What is an E-Learning Professional?

This paper begins by giving definitions of professionals and professionalism. A brief introduction to the characteristics and traits of E-learning professionals in the context of E-learning is also provided. The paper concludes with competences/skills that Elearning professionals need to have; technology, communication, research and practice related skills to bring together experience and knowledge on E-learning into everyday practices. [ABSTRACT BY AUTHOR

Ownership Of Technology-enhanced Learning- An Argument

This paper argues for learners now have ownership of technology-enhanced learning (TEL) as supported by literature. The literature reviewed gives arguments in favour of ownership of technology enhanced learning (TEL) now are the responsibility of learners. The paper also draws some important implications for practitioners in the teaching and learning context. Insights gathered support the implications in the context of teaching and learning in an ODL environment. (Abstract by author

"Building Core-Competencies for Sustainability through Leadership and Teamwork - the Experience of a leading ODL Institution's Star Faculty

Malaysia’s quest for achieving the status of a developed nation and increasing competition in the workforce has spurred working adults to enroll in higher learning institutions. Due to work and time constraints, most of these learners have chosen to opt for open and distance learning where they can engage in their studies while continuing to work at the same time. Open University Malaysia, as the leading ODL institution in the country, strives to fulfill its learners’ expectations while at the same time trying to forge ahead with limitations in terms of workforce, technological changes and increased competition faced by most ODL institutions. Taking these limitations in mind and realising that its future sustainability lies in its core competencies, the university’s Faculty of Business and Management has undertaken a massive move to build these competencies. Through sheer hard work and determination, the faculty has risen to be a “star” faculty in the university – showing improvements in terms of quality assessment and learning materials matched with an increase in student numbers and student satisfaction. This study shares their experiences and their secrets to success. Theirs is a journey of transformational leadership and teamwork, where two leaders lead from the front and behind - propelling a strong team towards a journey that will lead to the future. (Abstract by authors

Conjugate Product Graphs for Globally Optimal 2D-3D Shape Matching

We consider the problem of finding a continuous and non-rigid matching between a 2D contour and a 3D mesh. While such problems can be solved to global optimality by finding a shortest path in the product graph between both shapes, existing solutions heavily rely on unrealistic prior assumptions to avoid degenerate solutions (e.g. knowledge to which region of the 3D shape each point of the 2D contour is matched). To address this, we propose a novel 2D-3D shape matching formalism based on the conjugate product graph between the 2D contour and the 3D shape. Doing so allows us for the first time to consider higher-order costs, i.e. defined for edge chains, as opposed to costs defined for single edges. This offers substantially more flexibility, which we utilise to incorporate a local rigidity prior. By doing so, we effectively circumvent degenerate solutions and thereby obtain smoother and more realistic matchings, even when using only a one-dimensional feature descriptor. Overall, our method finds globally optimal and continuous 2D-3D matchings, has the same asymptotic complexity as previous solutions, produces state-of-the-art results for shape matching and is even capable of matching partial shapes

Transforming learning through strategic management case studies : OUM's on-line alternative

Engaging learners has become a major topic of discussion amongst academicians as many employers in the corporate sector have voiced their complaints regarding the employability of local graduates. Our local graduates are said to lack critical thinking skills and analytical abilities. Taking this in mind, the Faculty of Business and Management of Open University Malaysia has embarked on an ambitious project to engage learners using case studies in Strategic Management. The use of cases as a tool to develop critical thinking and analytical abilities have long been used by renowned business schools such as Harvard Business School in the United States and Curtin Business School in Australia. OUM’s Faculty of Business and Management has gone a step further to transform learning for its students – the Strategic Management course is going to be offered fully on-line where the faculty’s academicians will engage in case discussions with learners from anywhere in the country at any point of time. The use of cases, supplemented by learning materials, Power Point slides and videos will foster a more engaging learning environment where learners will experience real-life scenarios, make decisions and formulate strategies in the shoes of CEOs. This paper will share the faculty’s plans and implemented projects for the transformation of BBPS4103 Strategic Management. (Abstract by authors

Isometric Multi-Shape Matching

Finding correspondences between shapes is a fundamental problem in computer vision and graphics, which is relevant for many applications, including 3D reconstruction, object tracking, and style transfer. The vast majority of correspondence methods aim to find a solution between pairs of shapes, even if multiple instances of the same class are available. While isometries are often studied in shape correspondence problems, they have not been considered explicitly in the multi-matching setting. This paper closes this gap by proposing a novel optimisation formulation for isometric multi-shape matching. We present a suitable optimisation algorithm for solving our formulation and provide a convergence and complexity analysis. Our algorithm obtains multi-matchings that are by construction provably cycle-consistent. We demonstrate the superior performance of our method on various datasets and set the new state-of-the-art in isometric multi-shape matching