Page 25 - Ideas
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Associate Professor Tan Swee Liang uses a variety of
innovative technology-based teaching tools in her
Introductory Economics and International Economics
courses. She is also actively involved in research on
technology adoption in education. As a faculty member
in the School of Economics and the Director of the
Centre for Teaching Excellence, Swee Liang feels
privileged to have had the opportunities to explore and
innovate in her teaching, and to be able to leverage the
insights she gained to catalyse pedagogical change
within the SMU teaching community.
Setbacks that paved the path for innovative teaching
Having worked in the financial sector, Swee Liang has
never been short of industry anecdotes and practical
examples to share with her appreciative students. What
proved to be a stiffer challenge was ensuring that her
students were able to grasp, appreciate and apply the
TAN Swee Liang more technical theoretical concepts in the economics
Associate Professor of Economics textbooks. Although her anecdotal examples provided
School of Economics helpful contexts for more meaningful understanding of
Singapore Management University concepts, she noted that the gap between the two
(concepts and anecdotes) still stumbled many a student.
“Be curious on how to solve students’ pain points and They enjoyed listening to anecdotes but the nuanced
they will benefit from your innovation.” connections with the theoretical concepts were
sometimes lost on them. “The feedback from the
students in the initial years showed I was not engaging
students as well as I would have liked, and in areas where
it mattered more,” she recounted. “This was one of their
