Education innovation
As part of the Digital Sciences Initiative, our undergraduate and postgraduate programs will implement a wide range of digital tools and technologies to facilitate, augment, and enhance the learning and teaching experience for our students.
The DSI Education Innovation initiative aims to increase Faculty staff participation in innovative education practices by encouraging peer mentoring, professional development opportunities, education research and education innovation support. The DSI Education Innovation initiative seeks to focus on enhancing four pillars of engineering learning and teaching through the increased use of digital tools and technologies in combination with the latest learning and teaching and engineering education pedagogy within our programs.
Fostering better teamwork and managing group projects
Engineers often work in a variety of team environments in all forms: intradisciplinary, interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary. Digital collaborative tools and technologies will be implemented to support effective student-to-student and student-to-educator communication for sharing of ideas, knowledge and advice. We will also be employing technologies such as SPARKPLUS to fairly assess individual contributions and merit in group-based learning activities.
Making coding more ‘approachable’ to students
Engineers are now expected more than ever to have coding literacy as part of their profession. In addition to incorporating more digital skills within the curriculum structure, the DSI Education Innovation initiative seeks to increasingly implement tools such as Jupyter Notebook and Edstem to help students become familiar to and be competent in communicating with code between their peers and their educators.
Providing faster and effective quality feedback and communication
We are aware that students learn from their participation and the subsequent feedback in assessments. We will seek to employ tools within our programs such as Student Relationship Engagement System (SRES) to provide timely personalized feedback regarding their assessments and progress through their courses, as well as providing any required interventions to remedy any issues regarding the students’ learning process.
Fostering better engagement and interaction
Students learn better when they feel supported by the educators, their peers, and having fun. Students also learn better when there is bidirectional interaction between themselves and the learning content. In addition to the traditional lectures and tutorials, the DSI Education Innovation will be seeking to increase engagement and interaction through effective use of discussion board and collaborative tools, and innovative pedagogical methods such as flipped learning. In addition, as part of the Digital Sciences Initiative, there will be increased development of interactive multimedia such as virtual reality and augmented reality content to support student learning.