Nadya Shaznay Patel

The Play it Forward project aims to equip youth as co-creators of serious games to address societal and personal challenges. Through interdisciplinary collaboration, participants will conceptualize and develop games that foster resilience, empathy, and civic engagement. The project explores how game design can empower youth to bridge the digital divide, cultivate social cohesion, and enhance community awareness. The program concludes with a showcase at a Serious Games Festival, providing both participants and the wider community with opportunities to engage in meaningful dialogue and reflection on the societal challenges addressed in the games.

Youths face challenges such as social isolation and a lack of community engagement. Traditional support methods have limitations, leading to a need for innovative approaches that empower young people. Serious games provide an interactive platform to engage youths, helping them articulate their challenges while fostering problem-solving and resilience. This research is important as it leverages the power of serious games facilitated in UDE2001 Interdisciplinary Design Innovation module to address the societal and personal challenges faced by youth. By involving them in game design, it empowers them to create solutions to the problems they face, builds confidence, and strengthens social cohesion. The outcomes of this study have the potential to influence future pedagogical approaches.

National Youth Council (NYF)
Principal Investigator
$50,000

Entrepreneurship, characterised by innovation in problem-solving, adaptability to change, and creativity (Heinonen, 2007), and its curriculum integration in universities have been widely reported (Hahn et al., 2017). Our research investigates whether interdisciplinary learning enhanced with an AI tool can help students cultivate entrepreneurial readiness (Schillo et al., 2016). We aim to develop a conversational AI bot to be integrated with an existing web application for collaborative learning in a university-wide interdisciplinary design innovation module. The AI bot will guide students through interdisciplinary learning and facilitate collaborative teamwork as they seek to develop innovative solutions to real-world problems, potentially informing a scalable technological entrepreneurship curriculum for the university (Munoz et al., 2011). We seek to answer these research questions and address the following themes:

RQ 1a: How does participation in an interdisciplinary design innovation course, supported by a conversational AI bot and mentors from start-up businesses, influence students' entrepreneurial readiness? RQ 1b: How does participation in an interdisciplinary design innovation course, supported by a conversational AI bot and mentors from start-up businesses, influence students’ innovation abilities and collaborative skills?

MOE Tertiary Education Research Fund
Principal Investigator
$194,428.60

ALIGN (SIT), $14k
Principal Investigator
Phase 1: This study aimed to investigate students’ learning experiences and explore the affordances of blended learning in two design innovation modules piloted in AY2021 for Year 1 undergraduates across five programmes of different clusters in SIT. As part of this research, the study involved the intentional integration of critical thinking and communicating skills, in parallel with design thinking skills that were explicit and visible to students and tutors. This endeavour aimed to fulfil SIT’s Undergraduate Programme Structure (UPS) efforts to equip students with discipline-specific knowledge, skills, abilities and key transferable skills. Thus, the research investigated the effects of using critical thinking and communicating skills as a means for deep thinking and reflection so that students could apply design thinking principles, tools and methodology to build interdisciplinary skills when fostering innovation that delivers user-centric solutions. Adopting a pragmatic approach, the mixed-methods study used surveys, online seminars/learning packages, online forum discussions and focus group discussions. Data was analysed using the Community of Inquiry framework and literature-based template coding. The research findings offered discussions on factors influencing student learning and enhancing student learning outcomes, and student application of transferable critical design thinking skills in interdisciplinary work. Finally, as the research is contextualized in a blended learning environment, the study also offered reflections and proposed recommendations for an enhanced instructional model of blended learning environment that can be adopted.
Extended Phase 2: This study aims to investigate students’ learning experiences and explore the affordances of blended learning in two design innovation modules. As part of this research, the study will involve the intentional integration of critical thinking and futures thinking skills in parallel with design thinking skills, such they are explicit and visible to students and instructors. It will investigate the effects of using critical, design and futures thinking skills as a means for higher-order thinking and deep reflection so that students can ultimately apply humanity-centred principles and approaches, tools and methodology to build interdisciplinary skills when fostering innovation for real-world problems. Recommendations will be made at the end of the study for adjustments to the module design and delivery.