Applied Research and Industry Collaborations
CPC faculty actively collaborates with industry partners and professionals from partnering universities to conduct research studies that contribute to the community and co-create solutions that improve businesses and industrial processes.
Research Projects
Developing 21st Century Skills of Marine Industry in the Metaverse
Project Duration: February 2023 to April 2025
PI: Asst Prof Kenneth Ong.
Co-PIs: A/Prof Kenneth Low, Asst Prof Lee Hwee Hoon, A/Prof Mark Teo, Asst Prof Radhika Jaidev
Key Focus: To develop a metaverse programme that promote 21st century professional skills for staff of Sembcorp Marine. The metaverse programme is a web-based interactive application that consists of virtual reality (VR) problem-based gamified scenarios that simulate real-life interpersonal interactions specific and customised to the marine engineering workplace. These problem-based scenarios will test and develop critical thinking, problem-solving, communication skills, team management and leadership skills in addressing interpersonal conflicts, ethical dilemmas and miscommunications. The scenarios will be adapted from interview findings with stakeholders representing three job experience levels with the two companies - the entry-level/intermediate, mid-level and senior/executive-level, as well as small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) that are sub-contractors of Sembcorp Marine. The scenarios will also be accompanied by notes on the case studies, feedback on resolution decisions and effective oral and written communication strategies.
CLASIC Project Grant: Tools for Story-Reading / Telling for students with Special Needs
Project Duration: October 2022 to September 2023
PI: Asst Prof Radhika Jaidev
Co-PIs: Asst Prof Kenneth Ong, Asst Prof Lee Hwee Hoon, Senior Lecturer Erick Tan, Asst Prof Muhammed Fauzi Bin Abbas, Asst Prof Alex Qiang Chen
Key Focus: This collaborative project aims to develop a mobile prototype application that performs storytelling in an interactive and gamified manner for children with special needs. Faculty from the Centre for Communication Skills (CCS) and ICT Cluster will collaborate with interventionists from AWWA School to identify the needs of such children. The storytelling app will be designed with these needs in mind such that it facilitates both teacher-directed and learner-directed vocabulary learning and assessment. For this prototype app, two stories will be created focusing on the learning of vocabulary, though we hope to add more stories of varying levels of difficulty in future to be developed by SIT Speech and Language Therapy students. Unlike commercially available storytelling apps for children, the narratives in the storytelling app will incorporate references to Singapore’s local context such as kopitiams, mamak shops and shared common spaces like void decks that are unique to Singapore. In the learner-directed mode, the personalized and intelligent app will also record and track the child learner’s responses to vocabulary questions, as well as diagnose the child learner’s receptive vocabulary via a digitalized Peabody Picture Vocabulary test. As the app expands its pool of stories in future iterations, it will predict and prescribe stories of appropriate vocabulary learning difficulty to the child learner.
ALIGN Grant: Development and Evaluation of an Intelligent Application for the Communication Helpdesk & Library Research Consultation Service
Project Duration: September 2022 to July 2023
PI: Asst Prof Kenneth Ong
Co-PIs: Asst Prof Radhika Jaidev, Asst Prof Nisha Jain, Asst Prof Padma Rao, A/Prof Vivek Balachandran, Mr Azlan Bin Ithnin, Ms Joan Wee Jee Foon, Ms Kimmy Xing Yidong
Key Focus: Our project aims to develop and evaluate an intelligent application for the Communication Helpdesk and the SIT Library’s research consultation service. Currently, both services rely on a third-party web-based software, WCOnline, that have various constraints that limit learning efficacies of peer tutoring and librarian-student consultations. A prototype web-based application for the Communication Helpdesk was developed by a team of 4 ICT students that have the following features: fine-grained tutor-tutee matching, automatic and integrated feedback function for both tutors and tutees, Zoom API wrapper that retrieves Zoom meeting details and a chat function that tutors and tutees can use to communicate last-minute changes to tutoring sessions. However, in order to optimize the learning efficacies of both services, the prototype application needs to be expansively developed as a mobile and web-based application to become intelligent and personalized to every user, harnessing user data to predict and prescribe both tutoring sessions for the Communication Helpdesk as well as research consultation sessions for the SIT Library. We believe this proactive approach via the intelligent application would boost student take-up rates for the two services. The proposed app would also increase timeliness of feedback on students’ learning and boost learning gains in academic writing, self-regulation and motivation.
Exploring VR Conferencing Tools for Collaborative Learning Activities
Project Duration: January to December 2022
PI: Asst Prof Nisha Jain
Co-PIs: A/Prof Tan Chek Tien, A/Prof Lee Chien Ching, A/Prof Jeannie Lee and A/Prof Karin Avnit
Key Focus: This Centre for Immersification and CoLead project investigates how off-the-shelf VR conferencing tools can be used to achieve the best learning outcomes in a structured classroom team activity conducted in consumer VR HMDs.
ALIGN Grant: Training Physiotherapy Students in Clinical Questioning and Reasoning Using AI
Project Duration: September 2021 to March 2023
PI: A/Prof Lee Chien Ching.
Co-PIs: A/Prof Malcolm Low, A/Prof Benjamin Soon, Asst. Prof Lu Li Ming, Asst Prof Lee Hwee Hoon, Asst Prof Nadya Patel, Senior Professional Officer Selvakulasingam Thiruneepan
Key Focus: This research project aims to train physiotherapy students in clinical questioning and reasoning using AI. The features in this tool consist of semi-scripted practice conversations between a physiotherapist and patient to determine a clinical diagnosis using open-ended questions based on given scenarios. Feedback is provided at the end of each practice session for students to improve their performance.
ALIGN Grant: Developing Critical Thinking and Professional Communication Skills in Academic Literacy Across Five Different Degree Programmes
Project Duration: September 2021 to current
PI: Asst Prof Radhika Jaidev
Co-PIs: Asst Prof Kenneth Ong, Senior Lecturer Brad Blackstone, A/Prof Lee Hwee Hoon, Senior Lecturer Erick Tan and Asst Prof Nadya Patel
Key Focus: The study aims to examine the transfer of critical thinking skills in students’ written and oral communication in the assessments of the Critical Thinking and Communicating (CTC) modules, contextualised in discipline-specific content, within five participating pilot programmes in SIT. These programmes are Robotics Systems, Digital Communication and Integrated Media, Physiotherapy, Pharmaceutical Engineering, and Speech and Language Therapy.
Communication Practices Among Healthcare Professionals Working in Acute Clinical Settings
Project Duration: September 2021 to current
PI: Asst Prof Radhika Jaidev
Co-PIs: Asst Prof Kenneth Ong, Senior Lecturer Nazarene Ibrahim, Sabrina Koh Bee Leng, Deputy Director Nursing, Sengkang General Hospital
Key Focus: This is a joint study between CCS faculty and healthcare practitioners in Sengkang General Hospital. The study aims to help identify possible communication challenges that nurses working in acute care settings may encounter. The study outcomes could potentially assist CCS to scope module content that addresses potential communication challenges likely to be encountered by nurses in acute care settings in the Singapore context.
Outcomes and Impact of CCS Communication Skills Application Using Microlearning.
Project Duration: September 2020 to January 2022
PI: A/Prof Lee Chien Ching
Key Focus: The research investigated the impact of the communication skills micro-modules that have been developed by CCS on students’ communication skills in terms of career readiness, interpersonal skills and managing meetings.
Exploring Variability in the Development of English Academic Writing Ability
In collaboration with Prof Wander Lowie (University of Groningen)
PI: Asst Prof Rosmawati
Key Focus: This project focuses on exploring variability surrounding the developmental trajectories of students’ mastery and use of syntactic features of academic writing in English. Underpinned by the Complex Dynamic Systems Theory, this project applies tools and methods inspired by this theory to trace and explore the non-linear development pathways of syntactic complexity constructs in students’ writing to understand the underlying process of changes as manifested in those texts.
Measuring Multifractality in English Text
In collaboration with Prof Wander Lowie (University of Groningen)
PI: Asst Prof Rosmawati
Key Focus:
This research project threads into an under-explored territory of fractal linguistics. While the concept of fractals is more known to those in the hard science fields, the very existence of fractals transcends disciplinary boundaries and is prevalent anywhere in nature - you can find them in the forest, in the river network, in snowflakes, in cauliflowers, and inside our own body (in our vein structure). Even in an abstract such as language, fractals exist. In the study of fractal linguistics, evidence has been put forward to demonstrate fractality in language - by proving that the distribution of linguistic constructs follows the power-law relationship. However, the nature of this fractal property of language has not been explored beyond this relationship. Furthermore, considering the way natural languages are used, it is highly likely that language is a multifractal structure (instead of a mono-fractal). This study sets out to test this hypothesis and explore the nature of multifractality in language. As an exploratory study, it focuses on English texts first before moving on to other languages.
English Language and Communication Classes in Higher Education
In collaboration with Prof Emeritus Marjolijn Verspoor (University of Groningen)
PI: Asst Prof Rosmawati
Key Focus:
This book project is an upcoming edited volume that showcases English language/communication courses in tertiary education institutions around the world. Courses (or modules) on English language and communication skills are prevalent in many universities and institutes of higher learning around the world. In English as a medium of instructions (EMI) institutions particularly, these courses are frequently part of the curriculum for students regardless of their disciplines/major specialisations.
An example is the ubiquitous first-year writing course that is now near mandatory in almost any tertiary institution across the globe. The approach taken in the implementation of these courses, however, varies from institution to institution and country to country. Therefore, there is a need to put together a volume that maps the landscape of these courses, focusing on curriculum design innovations, instructional strategies, classroom challenges, assessment practices in the teaching and learning process. The book identifies themes and pedagogies used, discusses challenges, and shares the team’s reflection on the teaching and learning practice in these courses.
Industry Projects
CAC Immersion for Lecturers from the School of Life Skills & Communication (LSC), Singapore Polytechnic (SP)
Two CPC faculty members, Senior Lecturers Chris Bedwell and Nazarene Ibrahim, are working on a knowledge and expertise exchange project with lecturers from LSC, SP. The project aims to encourage both parties to learn and understand the communication challenges that students face before and during their time at university. The exchange of knowledge and skills expertise will be beneficial in course design, pedagogy and assessment in both spheres.
IWSP Corporate Coaching & Mentoring Programme
Dr. Lee Chien Ching was the trainer of the IWSP Coaching and Mentoring Workshop (Day 2), organised by NACE@ SIT.
Participants gained insights into how to craft learning outcomes and the principles of good assessment in workplace training and learning. They learned how to design simple rubrics to assess competencies, including technical and transferable skills, and how they can add value to the workplace as workplace trainers based on SIT’s applied learning model and the workplace learning framework.