The Singapore Management University’s Centre for Teaching Excellence (CTE) was one of four finalists under the Best Technological Collaboration category of the Singapore International Chamber of Commerce (SICC) Awards 2022.  

The annual SICC Awards was launched in 2015, with the purpose of recognising successful commercial collaborations, enabling companies to learn from industry peers in order to innovate, grow and sustain themselves.  It is the Chamber’s hope that each year’s worthy winners inspire other companies to understand the benefits of collaboration and to embark on their own collaboration journeys.

Under the Collaborative Innovation Award, SMU together with Datality Lab was nominated as the top four Best Technological Collaborations among participating organisations. This award honours the collaborative project that best harnesses the power of technology to positively disrupt the status quo to innovate processes, products or services and, thus, create new value for the collaborators and their customers.

The workplace is evolving at a rapid pace with conventional practices disrupted by digitalisation and recently, the pandemic. To develop future-ready graduates in the area of communication, SMU aims to develop students to become ambidextrous in pivoting from conventional communication modes to online modes. In response to the latest developments, SMU partnered Datality Lab to unlock the potential of multi-cognitive Artificial Intelligence (AI) by providing students a platform to improve their oral presentations, interview skills, English proficiency as well as instructors to build their teaching delivery skills.

As part of SMU’s EDGE: EdTech Greenhouse initiative, a pilot study was conducted to assess the effectiveness of multi-cognitive AI in providing personalised recommendations for students in a management communication class. The aim is to progressively expand this project to various scenarios.

James Foo, Associate Director, Centre for Teaching Excellence said, “With this system, students are able to practise anytime, anywhere. This lessens the load of instructors and allows students to gain access to recommendations to improve, helping them see their progression and growth in attaining certain communication competencies.”

Other award categories include the Most Sustainable Collaboration, Most Scalable Collaboration, and Most Transformational Collaboration.  The winners of each category were announced at an Awards Ceremony and Gala Dinner on 6 October 2022.