Education Commons^™

Look Before You Jump, Kapil R. Tuli

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Coming to grips with the reality of eLearning. In boardrooms all over the world today a scenario is played out again and again: Chief Learning Officers (CLOs) enthusiastically pitch the strategy of eLearning while chief executives remain sceptical over the outcomes. For years, eLearning appeared to be the perfect answer for corporations that need to train their employees. And it certainly has its advantages.

The Flexible University: Neoliberal Education And The Global Production Of Migrant Labor, Yasmin Y. Ortiga

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This article demonstrates how neoliberal higher education has come to play a distinct role in the global market for migrant labor, where a growing number of developing nations educate its citizens for overseas work in order to maximize future monetary remittances. Located in the Philippines, this study shows how local colleges and universities attempt to impose an ideal notion of flexibility, quickly shifting academic manpower and resources to programs that would produce the ‘right’ types of workers to address foreign labor demands. Based on qualitative interviews with Filipino college educators and students, the article then discusses how such ‘flexible’ strategies …

Text Analytics Approach To Extract Course Improvement Suggestions From Students’ Feedback, Swapna Gottipati, Venky Shankararaman, Jeff Rongsheng Lin

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In academic institutions, it is normal practice that at the end of each term, students are required to complete a questionnaire that is designed to gather students’ perceptions of the instructor and their learning experience in the course. Students’ feedback includes numerical answers to Likert scale questions and textual comments to open-ended questions. Within the textual comments given by the students are embedded suggestions. A suggestion can be explicit or implicit. Any suggestion provides useful pointers on how the instructor can further enhance the student learning experience. However, it is tedious to manually go through all the qualitative comments and …

Data Mining Approach To The Identification Of At-Risk Students, Li Chin Ho, Kyong Jin Shim

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In recent years, the use of digital tools and technologies in educational institutions are continuing to generate large amounts of digital traces of student learning behavior. This study presents a proof-of-concept analytics system that can detect at-risk students along their learning journey. Educators can benefit from the early detection of at-risk students by understanding factors which may lead to failure or drop-out. Further, educators can devise appropriate intervention measures before the students drop out of the course. Our system was built using SAS ® Enterprise Miner (EM) and SAS ® JMP Pro.

An Architectural Design And Evaluation Of An Affective Tutoring System For Novice Programmers, Hua Leong Fwa

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Affect is prevalent in learning and it influences students’ learning achievement. This paper details the design and evaluation of an Affective Tutoring System (ATS) that tutors student in computer programming. Although most ATSs are purpose built for a specific domain, making adaptation to another domain difficult, this ATS is architected for adaptability and extensibility. This study also addresses a lack of research exploring the theories and methods of integrating affect and learning within the learning process by proposing methods of regulating the negative affect of students. Both quantitative and qualitative techniques were used for evaluation of the effectiveness of the …

Online Learning Tool On External Financing Needs, Yuanto Kusnadi

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

In collaboration with colleagues at the Centre ofTeaching Excellence (CTE), I have developed an innovative online learningobject on External Financing Needs. This tool is designed to introduce a noveland refreshing way in teaching accounting and finance concepts to students andto create a more interactive learning experience in the classroom. The online learning tool is used in the two courses:Accounting for Entrepreneurs and Financial Management, to explain the relevantconcepts related to financial forecasting and financial planning. One unique feature about the learning object is that itprovides instantaneousfeedback to students as they can learn whether the numbers theyprovide are correct/wrong (as indicated …

Flipping A Course On Entrepreneurial Leadership In Ethnic Chinese Business: A Mobile Learning Perspective, Thomas Menkhoff

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This exploratory article reflects on the teaching experiences for a course on “Entrepreneurial Leadership in Ethnic Chinese Business” at the Singapore Management University (SMU). It was categorised as a mobile learning course with reference to the flipped classroom model, learner mobility, and user-generated content outside the classroom. We examine three examples of mobile learning projects which were assigned to students so that they would be able to internalise key course objectives such as gaining an appreciation of the structure, functions, and cultural uniqueness of traditional small Chinese business organisations in Singapore. The paper also addresses some of the challenges faced …

The Relationship Between Future Goals And Achievement Goal Orientations: An Intrinsic-Extrinsic Motivation Perspective, Jie Qi Lee, Dennis M. Mcinerney, Gregory Arief D. Liem, Yasmin Y. Ortiga

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This research aimed to study the relationships between students’ future goals (FGs) and their immediate achievement goal orientations (AGOs) among 5733 Singaporean secondary school students (M age = 14.18, SD = 1.26; 53% boys). To this end, we hypothesized that the relationships between like valenced FGs and AGOs (both intrinsic or both extrinsic) will be stronger than those of opposite valenced FGs and AGOs (intrinsic–extrinsic) and tested two alternative models: Model A positing the prediction of AGOs by FGs and Model B positing the prediction of FGs by AGOs. Structural equation modeling showed the heuristic superiority of Model B in …

Applying Design Thinking To Student Outreach Projects: Experiences From An Information Systems School, Swapna Gottipati, Venky Shankararaman, Alan Megargel

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

As countries turn into Smart Nations, Infocom Technology plays a key role in enhancing their competitiveness through high skilled workforces. Reaching to younger generations and attracting them to computing programs such as Information Systems (IS) and Computer Science (CS) is a key challenge faced by universities. Many high quality students from junior colleges either don’t choose IS programs or choose IS programs as their last option during the application process. A School of Information Systems (SIS) from a large metropolitan university decided to implement an innovative outreach program to attract high quality high school aka Junior College (JC) students. JC …

Effectiveness Of Physical Robot Versus Robot Simulator In Teaching Introductory Programming, Oka Kurniawan, Norman Tiong Seng Lee, Subhajit Datta, Nachamma Sockalingam, Pey Lin Leong

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This study reports the use of a physical robot and robot simulator in an introductory programming course in a university and measures students' programming background conceptual learning gain and learning experience. One group used physical robots in their lessons to complete programming assignments, while the other group used robot simulators. We are interested in finding out if there is any difference in the learning gain and experiences between those that use physical robots as compared to robot simulators. Our results suggest that there is no significant difference in terms of students' learning between the two approaches. However, the control group …

Oral History Interview With Lily Kong, Lily Kong

Oral History Collection

The interview covered:

• President – Career in Singapore prior to joining SMU
• Teaching & Curriculum – Blue Ribbon Commission for Undergraduate Education
• Campus – Prinsep Street Residences
• Teaching & Curriculum – SMU-X courses
• Research – Societal Challenges
• Teaching & Curriculum -SMU Academy

Smu Honours Professor Arnoud De Meyer With Its Highest Appointment Of University Professorship, Singapore Management University

SMU Press Releases

Professor Arnoud De Meyer, Singapore Management University (SMU)’s fourth and longest serving President, has been conferred the University’s highest honour - SMU University Professorship - at a farewell and handover ceremony held at SMU Hall today. He is the first in SMU to be conferred this title.

The SMU University Professorship is the highest appointment bestowed on a very select number of faculty to recognise significant accomplishments in research, eminent careers, and outstanding contributions to the University, the profession and the community. University Professors are recognised nationally and internationally for the importance of their scholarly and/or professional achievements. They will …

Entrepreneurship, College, And Credit: The Golden Triangle, Roberto M. Samaniego, Juliana Yu Sun

Research Collection School Of Economics

We develop a model to evaluate the aggregate impact of college finance in an environment with entrepreneurship. The calibrated model captures the stylized fact that entrepreneurs with college are more common and more profitable in the United States. The calibration indicates this is mainly because higher labor earnings allow college‐educated agents to ameliorate credit constraints if and when they eventually become entrepreneurs. Changes in financing constraints on entrepreneurs can thus affect college attendance, and changes in financing constraints on college can affect entrepreneurship rates as well.

Class Discussion Management And Analysis Application, Venky Shankararaman, Swapna Gottipati, Seshan Ramaswami, Chirag Chhablan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Discussion-based teaching is popular in several courses because it creates opportunities for students to practice important skills useful for the working environment. In order to make this pedagogy impactful and effective, instructors employ technologies such as online discussion forums and student response systems to conduct and manage classroom discussions. More recently mobile devices have become prevalent and researchers have been exploring how this device can help support education. In this paper we report the innovative use of mobile technology and supporting backend tools to manage classroom discussions. We have implemented a class discussion and management application, LiveClass. This application records …

Vt-Revolution: Interactive Programming Tutorials Made Possible, Lingfeng Bao, Zhenchang Xing, Xin Xia, David Lo, Shanping Li

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Programming video tutorials showcase programming tasks and associated workflows. Although video tutorials are easy to create, it isoften difficult to explore the captured workflows and interact withthe programs in the videos. In this work, we propose a tool named VTRevolution – an interactive programming video tutorial authoring system. VTRevolution has two components: 1) a tutorial authoring system leverages operating system level instrumentation to log workflow history while tutorial authors are creating programming video tutorials; 2) a tutorial watching system enhances the learning experience of video tutorials by providing operation history and timeline-based browsing interactions. Our tutorial authoring system does not …

Improving Knowledge Tracing Model By Integrating Problem Difficulty, Sein Minn, Feida Zhu, Michel C. Desmarais

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS) are designed for providing personalized instructions to students with the needs of their skills. Assessment of student knowledge acquisition dynamically is nontrivial during her learning process with ITS. Knowledge tracing, a popular student modeling technique for student knowledge assessment in adaptive tutoring, which is used for tracing student's knowledge state and detecting student's knowledge acquisition by using decomposed individual skill or problems with a single skill per problem. Unfortunately, recent KT models fail to deal with practices of complex skill composition and variety of concepts included in a problem simultaneously. Our goal is to investigate a …

Oral History Interview With Arnoud De Meyer, Arnoud De Meyer

Oral History Collection

The interview covered:

• Teaching and Curriculum – Title: Maintaining SMU’s competitive edge
• Challenges & Future; Title: Developing SMU into an internationally recognized university
• SMU research and its impact on society in Singapore
• Campus – Title: Renovating Campus Green
• Renovating Prinsep Street Residences
• SMU-X Building
• Designing SMU-X Building
• Building a culture of sustainability
• Goals as President
• Support from the government
• Advice for students – Grasping opportunities

Teachers, Education, And Inequality In The Developing World, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

Investing in teachers is key but incentivising poor parents to keep their kids in school is crucial

255 Students Are The First To Experience Smu’S New Residential Learning-And-Living Concept, Singapore Management University

SMU Press Releases

Singapore Management University (SMU) today officially opened the Prinsep Street Residences (PSR), which supports the University’s new residential learning-and-living concept introduced from August 2018. Having undergone a six-month ‘face-lift’, PSR now features 23 large-sized apartments, purpose-designed communal spaces, and meaningful programming that serves to nurture a co-live, co-learn, co-work community; thereby enhancing collaboration, inter-disciplinary learning and inter-cultural exchange among its residents.

The launch event, which was held amidst celebration and fanfare, was graced by Ms Denise Phua, Mayor of Central Singapore District, and was attended by over 50 guests comprising SMU partners, students, faculty and staff.

Sufat: An Analytics Tool For Gaining Insights From Student Feedback Comments, Siddhant Pyasi, Swapna Gottipati, Venky Shankararaman

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Teacher evaluation is a vital element inimproving student learning outcomes. Course and instructor feedback given bystudents, provides insights that can help improve student learning outcomes andteaching quality. Teaching and course evaluation systems help to collectquantitative and qualitative feedback from students. Since manually analysingthe qualitative feedback is painstaking and a tedious process, usually, onlythe quantitative feedback is often used for evaluating the course and theinstructor. However, useful knowledge is hidden in the qualitative comments, inthe form of sentiments and suggestions that can provide valuable insights tohelp plan improvements in the course content and delivery. In order toefficiently gather, analyse and provide …

Exploring Experiential Learning Model And Risk Management Process For An Undergraduate Software Architecture Course, Eng Lieh Ouh, Yunghans Irawan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper shares our insights on exploring theexperiential learning model and risk management process todesign an undergraduate software architecture course. The keychallenge for undergraduate students to appreciate softwarearchitecture design is usually their limited experience in thesoftware industry. In software architecture, the high-level designprinciples are heuristics lacking the absoluteness of firstprinciples which for inexperienced undergraduate students, thisis a frustrating divergence from what they used to value. From aneducator's perspective, teaching software architecture requirescontending with the problem of how to express this level ofabstraction practically and also make the learning realistic. Inthis paper, we propose a model adapting the concepts ofexperiential learning …

Smu Enhances Its Undergraduate Curriculum To Nurture Graduates Who Can Deliver Meaningful Impact Globally, Singapore Management University

SMU Press Releases

Singapore Management University (SMU) announced today that it is enhancing its undergraduate curriculum, following a one-year study by its Blue Ribbon Commission on Undergraduate Education. Besides redesigning its undergraduate Core Curriculum into three inter-related pillars of learning – Capabilities, Communities and Civilisations, SMU will integrate internship and community service into its new Core Curriculum as credit-bearing programmes.

Leading Mindfully In Dynamic Times: Can A Mindfulness-Based Leadership Training And Coaching Program Increase Leadership Effectiveness?, Nina Tan

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

This research examined the influence of a Mindfulness-based Leadership Training and Coaching Program (MBP), in garnering three aspects of leadership effectiveness; extra employee effort, productive performance and followers’ satisfaction with leadership.

We hypothesized that mindfulness-based leadership training and coaching program can influence leaders’ frequency in adopting authentic, transformational and transactional leadership behaviors to enhance leadership effectiveness.

We tested these predictions separately on two control and intervention groups. Results suggested that the combined training and coaching mindfulness-based intervention program had predictive effects between the practice of mindful attunement of leaders’ behaviors and enhancement in leadership effectiveness, even in a short span …

Constructing Underachievement: The Discursive Life Of Singapore In Us Federal Education Policy, Roberto Santiago De Roock, Darlene Machell Espena

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This paper offers insights into the referencing of Singapore within the US Obama Administration educational discourse, underscoring the political-material-discursive nexus of international educational benchmarking. Using critical discourse analysis, we find that an objectified Singapore functions as a rhetorical tool of US policymaker agendas, with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and other international assessments as basis for truth statements. US policy discourses on Singapore’s education system perpetuate, rather than interrogate, PISA’s questionable underlying “truths” around socio-economic development, equity, and excellence, and thus on student achievement and underachievement. Singapore’s status as an “Asian …

Academic “Centres,” Epistemic Differences And Brain Circulation, Yasmin Y. Ortiga, Meng‐Hsuan Chou, Gunjan Sondhi, Jue Wang

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This article investigates the factors that shape how migrant academics engage with fellow scholars within their countries of origin. We focus specifically on the mobility of Asian‐born faculty between Singapore, a fast‐developing education hub in Southeast Asia, and their “home” countries within the region. Based on qualitative interviews with 45 migrant academics, this article argues that while education hubs like Singapore increase the possibility of brain circulation within Asia, epistemic differences between migrant academics and home country counterparts make it difficult to establish long‐term collaboration for research. Singapore institutions also look to the West in determining how research work is …

Constructing The Global Education Hub: The Unlikely Case Of Manila, Yasmin Y. Ortiga

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This paper investigates the creation of an unlikely education hub in Manila, Philippines, where local institutions have seen a growing number of international students from Korea, India, and the Middle East. These students seek qualifications in professions where Filipino migrants are highly represented, either to gain an advantage within their home countries or as a steppingstone towards jobs elsewhere. Drawing from current debates on ‘global cities’, this paper discusses how different actors promote Manila as an ideal destination for students by using the country’s unique position within the global market for migrant labor and its American colonial history. Here, Filipino …

Boosting The Life-Changing Power Of Universities, Arnoud Cyriel Leo De Meyer

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

For decades, if not centuries, societies all over the world have assumed that universities have a positive socio-economic impact on them.

Teaching Basic Programming To Pre-University Students Through Blended Learning Pedagogy: A Descriptive Study, Vandana Ramachandra Rao, Ngee Mok Heng

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Students enrolling for undergraduate programmes in Singapore would have either finished their polytechnic diploma or completed Junior College (JC) studies. Most pre-university students coming through the JC pathway are not exposed to programming as computing is offered as a subject in a very few JCs. The authors of this paper conducted four runs of an introductory programing course between 2016 and 2017 for a research project funded by the Ministry of Education, Singapore. The project named “Let’s Code!” was intended to introduce fundamental programming concepts to students and guide them to consider taking a computer-science related degree for their university …

Smu Expands City Campus Footprint With New Sustainable Development Named Tahir Foundation Connexion, Singapore Management University

SMU Press Releases

Singapore Management University (SMU) held a ground-breaking ceremony today for its latest development – a five-storey green building in the heart of the city designed to support the University’s innovative SMU-X pedagogy, as well as cultivate innovation and entrepreneurship. The S$70 million development has been made possible by a donation from the Tahir Foundation and a grant from the Building and Construction Authority under the Public Sector Construction Productivity Fund (PSCPF).

Singhealth And Smu Partner To Train Undergraduates In Health Economics And Management, Singapore Management University

SMU Press Releases

SingHealth and the Singapore Management University (SMU) are embarking on a partnership to train the university’s undergraduates in the new Health Economics and Management (HEM) second major. Dr Amy Khor, Senior Minister of State for Health witnessed the inking of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the partners today at the opening ceremony of the Singapore Healthcare Management Congress.