The results of the initial stage of the Teaching Support Platform (TSP), a digitalized campus, developed by TKU were on display at the Future of Higher Education Exhibition hosted by the College of Education last week. The project of TSP started in January this year and is currently used by 121 teaching staff, which has fulfilled the goal of at least one teacher per department, the short-term goal of this project.
The Information Processing Center revealed that those 121 teachers all have a lively and fun webpage. For example, Pei Chau-pu, a lecturer from the Department of Spanish uses a group photograph as her platform, which gives rise to various activities, all wrought with a Spanish passion. In addition, she set up a virtual ‘self-study center’ aiming for mid and final-term exams. It is intended to help her students to discuss and prepare themselves in the relevant areas. Su Shwu-yann, an assistant professor from the Department of Russian, on the other hand, divided her web space into smaller groups for her students to use as their own creative space. Non-language subjects are also designed with similar passion and zest. Chen Jui-guey, an associate professor from the Graduate Institute of Future Studies, for example, injects free spirit and energy into his webpage, which is a perfect link to other useful sites. The forward-looking attitude of the institute is best expressed by having the motto “Pioneering a Better Future” flashing over the screen, to demonstrate him and his students’ unyielding commitment to future development. As for the Department of Mechanical and Electo-Mechanical Engineering, Professor Wang Yin-tien established a Robotic Laboratory to do research on all relevant issues concerning robots.
The platforms used by these teachers from all departments at TKU have been docked on the university webpage subsequently over the course of this year. Each teacher is offered 300MB of space to develop into his/her own virtual classroom which enables learning anyway and anytime. The Director of the Information Processing Center, Huang Ming-da, pointed out that when all teachers put their key contents of teaching on the platform, it will become a ‘digital library’, which will in turn, facilitate more search on other relevant topics on the web in the future. Above all, when teachers’ contents of teaching become transparent on the web, it will certainly deepen the effect of learning and encourage open interaction between faculty and students.
Next year, the Center will approach its medium-term goal, which is to put all 4500 subjects taught at the university on the web. It aims to support all teachers, including those of Military Training and First Aid, 470 plus full-time and 660 part-time teachers to ‘extend’ their classroom to the web. In order to achieve that and fulfill the ‘Deep Learning in a Digital Age’ strategy of the university, the Project Development Section of the Center will provide professionals and Division of Instructional Technology will be responsible for arranging courses/workshops. Teachers and staff, who would like to be informed about the know-how, can attend the workshops the Division has organized, which are open for maximally 30 participants. They have planned more than 10 of them and three have been held successfully so far. The organizer pointed out that the responses to these workshops were overwhelming, so that nearly all these three workshops were overbooked. However, these workshops can at most act as an introductory course, which contains basic information regarding constructing and operating a platform. As for data input and storage as well as the aesthetic effect of the website, those are up to the teachers themselves. There are still six more workshops to go, so whoever is interested, please contact Ms. Fang (extension: 2161) of the Division of Instructional Technology for details.
