About

A common theme that unites the contributors to this blog is their association with the Asian International College (AIC). Headquartered in Singapore, AIC serves the local market and the region through the flexible delivery of programmes in Education and Management via the two schools that bear this name, together with the Centre for Professional Development which focuses on executive development type courses.

In all these programmes, there is a heavy emphasis on the needs of the 21st Century learner and how the learning environment might be moulded to accommodate diverse learning styles and increasingly mobile lifestyles. As a result, the learning that takes place is qualitatively different. There is a focus on deep learning rather than surface learning, where students are encouraged to be active participants in their knowledge construction rather than be passive recipients of information.

The rationale for this participatory pedagogy is that, in the knowledge economy, information is literally at our fingertips. The critical skill is to validate this information and turn it into useable knowledge; knowledge that stays with you, because you learn how to learn (and, indeed, how to un-learn!) Rapid technological change requires this.

Herein lies the theme for this blog. We are interested in learning designs and associated pedagogies that test students’ powers of analysis and problem-solving skills and not their memories.

We call it future-proof learning … learning that lasts.