Using data to set up a classroom for one
30 Aug 2024
Research and data enthusiast, Ms Clarice Sim, harnesses digital tools and data insights to customise learning experiences. The curricula that she has developed cater to diverse levels of readiness, enabling bite-sized progress and meaningful progress.
Ms Clarice Sim is a Teaching and Learning Mentor at Singapore Polytechnic’s Media, Arts and Design School, and a recipient of the 2024 President’s Award for Teachers.
Ms Sim calls herself a “misfit” in Singapore Polytechnic’s Media, Arts & Design (MAD) School. While most professionals in the creative fields tend to dwell on artistry, she sees the synergy between artistry and data, and leads a signature pedagogy that leverages data to further artistic ventures.
Inspiration: She used to know only one way to solve problems – to walk away
Ms Sim did not set out to be an educator. Her heart was set on law school, till her applications were rejected. She felt lost, and unsure of the next step. She soon realised that she did not know how to overcome setbacks.
“I resorted to changing fields, companies, and interests, several times in the early part of my career whenever I hit a roadblock, as that seemed to be the only problem-solving method I knew,” she says.
When she eventually landed on what she felt passionate for – communications research – she found the courage to carve out a career as an educator in the discipline. In her new role, she knew exactly what she wanted to equip her students with – the skills and confidence to tackle whatever life brings.
Transformation: ‘Students shouldn’t be tested in their comfort zones’
Drawing from her own journey, Ms Sim knows that students learn best when they venture outside their comfort zones. This motivates her to provide opportunities for students to learn through “productive failure”, where challenges are not avoided, but welcomed as avenues for growth.
“It’s about planning tasks in class that are at the correct level of challenge for them,” she explains. “Things should always be a little bit tougher and a little bit uncomfortable.”
To calibrate difficulty levels according to individual students’ needs and readiness, Ms Sim spearheaded the use of Data-enabled Flipped Learning (DEFL) in MAD School. In traditional flipped learning, educators are freed from teaching content in the classroom; instead, they can utilise lesson time to deepen understanding through discussions or activities, after students have completed self-directed learning at home. DEFL takes this a step further. By gathering data on students’ progress in online assessments, surveys and polls, Ms Sim customises her lessons to cater to individual needs, effectively creating a classroom of one.
“It’s about pitching the tasks at the correct level of challenge for them. Things should always be a little bit tougher and a little bit uncomfortable. And that’s what I strive for.”
Escape the Classroom is one such example. By gamifying her Research and Strategy lessons through a Microsoft Excel-based game, Ms Sim progressively challenges her students’ knowledge of statistical formulae and skills, encouraging them to learn at their own pace.
Ms Sim complements her data-driven pedagogy through other curricular innovations, aimed at stretching students’ capacity in safe and nurturing settings.
The Creative Entrepreneurship “bootcamp”, for instance, challenges students to embrace an entrepreneurial mindset. A pioneering initiative that condenses a semester’s worth of learning into an intensive three-day simulated marketplace challenge, students attend bite-sized lectures on basic marketing skills, before developing and pitching their product concepts to peers. Students hone their skills of opportunity recognition, comfort with risk, and communication, in a collaborative setting that encourages innovation and experimentation.
Beyond the bootcamp, Ms Sim also leads the school’s Project Core modules, where MAD students of all specialisations – from game designers to story writers – step outside of their comfort zones to launch evidence-based/data-driven innovations. Beyond conducting research to develop their ideas, students also have the opportunity to present their work to industry partners. Through the experience, students are compelled to step out of their comfort zones, to try their hands at cross-cutting competencies, and glean insights into the transdisciplinary demands of the professional world.
Reflection: Let’s use data to enhance teaching and learning
As a Teaching and Learning Mentor, Ms Sim also guides other lecturers to enhance their mentorship and pedagogical skills. This includes the design of better surveys to assess student achievement and lesson effectiveness. With her strong background in quantitative research, Ms Sim leads them in navigating analytics dashboards and interpreting student data.
Above all else, she advocates for the purposeful use of data, to enhance teaching and learning efforts.
“It is very important to me that we gather data with the clear purpose to support learning. We should seek to understand students’ challenges and strengths, and use the information to enhance their learning experiences. In addition to building the dashboards, we must devote as much or even more resources to what we do in the classroom to reinforce learning.”
This is also why Ms Sim proudly tells her students that she has the perfect job, where she can marry her interest in data with an understanding of human behaviour, to prepare the next generation for the future.
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