Harnessing Technology in Medical Education: The Way Forward

Assoc Prof Alfred Kow
Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine

The 4th Industrial Revolution is well underway and digital transformation is inevitable in all fields, including education. While many institutions started the digital transformation in medical education at various speed, the COVID pandemic has forced educational institutions to evolve rapidly to meet the challenges in maintaining quality education and to explore innovative methods to move forward.
Advanced technologies have now been widely used in the fields of education and training. Increasingly demonstrated in the literatures, education institutions have started to invest resources to grow unique training models using augmented reality, virtual reality and mixed reality as well as artificial intelligence and machine learning, to tap on the expanded dimensions of what these tools can offer to enhance learning and outcomes. This represents a revolutionary change in the way how conventional medical training is carried out, requiring an open mind, a willingness to take risks, and transformational leadership in the institution.

In this lecture, I will share our experience in digitally transforming medical education using technology to enhance the experience and to meet the future needs of our learners. They constitute crucial steps in ensuring uniformity in learning and allowing students to build a strong foundation in the new post-pandemic era.
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Authentic Teaching - The Occam’s Razor for Effective Learning

HO Han Kiat
Faculty of Science

We are living in a time where technological and pedagogical enhancements continue to transform the way we do education. In the midst of this constant flux and re-adaptation, I seek to return to basics and identify age-old principles for learning that remain steadfast and important. From which, authentic teaching emerges as an anchoring value and a pedagogical compass to guide and test every innovation in education. As authenticity is about engaging students in real-world learning, it presents itself as a common denominator relevant to most teaching and learning context. Its consideration transcends the classroom, the content, the assessment and most of all, the teacher. Using a few examples, I will attempt to illustrate my own exposition of authentic teaching and the potential benefits it can bring.

We Have a Vision for Tomorrow

Stephen LIM
Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences

As educators and leaders, how might we insure our students truly learn? Cognitive and educational psychologists have discovered effective solutions for teaching and learning that are relatively inexpensive and applicable across many educational settings. In the ideal world, we would have created a translational educational science to be systematically adopted by universities, thereby reforming policy and practice. In this Lecture, we will envision such a future for higher education and how we can achieve it together.
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Deform to Create

Hans TAN
School of Design & Environment

In this talk, the speaker will elaborate on a peculiar approach to designing pedagogy based on the concept of “Deformative Inquiry”, which he developed from his personal practice as an award-winning designer. Contrary to the popular belief that creativity forms new ideas, it emphasises the importance of deforming as a starting point for imaginative thinking, exercised at the intersection of thought exploration and hands-on experimentation. This approach reflects Gaston Bachelard’s interpretation of one’s imagination: “We always think of the imagination as the faculty that forms images. On the contrary, it deforms what we perceive.” 

Me? Teach? The Evolution of an Incidental Teacher

NGA Min En
Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine

In the journey of any academic, periods of self-doubt and uncertainty are inevitable.  However, these moments of reflection and even angst can be drivers for self-improvement, and each challenge is an opportunity for creativity, courage and action.  As a doctor who became an ‘incidental teacher’, I have been fortunate enough to have distilled some personal insights from what can sometimes be the tumultuous journey of an educator.  I share these in the hope that others may be similarly encouraged, as we strive toward a purpose that is greater than ourselves.

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Collaboration: A Dialogue on the Product and Process of Education

Collaboration: A Dialogue on the Product and Process of Education
Using Research to Show that Service is Educational and Using Teaching of Research to Improve Service: Merging the Three Missions of Academia

Gerald Koh
Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health

The three main missions of the university and academic staff are teaching, research, and service. Often, these three domains stretch the academic in different directions, resulting in compartmentalization and stress. However, if strategically and purposefully planned, these missions may coalesce and produce synergies that are greater than the sum of its parts. In this lecture, the presenter will share how research was used to demonstrate that service was educational, and how teaching of research led to service improvements in society.

Deconstructing “Love”: an “Über-cool” Way to Unlock Potential in Novice Scholars

Paulin Tay Straughan
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

Heavy Lifting at the Coal Face: Marking, Comments, and Practical Teaching

Not too many teachers see marking assignments and exams as their favourite part of the vocation. Not a few will say 'Oh I would be happy to teach until I drop, forget retirement, but when my day comes the one thing I will not miss is marking.' There is no need to dwell on why so many of us feel this way. But it is important to consider why this far from glamorous task lies at the very heart of the educator mission. This is the most practical and practice oriented aspect of teaching, and is probably the most important thing we do in the eyes of our students. That alone should command our notice. In this talk, we will explore just why this heavy lifting task is so central to the practice of teaching, and what can happen when one does it well.

The Pragmatic Ideology in Teaching

[We] cannot produce the kind of pupils we did before. All of them went in for qualities which led to individual survival. You ask any bright boy what he wants to do. He wants to be a doctor. Why? Because then he can go anywhere in the world; he will still be a doctor and make money. Or, if he can’t, he will be a lawyer because he also makes money. But you ask him to be an engineer or an architect or to do something, he says, “Then what happens? If the country collapses, I can’t get another job elsewhere.” That must change.

-- Lee Kuan Yew, at meeting with Principals on 29 Aug 1966.

The Idea of a University

… it is, I believe, … the business of a University to make this intellectual culture its direct scope, or to employ itself in the education of the intellect,—… I say, a University, taken in its bare idea … has this object and this mission; it contemplates neither moral impression nor mechanical production; it professes to exercise the mind neither in art nor in duty; its function is intellectual culture; here it may leave its scholars, and it has done its work when it has done as much as this. It educates the intellect to reason well in all matters, to reach out towards truth, and to grasp it.

This lecture proposes to take Newman’s ‘idea of a university’ as its starting point, asking whether ‘intellectual culture’ or the ‘education of the intellect’ is, in fact, the end-point or sole purpose of a university. Should we, as educators, consider ‘moral impression’, or character formation to be part of our remit? Is Newman right when he says that ‘to discover and to teach’ are distinct functions and that the university exists to diffuse, rather than advance, knowledge? or, in fact, can research and teaching be viewed as related aspects of the university?

Back to Basics

TAN Chee Keong, Willie
School of Design and Environment

When it comes to teaching, most people ask the same question: “How do you do it?” One response would be to simply go back to the basics — teach in ways that motivate students to learn.  A Contingency Approach to teaching that focuses on developing traits, having clear goals and superior course design may be very useful in this regard. Together, these three elements interact within an environment that structures the incentives towards teaching and learning. This talk will elucidate how teaching goals may be developed, and how one may design courses that provide superior learning experiences for the students. Examples drawn from the speaker’s personal experiences will serve to illuminate the contingency approach to teaching.

Technology and the Role of the Teacher

Johan GEERTSEMA
University Scholars Programme

Lessons from “Kungfu Panda”

Nurturing Values

Against Empathetic Learning

The 2011 public lecture addressed four issues—the need for skills-based education, including teaching students to learn and to pose questions/problems and the importance of going beyond classroom teaching into pastoral care in a student centric teaching and learning environment.

Skills-based education focuses not just on teaching students "about things" but how to "do things". Drawing from the martial arts concept of 形 - 意 - 卦, it is important to focus on not just the how" (形) but the "why" (意) and the "what if" (卦) of the skills students are learning. Only then will students learn the skill-sets necessary and acquire the wisdom to use those skill-sets appropriately.

Focusing first on how, we must teach students to be “self-directed” learners. There is a need, for instance, to examine the plot we designed in the problem-based learning approach. One way is to stage learning as a sequence of experiences, in which the outcome is based on the synthesized reflections of each learning encounter, thus enabling students to construct their own knowledge and create a better sense of ownership through this process.

Moving next to why, the questions we ask can generate specific results which in turn may lead us to further questions and so on in a virtuous cycle. As educators, it is therefore important that we cultivate in our students the habit of asking the right questions.

Finally, a case can be made that our interaction with our students outside the classroom and our handling of those who fail to meet their obligations as students are as significant and have as great an impact as what we actually teach them.

Ancient Martial Wisdom and Modern Skills Education

Joel LEE
Faculty of Law

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Designing a "Learning to Learn" Experience

CHEAH Kong Ming
School of Design and Environment

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Asking Questions

KOH Khee Meng
Faculty of Science

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Pastoral Care: Why it Matters?

Bruce LOCKHART
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

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What is “higher” in Higher Education? Teach less learn more!

In Pursuit of Empathetic Knowledge

2009

Some Thoughts on Our Roles as Educators in the University

GOH Say Song
Faculty of Science

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Against Uncritical Pragmatism: Education for Doers Who Can Think and Thinkers Who Can Do

2008

Engineering an Education to Create Student-centred Learning Environments

Ashwin M. KHAMBADKONE
Faculty of Engineering

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Teaching Tech-savvy Students: Thoughts of an IT-naïve Old Fogey

Erle C.H. LIM
Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine

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Effective Use of Demonstration for Teaching and Learning

SOW Chorng Haur
Faculty of Science

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2007

Teaching plus Technology minus Fear : An Experience of a Non-IT-Savvy Maths Lecturer

2006

A Geographical Journey: From ‘B’ Student to ‘E’ Educator

CHANG Tou Chuang
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

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Active Student Engagement - A Precursor to Quality Education

Lakshminarayanan SAMAVEDHAM 
Faculty of Engineering

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2004

Coping with Rapid Content Changes in Information Systems Education

TAN Kay Chen
Faculty of Engineering

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Improving Teaching Effectiveness: Some Examples in Engineering Education

Lakshminarayanan SAMAVEDHAM 
Faculty of Engineering

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Personal Reflections on Teaching

K RAJENDRAN
Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine

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2003

Spurring Students on to Life-Long Learning

SEAH Kar Heng
Faculty of Engineering

Good Teaching: Some Critical Success Factors

Jochen WIRTZ
NUS Business School