Published: February 2019
By Dr. Aida Hazlin Ismail, Ts. Mohamad Ridhuan Mat Dangi, and Dr. Shukriah Saad
Rapid changes and advancement of technology have increased the importance and pervasiveness of digital environment in our life. Technology advancement has also revolutionized the education landscape where many students and educational institutions embrace digital technologies such as computers, laptops, internet and myriads of mobile devices. This revolution does not only enable students to quickly and easily access a huge range of digital resources and services but also use them effectively (Al-Htaybat, Von Alberti-Alhtaybat, & Alhatabat, 2018). In an educational perspective, digital teaching and learning are described as important tools used by educators who employ any technologies in their teaching practices (Voogt, Erstad, Dede, & Mishra, 2013). With this technology, it creates a vast amount of opportunities in a learning environment in terms of enhancing communication, promoting active learning and knowledge construction, and ensuring effective and efficient operational practice and processes, student engagement and delivery of content (Al-Htaybat et al., 2018).
The use of technology in education is inevitable because of the market demand for 21st century technological skills and competencies. Moreover, the world today is moving towards Industrial Revolution 4.0 (IR4.0). The trend of automation and data exchange in the manufacturing sector is becoming more common. Even administrative departments in universities are not excluded from being part of this revolution (Al-Htaybat et al., 2018). Countries across the world including Malaysia realize this potential and are striving forward to keep pace with this movement. It is hoped that one day Malaysia will be able to achieve the status of a developed nation with its people equipped with high technological skills and knowledge.
2018 is a year of digital transition within the education arena in Malaysia. In line with the aspiration of the Vice Chancellor of UiTM, Emeritus Professor Dato’ Dr. Hassan Said in his 2018 keynote speech, the Faculty of Accountancy has been one of the leading faculties to introduce the digital education applications to their faculty members. With the support from the Dean and Deputy Dean of Academic, the Faculty’s Department of Academic Affairs has initiated five workshops for the lecturers on the education digital applications. The workshops conducted were as follows:
During the workshop sessions, Mr. Mohamad Ridhuan Mat Dangi – as the speaker, Dr. Aida Hazlin Ismail, Dr. Shukriah Saad, and Associate Professor Noorbijan Abu Bakar – as the facilitators, conducted hands-on presentations and provided extensive guidance on the use of all the digital applications. The workshops were conducted at the computer laboratory at Level 4 of the Faculty of Accountancy. The first workshop session held was the MRMD Digital Board and MRMD Digital Catalogue – QR Code. This session emphasized how the lecturers can create the QR codes for all the teaching materials they planned to use during the semester. These QR codes can be posted on their teaching board outside their rooms. Alternatively, lecturers can also create a catalog with all the teaching materials pasted together in a sheet of paper. This QR catalog can be shared with their students at the beginning of the semester. The QR catalog can reduce the usage of paper for photocopying the lesson plan and syllabus of the subjects.
The second workshop was a hands-on session on the usage of Nearpod Application called the Live Presentation – Nearpod. Nearpod is an application that can be used in the classroom with the same function as the LCD projector. However, instead of looking at the screen in front of the classroom, students can view the PowerPoint presentation slides on their smartphones. The students need to download this application and enter the keyword to join the class session. This application is very useful especially when the classroom LCD projector is not functioning well.
The third session was the Hello to PLICKERS!, which is useful for educators to change from the commonly used traditional quizzes to interactive online quizzes, which engage students to be more active in a group discussion. The quiz is projected on a screen and the students are only required to show their chosen answers based on the given Plickers! codes, where educators can scan them and the student’s answers, are recorded. By using this application, it can save paper usage since it is in a digital platform, while educators can save their time from having to mark the assessment manually as the system will produce the result and report automatically.
The final workshop was the Digital Attendance Using Apps. This application can be used to record the attendance of the students digitally. The application is either used via SAM (Students Attendance Management) or QR code. SAM can also provide information such as the percentage of attendance for individual student and comparisons between classrooms.
Besides conducting workshops for the lecturers, the FACT Digital Committee has also conducted a series of workshops for the administrators at the faculty. Two workshops were conducted on the E-Document Sharing, Virtual Card (V.Card), QR code application, Visualizing Infographics, Live Presentation, and Digital Attendance. All of these applications are expected to help the administrators carry out their tasks more efficiently and effectively. For example, information can be disseminated to the faculty members or students more conveniently and economically by displaying the QR codes on the information board in front of the Faculty’s office management.
Digital applications are expected to provide many potential benefits to their users. More specifically, the digital education applications provide new teaching and learning tools that are believed to assist educators in conducting their classes more effectively. As the millennials and coming generations are seen to demand for more technological and digital approaches embedded in their learning experiences, the traditional ‘paper and chalk’ teaching method might soon be irrelevant. Accordingly, it is high time for us as educators to equip ourselves with the digital education knowledge and skill to be employed in our teaching delivery so that we are all ready to welcome the new generations to the university and to our faculty. JOM DIGITAL!
