Pre-training and Rally of IIOE Pilot Project in Malaysia
2022.09.23
On September 23rd, UNESCO-ICHEI and Universiti Putra Malaysia(UPM) co-organized a pre-training session prior to the official launch of the IIOE Pilot Project titledDigital Educator Micro-credentialin Malaysia. The session served as preparation for participating educators to understand the context and rationale behind it. Dr. Nurul Afiqah Zulkifly, Deputy Coordinator of IIOE National Centre, Malaysia, and Ms. Sherry Duan, Senior Programme Officer of UNESCO-ICHEI co-chaired the session. Close to 100 educators from Universiti Putra Malaysia, Universiti Sains Malaysia and Taylor's University completed the training and received certificates.
Co-chairs of the pre-training session
The pre-training session focused on the format of educators' professional development, micro-credential, and was carried out through the themes of Post-pandemic Pedagogical Innovation for HyFlex Learning and Artificial Intelligence for Personalized Learning. Prof. Abdul Karim Alias, Director of the Centre for Development of Academic Excellence and Professor from Universiti Sains Malaysia, Prof. Brian Beatty, Professor from San Francisco State University and pioneer of the development and evaluation of HyFlex Learning, and Dr. Alex Tianchong Wang, Lecturer and Course Director from Swinburne University of Technology delivered three presentations. Mr. Hassan Adeel Shehzad, Chief Technology Officer of UNESCO-ICHEI also delivered a session on how Smart Classroom project can support HyFlex Learning at UPM.
Malaysia is one of the pioneering countries and best practicers in the application of micro-credential in the Asia-Pacific region. Prof. Abdul Karim Alias, a leader in this field, believes that the rise of micro-credentials reflects the needs of lifelong learning and a learning society. In Malaysia, micro-credential has gradually become one of the effective ways for higher education to serve social development, life-long learning, and to innovative talent cultivation models. He emphasized that educators' professional development starts from the beginning stage to exploring, adopting and finally leading, transforming an novice to a scholar. Considering that micro-credential has the characteristics of "flexible, bite-size, stackable, competency-based, personalized, digital-credential", its adoption can serve as a flexible alternative to fulfill teachers' needs of up-skilling and re-training amidst their busy schedules. Prof. Karim stated that he looked forward to supporting the UPM project team to jointly explore and promote micro-credential in Malaysia through the pilot project, to motivate more higher education institutions to build and share training content of micro-credential, and to promote its recognition at the national level.
Micro-credential and Educators' Professional Development
Prof. Brian Beatty from San Francisco State University explained how to effectively design and implement HyFlex Learning. As an innovative teaching model that has attracted much attention since the pandemic, this model supports teachers to flexibly integrate the advantages of online learning and face-to-face learning. It has been applied at San Francisco State University since 2006 and has gradually become more mature, and applied to more educational institutions. Therefore, UNESCO-ICHEI is keen on exploring the integration of HyFlex Learning at the soon-to-be-installed Smart Classroom at UPM. Mr. Hassan , Programme Specialist and Chief Technology Officer shared its Smart Classroom solution.
Post-pandemic Pedagogical Innovation for HyFlex Learning
HyFlex Learning and Smart Classroom
In the last session, Dr. Alex Wang from Swinburne University of Technology, shared the different application scenarios of Artificial Intelligence in higher education. He believes that Artificial Intelligence is a strategic technology leading the scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation, and will become a veritable driving force for the development and reform of higher education teaching. He pointed out in his presentation that educators should flexibly use different tools to analyze learner characteristics, so as to provide learners with more scientific and personalized guidance.
Artificial Intelligence for Personalized Learning
The pre-training has attracted close to 100 educators from various higher education institutions across Malaysia, and has motivated them to participate in the pilot project. For the next step, UPM will host its official launch event of the pilot project on September 28th.
On September 23rd, UNESCO-ICHEI and Universiti Putra Malaysia(UPM) co-organized a pre-training session prior to the official launch of the IIOE Pilot Project titledDigital Educator Micro-credentialin Malaysia. The session served as preparation for participating educators to understand the context and rationale behind it. Dr. Nurul Afiqah Zulkifly, Deputy Coordinator of IIOE National Centre, Malays
