Dion Goh (PI), Lim Ee Peng (co-PI), Theng Yin Leng (Co-PI), Chang Chew Hung, Kalyani Chatterjea, Zhang Jun & Sun Ai Xin.

Email: chewhung.chang@nie.edu.sg

The project will conduct research and development in mobile tagging, focusing on the creation, management, analysis and discovery of mobile tags consisting of media elements (e.g. images, video), keywords and other supporting metadata attributes. The specific objectives are:

1. Techniques for tag analysis and discovery. A central contribution of this project is the development and evaluation of techniques for analyzing and discovering tags generated by users. Research in this area will center on user profiling and object/people recommendation using social network analysis techniques, and others drawn from the text mining literature.
2. Models for mobile tags. Crucial to the tag analysis and discovery effort is the data captured by the mobile tags themselves. Research will focus on the multimedia and contextual attributes describing both basic (individual) and composite objects and people.
3. MobiTOP prototype. The resulting algorithms and models will be integrated and demonstrated via the development of the MobiTOP (Mobile Tagging of Objects and People) system that realizes our vision of mobile tagging. In addition, an important contribution will also be the user interfaces that will be developed for mobile tagging. Here extensive user evaluations will be conducted on different design alternatives.
4. Deploy and evaluate MobiTOP in the education domain. MobiTOP will also be deployed and evaluated in the context of the education domain, focusing in particular, on building a community of learners centered on geography education.

Source of funding: A*STAR

Project Duration: Jan 2007 – Jan 2010

Yan Liu (PI), Elisabeth Bui (co-PI), Michael Jacobson, Chang Chew Hung

Email: yan.liu@nie.edu.sg

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) provide a technology and method to analyse and visualise information about the Earth. This technology can be used to provide a learning environment through real world problem-solving to facilitate students’ analytical and reasoning skills in a number of subject areas, including geography, humanities and social studies, Earth and environmental sciences, history, information technologies.

Previously research conducted at NIE provided an insight into the current status of GIS-based education in Singapore. A GIS package called EduGIS was developed and introduced into schools as a teaching and learning aid. Following on from that, the current research endeavours to introduce problem-based learning (PBL) into the secondary school education using GIS technology. Various problem-based activities with a local orientation will be developed which are to be structured in line with the current curriculum in geography. The PBL pedagogies will be implemented in a selected school to observe the performance of students. The main goals are:

• To evaluate the effectiveness of GIS technologies in facilitating PBL;
• To assess students’ learning outcomes through GIS-based PBL activities; and
• To evaluate how the learning of knowledge and skills occurs in PBL using GIS.

To achieve the main goals, the following objectives will be achieved in the order of sequence:

• Develop problem-based learning resources using GIS. These learning resources will integrate knowledge and skills outlined in the new geography syllabus;
• Establish a GIS-based learning environment to implement problem-based learning at selected school/junior college;
• Supervise and observe the behaviours and performances of students in their problem-solving activities; and
• Monitor and analyse students’ performances and learning outcomes and compare their learning outcomes with other students using traditional teaching approach.

Source of Funding: LSL Research Grant

Project Duration: Aug 2006 – July 2008

Yan Liu (PI)
Email: yan.liu@nie.edu.sg

The increased rate of post-War (1946-1964) natural population increase give us the baby boomer generation: 1.11 million of them in Singapore in 2000, which account for 33.9% of its total population. This is a very large ageing population, with the first of the generation reaching their retirement age of 65 in 2011. There is great interest in the lifestyle, migrations, demands and needs of baby boomers as it has significantly different characteristics to previous cohorts. Understanding the demographic profiles and spatial movement of baby boomers has many far-reaching policy implications for all aspects of our society – economic, social and environmental.

Using geographical information system (GIS) technology, this project will investigate and map the various demographic profiles of baby boomers in Singapore as well as their spatial diversity, concentration/isolation and migration over time. The impact of baby boomers on health and aged care services now and until the last cohort of boomers reach their retirement age in 2030 will be evaluated and analyzed. By associating the spatial diversity of baby boomers with the provision of health and aged care facilities in Singapore, GIS will be utilized to plan for the intensified demand on health resources to meet the needs necessary to maintain productive and independent living of baby boomers.

Source of Funding: AcRF

Project Duration: Nov 2006 – Oct 2007

Ooi Giok Ling (PI)
Email: giokling.ooi@nie.edu.sg

A milestone in Singapore’s practice of Chinese medicine was achieved when legislation was first proposed to require practitioners to be licensed. While not putting Chinese medicine on par with modern medicine, the new policy measure certainly indicates some recognition of the continuing importance of the role that Chinese medicine is contributing to health care delivery.   The research involves surveys of practitioners and clientele which will provide updated information on the practice and use of Chinese medicine.  The research that has already been conducted suggests that in spite of rapid development seen in health care infrastructure and services delivery in high income countries such as Singapore, Australia, United States and several European countries, the use of alternative medical systems like Chinese medicine, persists.  While the ways of organising Chinese medical practice and its use by patients have changed over time, the reasons for its persistence appear to have remained.  There are strengths in the medical knowledge that have proven the ability of Chinese medicine to contribute to primary and preventive health care in China as well as countries around the world to which the practice has been transposed either by Chinese migrants or business firms and the international trade in Chinese medications.

Source of funding: AcRF
Invited Conference Paper: `The Political Economy of Health Care – Role of Chinese Medicine’ Workshop on `Healthcare in Malaysia,’ 9-11 September 2004, Asia Research Institute, NUS, Singapore.

Chang Chew Hung (PI), Lim Ee Peng (PI), Kalyani Chatterjea, Dion Goh Hoe Lian and Theng Yin Leng
Email: chewhung.chang@nie.edu.sg

The World Wide Web today provides users access to extremely large number of web sites many of which contain learning objects of high education values (Sumner, Marlino, 2004).  Web pages may be designed such that various tools of the web may be used to complete a learning task. These web pages may contain a set of instructions that will lead students in a step-by-step manner in completing the task or they can be completely open-ended in that only the learning task is given. As the web also serves as a global network of servers for user communities to create and share learning objects, these resources may be organized in a manner which allow the users to take control of their choice of resources, choosing ways of representing and using the resources, creating new resources and even developing their own learning strategies.  Learning objects here refer to carefully edited and organized text, HTML and other multimedia objects that could be used directly or indirectly in the learning process.  For example, web pages and image files at a website documenting environmental issues related to water conservation are some kind of learning objects.  In this project, we propose to develop a meta-portal for harnessing distributed Geography learning objects and providing the essential tools to support problem-based learning.  This research extends our current research in G-Portal (Liu, et al., 2003, Liu, et al., 2004)  The research tasks include analyzing the content of those Geography related educational websites, constructing a community-driven review system for creating metadata and managing them, developing a object sharing mechanism to access remote learning object repositories making it possible to conduct advanced search and visualization over the distributed learning objects, and enabling the transduction of these educational content into students’ personalized project resources.

To conduct this research, we first need to tap on the metadata resources and domain knowledge of educational websites previously constructed by various Geography communities.  Examples of such metadata repositories include DLESE (https://www.dlese.org) and ADEPT (https://piru.alexandria.ucsb.edu/) (Champeny, et al. 2004).  Based on these metadata, we would like to analyze and organize the websites’ content further and make them more searchable and viewable.  Finally, these advanced search and visualization functions can be integrated with the pedagogical practices of Geography education.

Source of funding: CRPP

Kho Ee Moi (PI), Edmund Lim Wee Kiat & Merennage Radin Fernando
Email: eemoi.kho@nie.edu.sg

This project will capture a glimpse of a vanishing part of Singapore’s social and cultural heritage for the posterity. The small but significant Jewish community in Singapore has received little scholarly attention despite the important roles the members of this community have played in all spheres of life in multi-cultural Singapore.

This project will create a rich source of information on the Jewish community and its culture. We have already begun gathering first-hand oral and visual information supplemented by descriptive information from sources not easy to find. This data base will be very useful for educators, learners and general public interested in social and cultural development of Singapore. We shall deposit copies of this data base at national institutions involved in preservation and dissemination of information on the national heritage.

The project will produce educational materials including a small monograph based on the material collected.

Source of funding: AcRF

Kenneth Lim  (PI), John Hedberg (PI), Kalyani Chatterjea (PI) 
Email: kenneth.lim@nie.edu.sg

This study focuses on how the social software of the mobile internet, such as text messaging and picture messaging, is used by teenagers in the process of constructing negotiated and shared understandings of unfamiliar environments in which they find themselves.

To this end, the study was constructed such that students were given opportunities to collaboratively explore and navigate unfamiliar environments using the technologies of the mobile internet, as well as to engage in debate, and use multimedia evidence recorded in the field to defend their positions both to peers in the field and in the classroom, regarding various issues of concern to these environments, with specific links being made to their studies in geography.

Source of funding: CRPP

Peter Freebody (PI), John Hedberg (PI), Christine Chin (Co-Investigator), Tan Helen Doreen  (Co-Investigator)
Email: kenneth.lim@nie.edu.sg

The project relates directly to recent initiatives of the Singapore Ministry of Education (MOE) on ‘Extended Learning Tasks’ and on the use of ICTs in school learning. The term Digital Curriculum Literacies (DCL) refers to the use of ICTs within the Curriculum, in particular, as they support knowledge acquisition and production in multiple modalities and call upon varieties and combinations of literacy capabilities.

The general questions this research suite will address are:

DCL I: How do teachers guide students in their ICT-related project work through their classroom interactions? How can that guidance be improved?

DCL II: How do students engage in on-line extension tasks? How can that be improved?

DCL III: How do students construct and craft their assessable ICT-related projects? How can the linguistic/textual and multimodal features of those outcomes be improved?

Source of funding: CRPP

Chang Chew Hung (PI), John Hedberg (PI), Teh Tiong Sa, Lim Ee Ping, , Dion Goh Hoe Lian and Theng Yin Leng
Email: chewhung.chang@nie.edu.sg

In this project, a Java-based web portal will be developed to host geography related resources and metadata relevant to junior college level geography education.  Basic search and navigation services will be provided on the geography content to allow teachers and students to quickly locate the materials useful in their teaching and learning processes.  In the search and navigation sessions, geography content can be selected and downloaded onto the client PCs for further processing.  The geography web portal will be realised as a Java applet that can run on any web browser using the Schools’ or home PCs.  This proposed work extends a web portal prototype system known as G-Portal which has been developed in an earlier digital library research project.

Source of funding: CRPP

Kalyani Chatterjea
Email: kchatt@nie.edu.sg 

Collaborators: Tommy Wong Sai Wai (CEE)

Increasingly forested areas are becoming recreation grounds for the urban population of Singapore. In response to these changing recreational demands, and also to develop more environmental awareness among the population, the forested areas of Singapore are being opened up to human traffic. Several trails have been laid out within the forest to help the visitors venture into the otherwise inaccessible areas. This increased human traffic into the forested areas is expected to have many adverse effects, one of them being the heavy trampling of the surface and the associated soil erosion along the walking paths. In order to alleviate and manage such adverse effects the forest management has introduced boardwalks in some of the areas while others are still served by bare walking trails.

This project plans to study the conventional unsealed walking trails and the erected boardwalks in a part of the Central Water Catchment of Singapore to examine their comparative effectiveness in reducing visitor impact and the resultant erosion potential on the protected forest slopes.

Data, collected from field sites, will provide location specific relevant database, which can be useful for further considerations for sustainable management of forest inroads.

The study will compare the design parameters of the walking trails and the boardwalks and evaluate the relative efficiencies of the two types of inroads in securing a sustainable management strategy for the forest trails, whereby the forest environment is protected while providing the much sought-after access to the public.

Based on the findings the study will also provide some guidelines regarding the suitability, construction and site layouts for the boardwalks and the walking trails.

Source of funding: AcRF

Xuan Zhu, Tan Geok Chin
Email: ivy.tan@nie.edu.sg

Xuan Zhu and Ivy Tan from Humanities and Social Studies Education are studying the current status of GIS-supported education in Singapore Secondary Schools and developing a prototype GIS tool and data kit for school geography teaching and learning. With funding from the Academic Research Fund (AcRF), they are investigating the current GIS-based teaching activities in secondary schools, identifying major issues and challenges faced by school teachers in the use of GIS in classrooms, and developing a new GIS resource kit which is more closely related to the secondary school geography syllabus in Singapore.

Source of funding: AcRF

Kevin Blackburn, Karl Hack
Email: kevin.blackburn@nie.edu.sg

Kevin Blackburn and Karl Hack from Humanities and Social Studies Education are researching how the fall of Singapore has been remembered since 1942 by different groups - the British, Australians, Japanese, Indians, and the various ethnic communities of Singapore and Malaysia. The version of the past being recalled has varied depending who is doing the remembering. The history of the fall of Singapore is a political battleground of contesting interpretations of the past presented by the competing nationalities and ethnic communities involved in the conflict of 1942. All have remembered the sacrifices of their war dead in different ways, according to their own rituals. Fully documenting this multicultural mosaic of memories of a pivotal historical event has not been attempted before, and the project should thus add understanding of the construction of memory in history. This is especially relevant in the local context of Singapore and Malaysia. In these countries, national interpretations of the event and its consequences have emerged to try and transcend different ethnic memories of the fall of Singapore and the events that followed. The research has been partly funded by an AcRF grant from Nanyang Technological University; and it has been assisted by co-operation and consultancies with the Singapore Tourism Board and the Sentosa Development Corporation.

Source of funding: AcRF

Chang Chew Hung  
Email: chewhung.chang@nie.edu.sg 

Collaborators: Michael Williams (LST)

Learning on the World Wide Web potentially frees the student from spatial and temporal constraints in learning. However, before one takes the deep plunge into using the web for learning, one must consider if the use of Web will affect learning at all. But this question assumes that we can measure the effect of the web on learning. However, when learning is viewed in the constructivist paradigm, outcomes may not be explicitly measured as there aren't any objective outcomes at all - each learner constructs knowledge uniquely. Rather education researchers may want to examine how the web and learners interact. This project will explore how learners interact with the web? Constructivist learning may be regulated or guided through scaffolds and WebQuest fulfills this role of a learning scaffold, allowing different degrees of scaffold/guidance through the webquest design. Although much has been proposed about WebQuest's capabilities in the literature, little empirical research has been done to actually study the effectiveness of the use of WebQuests in learning. This study will look into how different levels of scaffold incorporated into the WebQuest design, the interaction between the learner and the web will be different. In addition, students and teachers' perception on using WebQuests as web based learning tools will also be studied.

Source of funding: AcRF

 
Wong Shuang Yann
Email: shuangyann.wong@nie.edu.sg 

Singapore has successfully restructured its industries by attracting inbound investments via providing a stable and competitive environment at home that continuously appeal to foreign investors. The capital, technology, skills and marketing know-how necessary for the rapid take-off and industrialization of Singapore have thus been brought in to compensate for its limited resources. However due to changing patterns of world competition and structural recession in the developing economies, a more strident outward-looking strategy facilitating overseas investment by Singapore firms through globalization and regionalization has to be pursued as stated in the Strategic Economic Plan of 1991. To minimize costs and retain its competitiveness in the rapid changing world markets, Singapore has relocated many of its noncompetitive industries in other countries, disaggregating stages of production and consumption across national boundaries under the organizational structure of densely networked firms or enterprises. Most studies on Singapore investment abroad or on China tend to be economic in nature focusing mainly on investment performance, sectoral distribution, output and management. There is a lack of studies and adequate understanding of the casual factors and the processes that lead to the emerging pattern of spatial division of labour which Singapore is capitalizing on to strengthen its competitiveness. The current investment projects of Singapore in Wuxi and Suzhou industrial park serve as examples to reflect the genesis of such spatial processes and patterns.

Source of funding: AcRF

Ivy Tan
Email: ivy.tan@nie.edu.sg

Collaborators:  Christine Lee and Shlomo Sharan (Tel Aviv University, Israel)

This study is a school-based experiment which evaluate the effects of the Group Investigation (G-I) method of cooperative learning versus the effects of regular instruction on students’ academic achievement and on their motivation to learn. Nine classes of secondary two students in geography (five classes from Express stream and four classes from Normal (Academic) stream) of two schools will participate in the nine-week experiment. All students exposed to the Group Investigation method are expected to have a greater degree of intrinsic motivation to learn and a deeper level of understanding of the significance of the environmental issues they will study than will their peers from classes conducted with the current methods of instruction.

Source of funding: AcRF

Christine Lee (PI), Mary Cherian, Maureen Ng, Rahil Ismail, Jasmine Sim , Chee Min Fui
Email: christine.lee@nie.edu.sg

This study aims to gain a deeper understanding of the social interaction of primary school children in Singapore especially their experience of multiracial relationships. More specifically, it seeks to examine (i) children’s perceptions of “self” and “other”; (ii) their intra- and inter-racial friendships; and (iii) the ways in which these play out in day-to-day social interactions at school. Qualitative and quantitative data were collected from six neighbourhood primary schools. Naturalistic observations of children in these schools were carried out in informal settings over a period of six months and a sociometric survey was administered to over 4000 children. Focus group discussions with teachers and students and interviews with school administrators helped the research team to make sense of the data and to develop recommendations The findings of the research were presented at a Research Forum on Ethnic Relations organized by the Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) in October 2002 and the Asia-Pacific Education Conference in June 2003.

Source of funding: IPS.

Michael Ian Bird, Chang Chew Hung, Teh Tiong Sa
Email: chewhung.chang@nie.edu.sg

Michael Bird, Tiong Sa Teh and Chew Hung Chang from Humanities and Social Studies Education are researching the detailed history of sea-level rise in the Singapore area since the end of the last ice age. With funding from the Academic Research Fund (AcRF), and with the co-operation of the Land Transport Authority, the National Parks Board and National Museum they are collecting sediment samples from excavations that are currently underway for the new MRT lines in the CBD and in Paya Lebar, as from remaining modern mangrove areas around the Singapore coast. These samples, which represent ancient mangrove deposits up to 10,000 years old and now up to 7 metres below modern sea-level are being radiocarbon–dated to provide a precise sea-level history for Singapore. This record can ultimately help in the prediction of current and future changes in sea-level in the Singapore region that are the result of the human-induced greenhouse effect as well as shed new light on the rapidly changing geography of Sundaland after the lend of the last ice-age.

Source of funding: AcRF

Michael Ian Bird, Chang Chew Hung, Teh Tiong Sa
Email: chewhung.chang@nie.edu.sg

Much of lowland and offshore Singapore is blanketed by a mix of terrestrial and marine sedimentary units that have been deposited during periods of fluctuating sea level. While the distribution of these units have been mapped previously have been virtually no attempts to develop an absolute temporal framework for the sediments on which much of Singapore's infrastructure is constructed. This study aims to built upon an earlier pilot study to develop an absolute chronology for the major quaternary sedimentary units of Singapore using radiocarbon dating by accelerator mass spectrometry, optically stimulated luminescence dating, stable-isotope mass spectrometry, pollen analysis and sediment analysis. The result of the project will be the development a high-resolution sea-level curve for the last deglacial period (post-18,000 years ago) and a better understanding of the environmental history and geomorphic development of Singapore. A high-resolution sea-level curve can assist in predicting the effects of future sea-level rise on Singapore by quantifying the rate of neotectonic uplift/subsidence. In addition, a high-resolution sea-level curve will assist in testing the hypothesis that the region was in fact part of a 'cradle of civilization' from which people were subsequently forced to disperse west into the 'old world' and east into the Pacific, as sea-levels rose rapidly ~8,000 years ago. The project also aims to train students in the areas of applied geomorphology and environmental reconstruction as well as begin the development of GIS-based aids to teaching the environmental history of Singapore and the region.

Source of funding: AcRF

Kalyani Chatterjea  
Email: kalyani.c@nie.edu.sg

The development of this courseware in Geomorphology for In-service training is a part of the In-service upgrading provided by HSSE and has been in response to requests by MOE. The web-based component is specially built on a hybrid platform, custom-devised to suit specific domain requirements of heavy graphic usage. This hybrid system of in-service course in Geomorphology is in line with the the national initiative of life-long learning in an IT-enabled learning environment. The course has been show-cased in several IT exhibitions organised by Ministry of Education as well as by NTU.

Source of funding: AcRF

Please contact Dr. Kalyani Chatterjea at kchatt@nie.edu.sg for the password to access the course Click here to view the course

Wong Tai Chee  
Email: taichee.wong@nie.edu.sg

The study examines land-use change in Singapore over the last 50 years initiated by a political leadership pursuing persistently to modernise its space economy. On the basis of an economic priority model strongly associated with world trade, land use cover of the city-state has witnessed a dramatic change. Areas investigated include land-use planning concepts, slum clearance and redevelopment in the Central Area, island-wide developments in housing, industries, infrastructure as well as parks and recreation.

Source of funding: AcRF

Publications arising:

1. Wong T. C. (in press) Singapore and the Interdependent World: Implications for Social Studies, Times Publishing, Singapore.  


2. Wong T. C. (2001) The Transformation of Singapore’s Central Area: From Slums to a Global Business Hub? Planning Practice and Research (UK), article scheduled for publication in issue Volume 16, No. 2.


3. Wong T. C. (2000) Land Use Change in Recreational Areas of Singapore and its Relationship with Quality of Life. Proceedings of the Second International Conference on ‘Quality of Life in Cities’ at Westin Stamford Hotel during March 8-10 (2000), Organised by School of Building and Real Estate, NUS. Volume 1. 266-282 (refereed by international panel).


4. Wong, T. C. (1999) The Transition from Physical Infrastructure to Infostructure: Infrastructure as a Modernising Agent in Singapore. GeoJournal Special Issue (Kluwer Publishers, Holland), Urban Development, Environment and Planning in Asia: Challenges for the 21st Century. (1999), 49 (3).  


5. Wong T. C. (1999) Infrastructure Development and Modernisation of Singapore. Proceedings of Geographical Research at the Turn of the Century – A Cross-Strait Symposium, August 21-27 (1999), The Geographical Society of China at National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei. Section E3. 1.1-1.20.

Goh Kim Chuan
Email: kimchuan.goh@nie.edu.sg

Singapore has grown from a fishing village into a developed city state in less than two hundred years. Nearly 100% of its population live in urban areas today. Urbanization brought about the transformation of the natural landscape into a man-made one characterized by tall buildings, asphalt roads and cemented pathways which invariably changes the urban climate of Singapore. Although previous studies found that a nocturnal heat island phenomenon existed in urbanised regions, these works were mostly descriptive. This research project attempts to delve into the underlying processes responsible for this phenomenon, within the urban configuration. In addition, other aspects of the urban climate, such as the urban air quality, will also be examined. On-sites studies involving meteorological data collection, as well as, secondary data research will be undertaken to enable statistical and spatial analysis of the data.

Source of funding: AcRF

Publications arising:

Chang C.H. and Goh K.C. (1996) An evaluation of the automobile traverse method in Heat Island studies, Proceedings, 4th Southeast Asian Geographer’s Conference, Chiang Mai. D-3-1 - D-3-12.
Chang C.H. and Goh K.C. (1998) “The Urban Thermal Climate of Singapore”, Paper presented at 5th Southeast Asian Geographer’s Conference, Singapore Dec 1998.
Goh K. C. and Chang C.H. (1999) The relationship between H/W and the heat island intensity at 2200 hrs for Singapore, International Journal of Climatology, John Wiley and Sons, New York, Vol 19, 1011-1023.

Note: One Master of Arts Dissertation on the Urban Thermal Climate of Singapore was completed under the academic supervision of the principal investigator:

Chang C.H. (1998) The Urban Thermal Climate of Singapore, Masters Dissertation, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.