Participation at the 2024 Global Chinese Teaching and Learning Symposium

I was invited as one of the keynote speakers at the Global Chinese Teaching and Learning Symposium, led by Fudan University with co-organisers from nine other Chinese universities.

My talk centred on “Deploying simulations to bridge the theory-practice divide for learning facilitation in business courses”. This talk is based upon my Scholarship in partnership with Dr Edwin Rajah, another member of ITLSIG who works at Otago Polytechnic in New Zealand. Our work focuses on exploring MBA students’ perceptions of using the web-based marketing strategy simulations in their learning with three objectives:

• to assess if the business simulations supported student engagement and participation.
• to evaluate if the business simulations supported the development of higher order critical thinking capabilities.
• to explore if the business simulations supported the development of soft skill for the participant.

The key takeaways that I shared with colleagues during the talk include the advantages and drawbacks of using simulations in teaching and learning. Simulation games offer many benefits; however, this approach should not be treated as an exclusive tool for teaching and learning, rather it needs to be linked to learning outcomes and used as complementary to other traditional methods to achieve the teaching and learning outcomes. The session was conducted using Chinese language. Despite being fluent in Chinese, it took me several hours to put the slides together as I had to translate everything from English to Chinese. I realised the difficulty of switching from one language to another, especially where some key technical terms are used.  The session was live streamed in two platforms and recorded for playback as well. I thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to participate at the Symposium, and I am delighted to be one of the pioneering speakers in the collaboration between ITLSIG and other Higher Education Institutions across the globe.