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19 November 2019

The National University of Singapore has entered into an arrangement with online education provider edX to offer courses on its platform from the year 2020.

There will be at least four massive open online courses (MOOCs) on edX next year, with plans to introduce more over the next three years.

A similar collaboration between NUS and United States-based education provider Coursera was last established in 2013. NUS’ current offerings on Coursera comprise a course each in philosophy and music, as well as one specialisation, which involves a series of courses with the aim of mastering a specific skill, in this case, intercultural communication.

Students and staff at NUS have access to more than 2,000 online courses on edX offered by about 120 institutions and partners across the world. They include top institutions like Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and University of California, Berkeley.

NUS undergraduates now have the option of counting completed online courses as part of their curriculum with the recent introduction of an initiative that lets students design part of their course components. They can earn up to four modular credits in pursuing subjects on edX as part of their Unrestricted Electives modules.

18 November 2019

Institute of Technical Education student Chow Ying Shun recently clinched first place at the F&N Drinks Creation Challenge, with her drink Call Me Peachy, which is presented in a tall cocktail glass, is orange, frothy and also a toast to strong women.

“Independent women are usually mistaken to be ‘toxic’ as they seem strong. So, I wanted to concoct a drink as a tribute and representation of their soft and sweet personalities,” said the the ITE College West Nitec in Hospitality Operations’ first-year student.

In the competition, co-organised by F&N Foods and ITE College West’s School of Hospitality, competitors had to concoct drinks utilising F&N’s selection of healthier choice beverages. This year, participants had to create the most Instagram-able mocktail.

Ting Chi Ying and Charlene Lee Yan Xuan, both 17, clinched the second and third places respectively.

The top three students won cash prizes totalling $900, while $120 worth of Fraser vouchers were given to the three winners of Best Showmanship Award and Student’s Choice Awards.

18 November 2019

Switzerland’s Ecole hoteliere de Lausanne (EHL), dubbed the Harvard for hospitality management education, is setting up a campus in Singapore in 2021.

The degree will cost 110,000 Swiss Francs (S$151,030) over four years, about five times more than the hospitality management degree offered by the Singapore Institute of Technology.

The school said it has got the EduTrust certification needed by private education institutions in Singapore to offer its Bachelor of Science in International Hospitality Management course in Singapore.

EHL Group CEO Michel Rochat said that Singapore was selected as the preferred location for EHL’s first international campus outside Switzerland thanks to its stringent educational quality standards, quality of life, stability, attractiveness to students and values.

The Singapore Institute of Technology, which takes in 150 students a year, said its hospitality management degree course is one of the most popular, with about six Singapore students vying for one place.

13 November 2019

Next year, 40 Singapore schools will be getting new principals, as part of the annual reshuffle exercise conducted by the Ministry of Education.

The rotation of principals allows schools to benefit from new perspectives, and enables experienced principals to bring and share best practices across schools”, said MOE.

Next year, first-time principals will be appointed to 21 of the schools involved in the exercise. They include Mr Kevin Pang Chin Keat, who will head Yuhua Secondary, and Madam Tey Kah Hwee, who will helm Cedar Girls’ Secondary.

Separately, Madam Haslinda Zamani, a cluster superintendent with MOE, will head Raffles Girls’ School (Secondary), while Madam Soh Lai Leng, current principal of Catholic High School, will helm the NUS High School of Math and Science.

The 40 principals will receive their letters of appointment from MOE’s director-general of education Wong Siew Hoong at a ceremony in December, in the presence of Education Minister Ong Ye Kung.

11 November 2019

Ms Lydia Tow, 25. studied psychological science at the Singapore campus of James Cook University. The insights she gleaned into human behaviour during her bachelor’s degree programme would later prove useful in her job as a creative copywriter and content developer at the creative agency Mills Design.

Ms Tow says: “I’ve always been naturally curious and interested in the why — why people perceive, think and act a certain way — so when I got the idea in my head that I wanted to study psych, it was going to happen, one way or another. Psychology is about perception, persuasion and cognition, among many other things.”

The 2018 graduate says that being able to understand the motivations of her clients’ target audiences allows her to broadly predict how they are likely to react to certain ideas.

She says: “As to exactly why I chose to pursue a career as a creative, I suppose this harks back to my love of books, creative storytelling and Disney films. So somewhere during the course of my undergraduate studies, I got lured by this siren call of wanting to create something just as engaging and capable of moving people.”

As a psychology student at JCU, she even wrote a thematic analysis on Disney princesses. Going beyond the romantic storyline, she examined the media’s influence on the formation of gender identity in children, as well as the changing role of women as seen through the lens of the Disney princesses, both classic and contemporary.

09 November 2019

Raffles Girls’ School students, along with 180 staff members and 150 invited guests, participated in the recent opening of RGS’ new campus at 2 Braddell Rise.

Now, RGS is connected to Raffles Institution at Bishan via an overhead pedestrian bridge linking bus stops on both sides of Braddell Road.

The RGS project took a total of 7 years and cost $90 million. It was co-funded by the school and the Ministry of Education (MOE).

RGS principal and alumna Poh Mun See, 50, said she was glad to have been part of this chapter of the school’s journey. She has helmed RGS since the end of 2012 and will step down in December to return to MOE as a cluster superintendent.

While the new campus is about 2.5ha larger than the old one in Anderson Road, Mrs Poh said the intake of Sec 1 students next year would remain constant at about 400.

The school has plans to expand a mentorship programme that matches RGS students with pupils of schools in the area. The school is also considering offering the Raffles Scholarship, alongside RI. The scholarship requires one-to-one matching for funds from donors.

05 November 2019

A building and a road at Nanyang Technological University have been renamed to mark the contributions of Singaporean pioneers to the development of our local education system.

The building that houses the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at NTU has been renamed the Singapore Hokkien Huay Kuan (SHHK) Building, while Nanyang Valley, a road adjacent to the Chinese Heritage Centre, will be renamed as the Tan Lark Sye Walk.

NTU president Subra Suresh said: “(The local communities’) legacy should not be forgotten by future generations of Singaporeans, even as we revel in the progress that Singapore has made in her education journey, with two top-ranked universities that are among the world’s best, and a strong research, innovation and education ecosystem.”

The SHHK Building and Tan Lark Sye Walk are next to the Chinese Heritage Centre. The nearby Yunnan Garden is being refurbished and will become an educational and recreation hub for students and the public. It will open by the first quarter of next year.