Prof. Dato’ Dr. Mazliham Mohd Su’ud, MMU President was featured at the Times Higher Education Digital Universities Asia Conference at Hilton Kuala Lumpur on 10 May 2023, speaking in a panel entitled “Extended reality in higher education: Where is it going next?”. Prof. Dato’ Dr. Mazliham was optimistic that extended reality (XR) presents endless possibilities for universities to engage students in a more versatile, creative, individualised and more importantly, effective manner that will undeniably re-shape the future of university education.
He also shared some of MMU’s forays with XR in the form of nanotechnology laboratory experiments that were developed by our innovative Faculty of Creative Multimedia (FCM) academics during the COVID-19 lockdown to allow our students to conduct their experiments remotely whilst experiencing the MMU nanotechnology laboratory via XR technology.
The President opined that the main challenge that all universities face in embarking on XR in teaching and learning is to train and re-train all academics to be familiar with the pedagogical aspects of embedding XR in the classroom. The success of realising the full potential of XR is dependent on the ability of universities to ensure that academics are competent with XR from a pedagogical perspective. He envisaged that the future of XR is bright as it opens new frontiers for universities and academics in bringing higher education to more people in a more engaging manner.
Also featured in this conference is the Director of Centre for Learning Excellence and Academic Intelligence (LEARN), Prof. Dr. Wong Chee Onn who spoke in the panel “ How to design online learning with students” together with 2 MMU students – Mr. Lum Jinn Min from the Faculty of Computing and Informatics (FCI) and Ms. Tan Huey Shyh from the Faculty of Cinematic Arts (FCM) . In this panel, they spoke on how students would like to learn and in turn, contribute to the curriculum design process and how universities could engage their students better in the curriculum design process be it at the programme or course level.
They also shared their MMU experiences in developing the ‘Build Your Own Curriculum’ or BYOC model that allows students to curate their programmes and how student feedback provided invaluable input for the HyFlex and Hy Space teaching and learning spaces on campus that enabled more engaging technology-enabled learning experiences for students during the COVID and post-COVID phases.
The Digital Universities Asia conference from 8 to 10 May 2023 in Kuala Lumpur gathered nearly 300 education leaders, experts, industry partners and policymakers from across the globe convening to discuss the future of digital-first higher education for Asia and showcased the latest start-ups and technologies that will transform universities and equip them with the skills to accelerate transformation at scale.
