Lab Innovators: Transforming Teaching in Higher Education

This session will showcase the @Lab Innovators, a professional development program at the Center for Educational Innovation at Zayed University in Dubai. The program was designed to address the need for the creation of engaging digital course resources for undergraduate students who were attending online sessions during the COVID-19 lockdown. The sudden switch to online learning emphasized the need to use technology in the teaching and learning process in innovative and engaging ways. We designed the @Lab program to support the digital transformation of faculty at our university. The program consisted of three phases and was carried out over a year. Faculty attending the @Lab program received training on an array of useful tools such as: the use of augmented reality (AR) in the creation and consumption of engaging information; the exploration of professional movie-making techniques and genres, and the production of interactive and engaging teaching and learning materials; the understanding of classroom management; personalisation of learning and digital citizenship; and the ability to collaborate and co-create in a digital environment. The session will provide an overview of the @Lab Innovators program, how it was implemented and examples of digital resources created by the faculty.