Keynotes

Keynote Speakers

We are pleased to announce that the following distinguished speakers have accepted our invitation to address the delegates at the Symposium.

	Keynote Title: Pedagogical Beliefs and Institutional Practices at Republic Polytechnic Speaker Bio		Keynote Title: Changing Perspectives on Problem-Based Learning Speaker Bio
Dr. Alwis W. A. M. Director of Academic Affairs Republic Polytechnic Singapore		Professor Henk Schmidt Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences Erasmus University Rotterdam The Netherlands
	Keynote Title: Pedagogical BIASes and PBL Speaker Bio		Keynote Title: PBL Second Life: Liminality, Liquidity and Learning Speaker Bio
Professor Dan Pratt Professor of Adult & Higher Education Faculty of Education and Faculty of Medicine The University of British Columbia Canada		Professor Maggi Savin-Baden Head of Research Centre for the Study of Higher Education Coventry University United Kingdom

Alwis W. A. M. is the main architect of RP's unique pedagogical scheme inclusive of its curricular framework, one-day one-problem procedure, problem design philosophy and student assessment system.

Prior to this, he was an academic staff at the Department of Civil Engineering of National University of Singapore and was the Director of the Computer Based Learning Centre, Coordinator of the Talent Development Programme, and Sub-Dean for Innovation and Junior Outreach. He has been actively engaged in major educational programmes organised by the Ministry of Education, such as the Science Research Programme, Singapore Science & Engineering Fair and the Innovation Programme.

In recognition of his contributions, he was awarded the Public Administration (Silver) Medal for the Singapore National Day Awards 2004.

Dan Pratt is Professor and Director of Graduate Programs in Medical Education at the University of British Columbia. Over the past fifteen years he has been conducting research on the teaching of adults in different contexts and cultures.

He is the co-author of the Teaching Perspectives Inventory (TPI), an on-line instrument that helps educators explore their views of teaching and learning.

Henk Schmidt is a professor of Psychology at Erasmus University's Faculty of Social Sciences and founding Dean of its problem-based psychology curriculum. His areas of interest are learning and memory, and he has published extensively on problem-based learning, long-term memory, and the development of expertise in medicine.

Presently, he is the Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

Maggi Savin-Baden is Professor of Higher Education Research, Coventry University and Head of Research at the Centre for the Study of Higher Education. Maggi has researched and consulted widely on problem-based learning and has published four books on problem-based learning, she has a fifth book entitled Learning Spaces, in press.