BUKA for Better Learning

An exciting project, called BUKA, is currently being undertaken by OUM’s Centre for Research and Innovation (CRI). We sat down with CRI Director Assoc Prof Dr Thirumeni Subramaniam one evening to talk about it.

Q: Hi, Dr Thiru. Could you tell us what is BUKA?

Dr Thiru: It’s a research project funded under the European Erasmus+ programme. It involves support for capacity building and sharing of resources from European countries to Asian countries in the field of open and distance learning. On the European side, we have Tampere University of Applied Sciences (TAMK), which is the project leader, and Dublin City University (DCU) from Ireland. The Asian partners are OUM and Wawasan Open University from Malaysia, Universitas Terbuka and Universitas Negeri Padang from Indonesia, and University of the Philippines Open University and Mindanao State University – Iligan Institute of Technology from the Philippines.

Q: What is BUKA about?

Dr Thiru: It’s about promoting the use of inclusive learning design and analytics to improve the teaching and learning process. This is to be achieved by training the academics. For OUM, we also chose to focus on skill-based training and universal design principles. We have academic staff from both education and non-education backgrounds. This project will enable the latter to have a better view of education theories and current principles in design, especially for inclusive digital learning.

Q: How is the project being conducted?

Dr Thiru: We began with a pilot project and then started developing a module. It contains six chapters. The first five touch on learning theories, pedagogical approaches, learning designs, multimedia design elements, and learning analytics. The final chapter involves a small skill-based project which enables academics to develop open educational resources (OER) and license their work using Creative Common licences.

Q: Who are the OUM staff conducting this project?

Dr Thiru: Besides me, there’s Dr Md Rosli Ismail, a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Education, Rohaizak Omar, the Director of the Accreditation of Prior Experiential Learning (APEL) Centre, and Assoc Prof Dr Nantha Kumar Subramaniam, the Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Technology and Applied Sciences. As the project lead for OUM, I have been involved in the project’s proposal writing, management, and development and the delivery of the pilot project. The pilot project is supported efficiently by the administrative work carried out by Ruhil Imal Mustafa, a CRI staff. Dr Rosli handles the focus groups while Rohaizak manages the evaluation processes and Dr Nantha promotes learning analytics.

Q: Who are the project respondents?

Dr Thiru: The initial batch comprises 12 academics from the Faculty of Technology and Applied Sciences and 10 technical support staff, using the focus group approach. After we have involved a total of 40 staff from all faculties, we will move on to conduct workshops for other faculty members using a workshop model.

Q: Earlier this month, a trip was made to Finland and Ireland. Could you tell us about it?

Dr Thiru: The BUKA project requires a visit to every partner. We had started the project in late 2019 and were supposed to visit TAMK in 2020 but it had to be put on hold due to Covid-19. So, this year, we visited both TAMK and DCU. At TAMK, we visited and learnt about its skill-based labs and virtual labs while at DCU, we took part in presentations and visited groups that worked on learning design. They also had challenge-based learning, which we found interesting. The visit also included monitoring all pilot projects through an audit process that was carried out by two external auditors, who gave positive feedback.

Q: As you said earlier, the project began in 2019. When is it scheduled to end?

Dr Thiru: Next year. We are currently working on improving embedded instructional designs in the module so that it can become a completely self-instructional module. After that, we will try the module with part-time tutors, depending on the support we get. It may involve all tutors or only tutors for two education programmes, Bachelor of Teaching (Primary Education) and Master of Education. Once that stage is completed, we could extend the project to teachers. It will be conducted fully online.

Q: What will be the outputs of this project?

Dr Thiru: Capacity-building of academic staff and OER resources for OUM courses. We promote cooperation among academics working on common subject areas and flexibility in using a wide range of learning theories, pedagogical approaches, and learning designs to create OER materials for their students. Their efforts will be published as case studies. The OER can be used to replace the YouTube references that are currently being used in learning materials. OER are more permanent as they are attributed to the OUM staff who developed them.

Q: Thank you for the explanation, Dr Thiru. We look forward to covering future developments of the project.

Dr Thiru: Welcome. That would be great.