Strategic Goals

In pursuit of achieving the COM’s mission, five broad strategic goals are identified and operationalized. Each of these goals comprises several essential objectives.

Goal 1: Promote and Enrich Innovative Teaching

In keeping with rapid economic transformation and technological advancement, the COM aims to promote and enrich innovative teaching by encouraging teaching faculty members to develop and evaluate innovative modes of teaching such as Problem Based Learning (PBL), Moodle, and others, by engaging students at the Learning Center. The COM facilitates flexible curricula to stimulate reflective, analytical learning and develop competencies to address global challenges and opportunities through Interactive Case Teaching, workshops, etc.  Also, while striving to contribute to regional economic development, COM aims to impart necessary and relevant skills and knowledge with the support of advanced technology systems and infrastructure such as Application software, IRS technology, etc. Furthermore, the COM provides faculty training to ensure that students are capable of acquiring professional certification related to subjects such as AI. In order to leverage innovative teaching and learning processes, the COM facilitates the MOE Teaching Practice Research Program, while embracing the bold approaches of meticulously mentoring and advising students both inside and outside the classroom in an avant-garde environment and empowers future leaders by emphasising values such as technical competence and resilience.

Goal 2: Foster and Facilitate Experiential Learning

The COM defines Experiential Learning as a comprehensive method of integrating academic theory with industry practice, to address practical problems. It forms a bridge between knowledge and experience through learning-by-doing. The students have a wide variety of curricular and co-curricular experiential learning opportunities across their programs of study. Over the years, the COM has emphasised that degree programs should forge explicit connections between experiential learning and program learning outcomes through the development of a framework which appropriately defines and provides criteria for Internships, Learning Centres, Field Trips, Elite Seminars, Study Abroad Programs, Career Fairs, etc. Some opportunities are long-embedded and integrated in the relevant discipline. To further integrate experiential learning firmly into the curriculum, the COM has designed rubrics for internship which measure student learning outcomes relative to the alignment with the COM’s mission. Furthermore, some cornerstone courses allow students to gain hands-on experience to deal with practical problems through software simulations, situational teaching methodology, and other methods. The COM ensures that within each program, students are offered at least two courses per semester with industrial experts, with the purpose of keeping students updated on latest industrial trends and challenges. With experiential learning being one of the foremost attributes in acquiring practical knowledge, and by developing interpersonal skills in students, COM strives to create value, reflection, and reciprocal integration of knowledge and experience to manifest as an experiential learning process. 

Goal 3: Encourage and Facilitate Applied Research

The COM has instilled a notable research culture accelerated by vibrant and dynamic research and development centres) and has granted recognition to the spectrum of valuable research outputs. It has adopted a project-based portfolio approach that focuses on delivering both academic and industrial impact. This ensures that pathways from knowledge creation through research for impact and purposes of external engagement are thoroughly optimised and recognised, and that all researchers are well-supported in articulating the impact of their research within the context of discipline-based norms. In addition, the COM has developed a well-defined and detailed Faculty Matrix to assess faculty performance in the area of research, guided by impact and excellence. It is explicit, analytically structured, and in keeping with developments in interdisciplinary practice. The COM has greatly improved its efforts to create collaborative research partnerships and strategic alliances with partner institutions, organisations, business communities, and others, in order to enhance competitiveness and innovation in regional business. It has also developed support systems for researchers by ensuring that research groups engage and make an impact within academia and beyond through conference proceedings, project activities, peer-reviewed journals, faculty exchange, and others.

Goal 4: Nurture and Strengthen Interdisciplinary Expertise

In this era of severe competition and complex challenges, the role of multi-tasking and interdisciplinary expertise becomes a vital element of students’ professional growth. The COM consolidates cognate interdisciplinary expertise through clustering, which is aimed at supporting existing resource strengths and facilitating the growth of new interdisciplinary themes. As it is imperative for the COM to be sufficiently resilient to meet external pressures, the regional competitiveness of the institution requires agility and flexibility in its curriculum and programs, and this is brought about by adjusting its policies. The COM offers mandatory core courses pertaining to Information Science and Technology and encourages students to acquire inter-departmental credits to strengthen their interdisciplinary expertise. As a further step, The COM has carefully identified and developed an interdisciplinary landscape by offering orientation programs to its students and these are partnered by academia, enterprise, government, and other sectors.  

Goal 5: Advance and Stimulate Progressive Skills

Advanced technological knowledge is required to stimulate creativity in students. Some suitable COM programs include Information Technology (including DBMS, ERP, Big Data Analysis, Python), Financial Technology (Fintech), AI, etc. The COM has enhanced and improved its technology infrastructure by enabling its digital learning ecosystem, well-supported by the Oracle School, Ergonomic Laboratory, AI+  Experiential Center, Financial Information Center, Cross Border E-Commerce Center, ERP Center, etc. to furnish students with progressive skills by enabling them to acquire advanced professional certification in their chosen fields.