MOE Academies Fund Grant Award

SMU Office of Research – The Ministry of Education Academies Fund (MAF) aims to fund development and research projects that contribute to the enhancement of pedagogical practices or the professional development of teachers. The MAF also aims to provide opportunities for the Academies to focus on identifying key pedagogical and professional development approaches for researchers to test, evaluate and propose areas of improvements.

The Office of Research is pleased to announce that the research proposal from School of Information System (SIS) instructors Mok Heng Ngee and Vandana Rao was awarded the MAF grant. Below is the summary of the proposal, and we wish them the best in the research!

Project Title:

Let’s Code! – Teaching Pre-University Students Coding Using a Blended Learning Approach

Duration: 2 years

Overview:

“Let’s Code!” is an initiative by two SIS instructors to expose pre-university students to programming in a fun yet formal way. Programming is taught to participants in a span of three weeks using a blended learning approach. Most of the learning will take place at home and will be supplemented by seven face-to-face sessions at SMU.

The course content is divided into five modules, each of which is to be completed within two to three days. Participants will start by watching a video lecture before attempting a series of assignment problems. The module will conclude with a face-to-face tutorial moderated by an instructor. Throughout the course, participants can seek the instructors for consultations and formative feedback on their submitted assignments. At the end of the course, participants should have the ability to write a simple program to solve a non-trivial problem.

A trial involving 50 participants was successfully carried out in June 2015, and will be followed by full-fledged runs every June and December starting June 2016. Application will be open to all Junior College students, as well as Year 5 or 6 Integrated-Program students who are not doing “Computing” as a subject. This project is supported by the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore, Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (Singapore section), Science Centre Singapore, and the Singapore Computer Society.

Back to Research@SMU Issue 32