Wharton QS Stars Awards 2014: Reimagine Education bestow the “Oscars” for innovation to institutions around the world
In a global competition meant to inspire, and of course reward, those institutions with innovative approaches in higher ed to enhance learning and student employability, two lucky institutions were each awarded $25,000.
The “Wharton-QS Stars Awards 2014: Reimagine Education,” took place on December 9th in Philadelphia after having received submissions from 427 universities and enterprises from 43 countries. Overall, there are 21 awards judged by a panel of 25 international experts–a ‘who’s who’ of higher education, says QS.
QS Quacquarelli Symonds, publisher of the QS World University Rankings, has developed this global competition in partnership with The Wharton School SEI Center of the University of Pennsylvania to highlight innovative best practices that better meet the higher education needs for today’s diverse student body.
“QS recognizes that world university rankings cannot measure the incredible innovations in learning solutions taking place in universities and enterprises around the world,” said Nunzio Quacquarelli, managing director of QS. “’Wharton QS Stars Awards: Reimagine Education’ is our answer. We want to shine a light on the very best learning and employability solutions around the world, for the benefit to current and the next generation of students.”
The overall award has a prize fund of US $50,000, offered by IELTS, and the judges decided it should be shared by two overall winners:
- PaGamO, the worlds’ first multi-student social game (National Taiwan University) in which students compete to amass virtual land and wealth by answering questions correctly; they can then buy defenses to protect themselves from monsters and other competitors. This platform is popular for teaching probability in Chinese, teaching math to K-12 students in the U.S., teaching dentistry to U.S. Ivy league undergraduates, and has been adopted by a fortune 500 company to teach management and leadership.
- PhET Interactive Simulations (University of Colorado Boulder) provides interactive animations to teach students fundamental scientific principles. Over 130 simulations have “already inspired over 45 million students around the world,” notes QS.
(Next page: Winners in other innovation categories)
Winners of other Wharton-QS Star Awards 2014, include:
| Enterprise Awards | |||
| Winner | ForClass: Driving Student Engagement through Accountability |
For Class Ltd. | USA |
| Students learn better when they are engaged – both in the course content and class discussion. Engagement remains a constant struggle for professors across disciplines. ForClass has developed a solution: a single tool that drives student engagement through accountability, while streamlining content distribution, student assessment and classroom management for faculty – the first and only tool to combine these three elements. | |||
| Runner up | African Management Initiative | AMI | Kenya |
| The African Management Initiative, AMI, is a pan-African social enterprise that empowers African managers & entrepreneurs through practical as well as accessible learning and coaching tools. They have developed the first online social learning platform in Africa, designed for an African context – low on bandwidth and with mobile in mind, partnering with Africa’s top business schools and practitioners to develop world class content. | |||
| 3rd place | Labster: Virtual Laboratory | Labster | Denmark |
| In teaching science, one meets challenges like, the high number of students combined with budget limitations, high failure rates in passive learning such as lectures, expensive laboratory costs, and low learning efficiencies with cookbook methods. At Labster these problems are circumvented by introducing students to a virtual laboratory, in which they are invited to investigate and resolve life science case stories. This 3D virtual laboratory is built based on real life topics that students can easily relate to, and can be used by teachers as a supplement or an alternative teaching method. | |||
| 3rd place | Career Exploration: The Gamification of an Undergraduate Sport Management |
North Carolina State University | USA |
| The Gamification Module created within Moodle, an open source learning management system, was designed to actively engage as well as motivate students while improving their academic achievement and satisfaction with a distance education undergraduate course in sport management. This has been designed to assist students in the process of making career choices and developing the skills required for career advancement. | |||
| E-Learning Awards | |||
| Winner | PaGamO, the worlds’ first-ever multi-student social gaming | National Taiwan University | Taiwan |
| As the first-ever MOOC made in Chinese, this is a multi-student social gaming platform called ‘PaGamO’. This platform allows thousands of students to compete on the same map by occupying territory through problem solving. Not only can one win land, but one can have problem based battles with others, creating monsters, and taking other students land. This program is easily adapted to insert problems from any subject matter or language to facilitate learning. | |||
| Winner | PhET Interactive Simulations | University of Colorado Boulder | USA |
| Designed to address the need to improve K-20 science education for US and world, as numerous reports call to increase the number of students pursuing technical fields and prepare graduates to enter the technical workforce, and lead technical innovation. PhET has developed over 130 research-based interactive simulations, emphasizing connections to the real world, make the invisible visible, and include the visual models scientist use. They are easily translated and able to be run both on or offline. | |||
| Runner up | Studio by Purdue | Purdue University | USA |
| Dedicated to increasing student success by supporting the creation of technologies that transform the student experience, Studio by Purdue empowers faculty by enabling new pedagogical strategies, communications, and student engagement. The program prides itself in continually challenging the classroom paradigm while encouraging exploration into areas that classrooms have traditionally cut out of instruction. With broad applicability across subjects and adaptability for each course, this has change the teaching approach. | |||
| 3rd place | Enhanced E-learning through utilization of mobile learning | Yeungnam University | South Korea |
| Yeungnam University was the first university in Korea that started utilizing mobile learning as an alternative to take credit courses, launched in 2011. The mobile learning enabled students to take and review their courses anywhere and at any time with smart phones. In last three years, 958 mobile-based courses have been offered and 160,355 students from 95 different universities have been taking these for credit transfer. | |||
| Hybrid Learning Award | |||
| Winner | Developing & Stimulating Young Engineers: Simulations, Collaborations, & Creations | University of Utah | USA |
| The early learning curriculum has been transformed through the implementation of a new freshman design laboratory, coupling online content & simulations, engaging lectures, as well as proven hands-on, collaborative techniques. The course features a blend of different project and assignment forms, including a collaborative project between freshmen and seniors, which is designed to assist students into eventual employment and progress. | |||
| Runner up | “Principles of Policy Analysis”blended course | Delft University of Technology | Netherlands |
| The design of this course leverages cutting edge technology, innovative educational methodologies, and extensive student input to transform students’ learning experiences. Students become intricately linked to the design of their own learning journeys, with a level of teacher interaction that directly responds to student difficulties in the moment. Students take responsibility for their own education, and the level of student success as well as satisfaction has risen has a result. | |||
| Runner up | Blended MOOC and On-campus learning | Hong Kong University of Science and Technology / Hong Kong Virtual University Program | Hong Kong |
| The program was established in 2005 with the goal of creating a virtual campus that is able to provide students around the world with the broad range of course possibilities offered by universities in Hong Kong. It is designed to improve the transition to higher education, offer a range of classes not available at one’s home institutions, give graduates a variety of lifelong learning opportunities, and provide feedback to teachers. | |||
| 3rd place | Case based collaborative learning | Harvard University | USA |
| Case Based Collaborative Learning (CBCL) expands upon the characteristics and goals of team based learning, accomplishing student readiness, individual testing and group consensus. This is done through case presentations generating student responses, questions prior to the students’ class attendance, and group evaluations requiring one answer to be given. This stems from the idea of guided exploration with hypothesis generation. | |||
For a complete list of awards, click here.
Material from a press release was used in this report.
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