Oct 22 2015
Nanyang Technological University (NTU) has launched The Hive, the centrepiece of its new learning pedagogy known as the flipped classroom. In this new model of learning, students access course content on their own and the face time with professors in class is devoted to team-based learning.
NTU targets to convert at least 150 courses in the first year, with a third of them already completed. About 1,500 courses will be converted within five years using this new pedagogy. It will spend about $75 million implementing this new approach to learning.
Designed to support this new way of learning, The Hive has done away with traditional classroom layouts with its 56 curvilinear smart classrooms that are equipped with the latest technologies. NTU has in the last three years converted most of its tutorial rooms into smart classrooms. A second learning hub with more smart classrooms is being built and will be ready by 2017.
Professor Bertil Andersson, NTU President, said, “In education, we are going from Gutenberg to Google and the next-generation professor is Professor iPad or Professor Smartphone. Digital devices and online media have changed the way the young acquire knowledge. The Hive will reinvent the learning experience and also create a unique social space for students from all disciplines to interact.”
The Hive was officially opened this morning by Mr Ong Ye Kung, Acting Minister for Education (Higher Education and Skills).
Designed by top UK designer Thomas Heatherwick, the man behind the London Olympic Cauldron, The Hive will support NTU’s ambitions in pushing the frontiers of innovation in learning and sustainable building design.
“This is a university building like no other. It defies the norms of traditional university buildings and redefines them with its iconic shape and unusual use of space. Within its iconic shape and classroom structure lies the future of learning in Singapore,” said Professor Andersson.