NCKU hosts workshop on online education with SATU presidents

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Tainan, Taiwan, July 22, 2014

National Cheng Kung University (NCKU), southern Taiwan, hosts a 4-day workshop on Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) as summer intensive program of the Presidents’ Forum of Southeast and South Asia and Taiwan Universities (SATU Presidents’ Forum), July 21-24.

Approximately 25 university representatives from 4 countries attended the conference, in which the issues on technology and education transformation, online learning projects and challenges of online learning in Asia will be discussed.

The opening ceremony was held at the conference room one of Yun-Ping Administration Building, Kuang-Fu Campus, NCKU, on July 21.

Dr. Huey-Jen Jenny Su, Secretary General of SATU Presidents’ Forum International Secretariat and also NCKU Executive Vice President, on behalf of NCKU President Dr. Hwung-Hweng Hwung welcomed the representatives of the participating universities to join the workshop.

“The SATU Presidents’ Forum has been organized by NCKU for more than 10 years now. It’s by annual event where we have 80 to sometimes close to 90 presidents coming to join us throughout southeast and south Asia and Taiwan,” according to NCKU Executive Vice President Su.

She also said, “We like to see this as a platform where each and every member university would have their very important and critical contribution equally to the success of the region.”

“Somewhere around 4 years ago, we started initiating some workshops with a hope to better link different clusters of the institution throughout our region and underneath that we try to design different timely issues with specific focus for different sectors of our partners and the institution, “ Su added.

Dr. Stephen J.H. Yang, Director of Department of Information and Technology Education, Ministry of Education (MOE), attended the ceremony and gave a talk on technology and education transformation in the 21st century.

Dr. Cheng-Hung Huang, Executive Secretary of SATU, Presidents’ Forum International Secretariat, who is also the Vice President for International Affairs, NCKU noted, “the workshop is aiming to emphasize current online learning trend and bring higher education into a new era.”

He also noted, “The objective of this workshop is to let our faculty from the member universities to get acquaintance with the importance of MOOCs and also to learn how to prepare a course for the MOOCs. Hopefully in the near future, some of our professors can work together to upload open courses in MOOCs system for teaching purposes for our member universities.”

In his talk, Dr. Yang helped his audience to understand the initiatives of digital learning in Taiwan by MOE in recent years. He also mentioned that in online learning the changes of courses, services and learners are inevitable.

“Starting from last year, we have over 47 universities participated and a total of 99 courses are granted by the MOE and will be offered from the middle of July,” according to Dr. Yang.

“The current development of digital learning in Taiwan is to enhance learning with digital technology that could empower the learning,” Dr. Yang said.

The 4-day workshop includes three keynote speeches and four colloquiums. Group consensus on how that MOOCs consolidate the bond among SATU members, why the platform is chosen and what the feasible plans would be will be covered.
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Provider: NCKU NEWS
Date: 20140722