging the currency/up-to-dateness of the course to the latest edition of the modeling specification, UML.  The course has been rewritten twice, corresponding to the upgrade of 1.4 to 1.5, and recently, from 1.5 to 2.0.
• Adoption of a course textbook.  The choice was fairly difficult, involving a comparison of ten books by leading authors.
• Reconfigure the exam to a single case study engineering style, with the handout of the examinable case study a week or two prior to the exam conduct.
• Reconfigure the laboratory experiment from a series of small web-application projects, to a single large distributed (not web) system application development.  The lab gives the students the opportunity to experience and practice both the hard technical and soft people aspects of a large software system project, where up to 80 students work together as a company on the project.

In the years since the above fundamental changes, several other initiatives have been instituted; these include 1) lecture content structuring, 2) active tutorials, 3) workshops, 4) open-ended questions for normal tutorials, and 5) content reshaping.  Some of these have been successful, and other not so.  However, the recent adoption of blended learning (using LAMS to deliver course material in a paced learning sequence) has shown tremendous promise.

I would like share with you the opportunity for moving into a whole new direction with the course that this new technology has afforded me.  So, I will share the structure and operation of the blended learning programme, and the rethinking of teaching that I have pursued consequent of using LAMS.

Olga Sourina (Asst Prof) Concurrent Sessions 1  Show and Share - Sharing of Innovative Teaching Practices Neurofeedback: Research into Educational Applications 27 Feb (Wed)  1530 to 1700 hrs

Synopsis
Neurofeedback is a learning strategy that enables a person to alter his/her brain waves when the brain is not functioning at its optimum levels. We are proposing to study and monitor Active Learning engagement practices and, by quantifying levels of learner engagement, invoke virtual agents in face-to-face (F2F), and eLearning environments. The idea for this research originates from our project on collecting, processing and visualisation of human electroencephalograms. In this preliminary study we found new clues for understanding mental processes in humans. For example, we noticed that negative responses were more stressful to the brain than positive ones. We have also studied how humans react to different types of music, spiritual incantations, and stress-related stimuli. We proposed and developed a fractal dimension model that allows us to quantify brain reaction/s to visual, audio, and olfactory stimuli. These findings could be the basis for the research that would give us deeper understanding of the nature of students’ engagement when learning in F2F, eLearning, and cyber environments.

Concurrent Sessions 2:
Show and Share - Moving on and Getting There…..
28 Feb 2008 (Thurs) 1100 to 1230 hrs (LT 11)

Martin Constable Concurrent Sessions 2  Show and Share - Moving on and Getting There….. Meeting the Particular eLearning Requirements of a Digital Painting Course Using a Mix of Adapted and Tailored Solutions 28 Feb (Thu)  1100 to 1230 hrs

Synopsis
The particular e-learning needs of any course are not always immediately well served by off the shelf solutions, and a fair amount of adaptation will usually be needed. It can also be said that some courses are naturally better suited to e-learning solutions than others. Visually-biased fine art courses are notoriously difficult to get online in a way that suits the needs of the students and the course administrator. I will be describing where my ongoing efforts to do so have led me and what degree of success I have had.

Timothy White Concurrent Sessions 2  Show and Share - Moving on and Getting There….. Clickers – Student Response System 28 Feb (Thu)  1100 to 1230 hrs

Synopsis
The persistent challenge for the lecturer is to ensure the engagement of students.  ‘Engagement’ can mean many things but ideally includes immersion in a questioning environment, good retention of facts, and translation of those facts to general concepts.  ‘Stand-and-deliver’ lecturing can be successful for especially gifted teachers, but even then, maintaining audience participation is difficult for large cohorts or when there is an extended lecture period (3 hours in some instances at NTU!).  Student Response Systems or clickers are a relatively new method for generating audience participation in Q & A sessions (tutorials) that can be integrated with the usual PowerPoint presentations.  Clickers allow instant feedback students (did they understand?), facilitate peer-to-peer learning, and can simplify grading.

Thanasingam Santhakumari & Alan Soong Concurrent Sessions 2  Show and Share - Moving on and Getting There….. An Evaluation Of A Scaffolded-Blended Approach Used To Teach Paragraph Writing 28 Feb (Thu)   1100 to 1230 hrs

Synopsis
This paper presents the initial findings of learning outcomes of students who were taught paragraph writing using a new curriculum model (SCBC), designed to teach undergraduate students English Proficiency .The study was conducted at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU). The curriculum model called the Spring-Cycle Blended Model (SCBC) combines the  strengths of two learning pedagogies namely blending and scaffolding. Learning outcomes were measured using streaming video and synchronous discussion forums .These tools were used by 13 students to provide feedback to a presenter in an oral skills tutorial. In addition, a survey was administered to collect information on the participants’ perception of their learning. The discourse threads from the discussion forum analysed reflected a high level of understanding of the content taught using the SCBC model. Findings from the survey also showed students felt that  the use of video streaming and the discussion board in the SCBC model also supported their learning and enhanced their understanding. The SCBC model has the potential of being adapted and customized for other learning contexts both in and beyond Singapore.

Synopsis
Some pertinent issues that will need to be addressed in the seminar theme ‘Buidling Bridges….Fostering Learning’ include:

• Bridges for Learning – Do we really need them?
• Be Immersed in virtual reality or get real - which is which?
• To blend or not to blend – Which way to go?
• Web 2.0: What is? – How to use it? – What’s next?

This is an interactive sessions between a panel of speakers and the seminar participants on the topics presented in the Plenary Sessions. The intent is to allow participants to be proactive in asking questions, providing feedback on the topics and sharing their own teaching experiences in the context of the seminar theme.

Synopsis
With the increasing power of 3D graphic cards in personal computers, the games industry is looking at building edutainment products that use Games and 3D worlds as teaching tools. This session focuses on some of the real-life classroom experiences and sheds light on the causes of failures in hyped-out cases, while showcasing some of the successful projects.