Texas A&M University at Qatar’s (TAMUQ) Academic Affairs Office and Information Technology Services Department hosted the Teaching Innovation with Technology Competition at its Engineering Building in Education City recently. The competition was created to stimulate the innovative use of technology for better teaching and learning experiences.
Dr Hamid Parsaei, professor of mechanical engineering and associate dean for academic affairs, highlighted the importance of technology in the classroom as a motivator for greater student achievement.
He said, “Classroom technology has a positive effect not only on learning, but also on students’ motivation, the classroom atmosphere and teachers’ willingness to experiment with new and innovative instructional approaches.”
In the competition, three proposals were awarded for implementation, and a faculty–ITS partnership was created to develop these proposals. Dr Nasser Alaeddine, Director of Enterprise Applications & Educational Technology at TAMUQ, said: “The competition provides an opportunity to prototype and assess the impact of emerging learning technologies and facilitate educational technology innovations.”
The projects were active learning via smart student response system in an engineering classroom by Dr Bilal Mansoor; interactive and collaborative mobile learning platform for engineers by Dr Konstantinos Kakosimos and software visualisation tool for learning 3D objects by Dr Bing Guo. The selection committee picked Dr Kakosimos as the winner.
TAMUQ is looking to develop this competition to evolve into a fully collaborative effort open to all Hamad Bin Khalifa University partner branch campuses in Fall 2014.
The Peninsula
