An interview with Professor Low Teck Seng

by Kim-Kyna Tan

PROFESSOR Low Teck Seng, head honcho of the latest addition to the polytechnic family, The Republic, is leading a revolution of the post-secondary education system.

And he is not your run-of-the-mill, cookie cutter career academic, mind you.

The engineer who founded Singapore’s leading national research institute specialising in magnetics and optics relevant to data storage (the Data Storage Institute) is also a technopreneur who runs his own enterprises and sits on the board of several publicly-listed companies.

As an educationist and entrepreneur who is in his element crisscrossing multi-disciplines, Prof Low must have been a natural, de facto choice for the Ministry of Education in its quest for a leader of the fifth and newest polytechnic.

Said the Principal and CEO of The Republic of the first thoughts that crossed his mind when the offer came: “I thought about the importance of the role of the polytechnic in Singapore, in nation-building, the quality of our polytechnics, and the importance of a fifth poly because of the social obligations we have to young people in Singapore in terms of the need for diversity in our tertiary education landscape,” he recounted.

“The most important thing that struck me was the opportunity to build something very exciting because the Ministry was willing to accept new ideas which was very much in line with Mr Teo’s (the then Minister for Education) management of the whole education system. The timing was also when Singapore was looking for diversity in the tertiary education sector and economically as well. I found a ministry that was receptive of new ideas, and with that, the challenge. Administratively, having run the university faculty, I saw how things could be run differently and so I took up the challenge of starting this poly,” he continued, and added with a chuckle, “I was employee number one.”

Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong made the first announcement about the formation of The Republic in his 2001 National Day Rally Speech. From 1 January 2002, RP began recruiting a handful of officers and senior management staff. The team operated from the premises of the Data Storage Institute at NUS between January and July 2002. Tasked with the mammoth mission of birthing Singapore's fifth poly, Prof Low - who credits the then Minister for Education, RAdm Teo Chee Hean for giving him the support and inspiration - began by mapping out his own vision.

“Academically, I had a vision of what our poly would be like. The challenge was to articulate this to the people I was gathering around me…for them to be able to share this vision of mine with conviction. I personally believe if anything is worth doing, it’s worth doing well with passion,” he said.

Prof Low has 20 years of experience under his belt, having taught students of all levels - from undergraduate to postgraduate, and classes of all sizes from groups of 12 to 300 in a lecture theatre. “I understand class dynamics and I’ve had years of students assessing me,” he said.

Having been there, done that, he has intimate knowledge of progressive trends of thoughts in the realm of technical education, and of the dos and don'ts - the pedagogical strategies that work and the pitfalls to avoid.

“I wouldn’t say I did. Having been involved in technical education and now given the opportunity to start up an institution of higher learning in technical education, I had to do a severe re-think and to look at all the new things that had come my way through the interactions I’ve had with a lot of technical educators in the US and Europe because of my association with IEEE,” he said in measured tone.

He added: “I came to the conclusion that we have to move away from the traditional lecture-tutorial system to one which is more student-centric with a clearer emphasis on the process without compromising on the content being delivered.”

Thus the adoption of the Problem-Based Learning (PBL) approach. In performing the due diligence, other alternatives were evaluated and then canned in favour of the one clear winning formula, PBL.

“What’s most important is to find one that works for us in Singapore. Many systems, when transported to a different locale, will fail miserably because they’re culturally irrelevant or because of a different blend of resources,” he explained.

So unwavered is The Republic's faith in PBL that it is applying it across the board i.e. 100 per cent of its curriculum -  a first for an educational institution in Singapore.

The Republic's first intake of over 800 students are empowered with self-autonomy in a learner-centred environment and steeped in contextually-relevant and just-in-time knowledge. This, rather than the mere regurgitation or memorisation of facts, better equips them for the rapidly evolving world out there. Under the PBL paradigm, and its one-problem-a-day delivery system, learning is not a utilitarian means to an end but a continuum that inculcates the values of lifelong learning.

Critics of the PBL paradigm may charge that it is unrealistic to undo years of socialisation in a conventional classroom milieu. To naysayers, this is what Prof Low has to say: “I don’t think it’s a question of undoing. I think it’s a question of moving the students to a different phase. We should be more positive and not look at it as undoing. A lecture-tutorial system does have its merits. Even today, I do contend that our system is good, if not better, but the other polys are also doing very well.

“A lot of work needs to be done but I think it’s do-able. From the start, I also had the view that we cannot build this poly ourselves - with the staff and resources from the government. That’s why from the point I started my team, we started working with industry and visiting companies, and by February this year, we already had 33 partner companies. We need industry and the community to build this,” he added.

The PBL modus operandi is reinforced by a wireless and paperless system which streamlines and optimises all organisational and administrative processes.

"The key for us is to exploit the synchronous time we have with the students and the asynchronous space. We should take advantage of the asynchronous space for them to continue learning and interacting. It’s the same thing for management. If we are e-connected, it doesn’t matter where we are. If you look at trends of technology, this is something you cannot escape. Computing will be pervasive. We also make full use of it for our administration and infrastructure because of our paperless approach," he said.

Aligned with Singapore's aim of nurturing its cultural capital and becoming the renaissance arts hub of the region, both The Republic's interim campus in Tanglin and its permanent home in Woodlands will be transformed into an epicentre for arts and culture. There will be a flowering of events and activities that will inject verve, variety and spice into campus life.

Said Prof Low: “The great opportunities today are at the interfaces of disciplines. Where does science end or begin and arts end or begin? We even talk about 'the art of technology' these days. I think we’re evolving into a world where the multi-disciplinary nature of systems and events makes it impossible for us to compartmentalize subjects. Because of that, it’s important for The Republic to move away from the traditional lecture-tutorial system based on subjects to a more interactive and integrative learning environment we have in RP. We have a system which is better placed to meet the challenges of the environment we are entering or have entered.”

In an epochal age where time and space have been conflated to the span of a nanosecond; where man has been to the moon and back innumerable times, and humans can be cloned in part and in whole, the New Economy warrior needs to be highly adaptable and technically competent. The diploma-holders and graduates of today are confronted with new and unnerving global realities which are altering the rules of engagement in the blink of an eye. More and more blue and white collar jobs are being shifted to low-cost regional production powerhouses like China and India.

“I’ve always held the view that the system we have has an over-emphasis on analysis, and because we classify things into different boxes, the students learn all the tools. A tool can be used for dismantling and understanding. But tools are actually very important for putting things together and providing a solution. This synthesis, as opposed to analysis, is not a strength in our system. It does not come out so obviously in a lecture-tutorial system whereas in a PBL-based approach, this is a natural consequence because students are always seeking solutions. And because the teaching is contextual, it’s easier for the students to relate to. If they see a problem, they know how to integrate information and synthesise solutions,” said Prof Low.

Turning his attention to the rows of books lining his study, many of them familiar literary works such as Sun Tzi's Art of War and Edward de Bono's Tactics, Prof Low picked out Clock Speed by Charles H. Fine and said: “50 years ago, technological changes were very slow and you didn’t need to relearn many things and you learnt things slowly. But today, technology changes at a rapid pace, and habits and paradigms in businesses change. In the face of these changes, the workplace changes too. Given this scenario, it’s important that our workforce is flexible, agile, adaptable and confident.”

Pausing for a moment to reflect, he added: “They will also need certain attributes to have this philosophy of continuous learning and upgrading. If you look at the PBL process, they’re learning all the time. The process of learning is at the centre of the pedagogical system we have adopted.”