WOU grabbed gold medals for both the Best Paper Award and the Young Innovator Award at the 25th AAOU Annual Conference. The winners received their awards from Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, Tan Sri Dr Koh Tsu Koon, at the closing ceremony on September 30th.
The paper titled Implementation of Facebook Study Groups as Supplements for Learning Management Systems (LMS) in Adult ODL Environments won gold in the Best Paper Award for Ishan Sudeera Abeywardena and Prof Tham Choy Yoong, from the School of Science and Technology (SST). In last year’s conference in Hanoi, Ishan along with Deputy Vice Chancellor (Academic) Prof Ho Sinn Chye won silver for their joint paper.
The first silver medal went to the paper on Assuring the Quality of Online Teaching and Learning: The case of Wawasan Open University by WOU Quality Assurance Manager Dr Andy Liew Teik Kooi and Dr Teoh Ai Ping (Universiti Sains Malaysia).
The other silver medal was awarded to the paper on Instructional design strategies for stress-reduced online collaboration in Asia’s high content culture by authors Prof Insung Jung and Sook-Kyoung Choi from the International Christian University, Japan and Masayuki Kodo from Hokkaido Institute of Technology
VINCENT CHUNG (LEFT) RECEIVES AWARD FROM TAN SRI DR KOH TSU KOON AS VICE CHANCELLOR PROF WONG TAT MENG LOOKS ON.
Lecturer Vincent Chung Sheng Hung (SST) picked up the gold in the Young Innovator Award for his paper on Course Delivery and Module Learning via Learning Objects (Knowledge Map) in Mobile Learning Environment. This is the second consecutive win for Vincent, who along with Karen Khor (SST) won gold last year in Hanoi.
The two silver medals went to the papers titled Augmenting the Learning Management System of the UP Open University by Al Francis D. Librero of the University of the Philippines Open University, and Enhancing Learning through the Discussion Forum by Nantha Kumar Subramaniam of Open University Malaysia.
Some 128 technical papers were presented in the five parallel sessions covering the five sub-themes of the conference: culture and social change; quality; business model and the role of partnership in ODL; technology; and future trends.
The 260 delegates were treated to five plenary lectures, a CEO roundtable discussion on the latest in open learning resources, and six focus panel discussions covering issues like quality assurance, ICT applications, open educational resources, multimedia learning materials, learning outcome assessment and learning analytics.
Among the plenary speakers of the conference were: Prof Zita Haji Mohd Fahmi, Deputy Chief Executive Officer (Quality Assurance), Malaysian Qualifications Agency, who spoke on quality assurance in higher education; and Brian McKay Epp, Assessment and Analytics Group Principal Consultant, Pearson eCollege, USA on how to make use of technology to solve education’s problems.
The keynote address by Sir John Daniel and the plenary speeches at the conference were web-casted to the ODL community as far as New Zealand, Canada and Mexico.
