ITx 2018 Speakers

Keynotes and Speakers for ITx 2018

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Sunitha Prabhu

Waikato Institute of Technology

Sunitha is originally from India and has over 20 years’ experience teaching Information Technology in New Zealand.

She is currently a Senior Academic Staff Member in the Centre for Business, Information Technology, and Enterprises (CBITE) at Waikato Institute of Technology (Wintec).

Sunitha completed her Masters in Computing and Mathematical Sciences at Waikato University, a Bachelor of Engineering (Electronics) Degree at Marathwada University, India. She specialises in lecturing Mathematics, Programming, Databases, and supervises IT projects at CBITE-IT.

Comprehensive learning incorporating Ako – A Tertiary Education Approach at Wintec

Wednesday 11:00am - 11:30am, CITRENZ Conference (CITRENZ 1 Room)

This article outlines the design and implementation of a scenario-based approach to teaching and learning in tertiary education, inspired from Ako, adopted at the Waikato Institute of Technology (Wintec). This learning approach, titled ‘Comprehensive Learning (CL)’, aligns with the holistic objective of enabling students with an active, flexible, personalised, authentic and practical approach to learning that builds upon students’ interests and experiences.

The article explains the motivation and the process used in creating and applying this approach to teach some of the IT and Business modules. The main reason to implement this approach is to encourage/enable critical thinking while learning in a continuous and personalised manner.

CL allows students to specialize in a context of their choice, which in turn induces learning. In addition, students are less motivated to plagiarize due to the unique nature of their scenarios, and inherent safeguards present within the approach.