Transforming Teaching and Learning in Higher Education - A Chronicle of Research and Development in a Singaporean Context

This book chronicles the journeys of educational researchers and academics who have engaged in research and development to improve teaching and learning at universities. It highlights the research evidence, approaches, and in many cases, the journey of transformation rather than prescribing certain principles of and approaches to effective instruction. In other words, it not only describes the destination, but also various pathways leading toward it. Further, it focuses on mechanisms for improving the approaches discussed, rather than simply determining whether one works better than the other.  As such, novice and seasoned academics and teaching staff in higher education will benefit from this book, not just from the teaching and learning approaches it highlights, but also from the insights into the respective journeys. The research and development methods and approaches discussed here will also appeal to researchers working in teaching and learning in higher education.





Associate Professor Seng Chee Tan was among the pioneers who helped to set up the Centre for Research and Development in Learning (CRADLE) at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He was a Deputy Director of CRADLE@NTU from 2015 to 2016 and Acting Co-director from 2017 to 2019. Dr. Tan received his Ph.D. in Instructional Systems from Pennsylvania State University and joined the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University in 2000. Prior to his appointment at CRADLE, he served in a number of roles promoting the use of ICT in education, including as Head of the Learning Sciences and Technologies academic group at the National Institute of Education (NIE), Singapore, and as Assistant Director of the Educational Technology Division, Ministry of Education. His research interests include Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning, knowledge creation in education, and teacher education. He is the first editor of the book 'Knowledge Creation in Education' (Springer), published in 2014 and the first author of the book 'Pushing the frontier: A cohesive system-wide approach to integrating ICT into education' (Springer), published in 2017.

S.H. Annabel Chen is a Professor of Psychology at the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences and holds joint appointments at LKC Medicine and the NIE. She is a clinical neuropsychologist (licensed in Clinical Psychology, USA; Singapore Registry of Psychologists) by training and has worked with both adult and child populations. She received her doctorate in Clinical Rehabilitation Psychology from Purdue University in Indianapolis. After completing her clinical psychology internship in Behavioral Medicine and Psychiatry at West Virginia University School of Medicine, she went on to pursue a postdoctoral residency in Clinical Neuropsychology with Neurology at the Medical College of Wisconsin. She subsequently worked as a postdoctoral research affiliate at the Lucas MRS/I Center of Radiology at Stanford University School of Medicine, and as an Assistant Professor at National Taiwan University's Clinical Psychology Graduate Program. She joined NTU in 2008 and served as the Associate Chair of Research at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences before becoming the Acting Director of CRADLE. Her research interests include higher cognition in the cerebellum, ageing neuroscience, deception neuroscience and education neuroscience.