Speech - Welcome Address by Ms Low Kah Gek, CEO/ITE, at the MOU Signing Ceremony between ITE and National Supercomputing Centre, Singapore, on 10 September 2020, 1000hrs, Cooperation In The Field Of Ai+High Performance Computing (HPC), ITE College Central

Mr. Peter Ho, Steering Committee Chairman, National Supercomputing Centre (NSCC) Singapore

Prof Tan Tin Wee,  Chief Executive, National Supercomputing Centre, Singapore

Mr Andrew Chong, Chairman, ITE Board

Friends from National Supercomputing Centre, Singapore

Industry partners

ITE colleagues 

Ladies and Gentlemen

1. National Supercomputing Centre (NSCC) reached out to me in May  this year to explore ways to enable ITE lecturers and students will have access to the power of high performance computing (HPC) for our artificial intelligence (AI) projects and training programmes. The timing is perfect because we, at ITE have planned to teach AI to all students, encourage them to dabble in AI projects and develop AI applications, and our staff are also experimenting with how AI can enable better teaching and new modes of conducting assessment.

2. The support of NSCC and access to supercomputing resources and expertise will be a real boost to our plans and ambitions at ITE. My staff immediately came up with two innovations for teaching and assessment:

   1. In-Class Video Analytics of Students  to analyse emotions and non-verbal cues of students and provide a sentiment scoring matrix for lecturers to identify topics that are well-received by students and areas of lesson delivery that need improvement. This means there will be rich data to enable our lecturers to have greater awareness of which lesson activities could engage students better, result in higher student mastery and which activities do not and so they can re-design their lesson activities and re-enact subsequent lessons so as to achieve better student engagement and mastery.

   2. Video Analytics and AI-Enabled Assessment of Practical Skills to assess students as they don smart-glasses and perform timed practical tasks such as servicing machinery and equipment or operating an industrial process.

3. With supercomputers, the speed, ease of use, accuracy and productivity of such AI-related innovations will be greatly enhanced. I am sure beyond these two experimentations and innovations, staff will continue to come up with more.

4. In this partnership, NSCC and ITE are also committed to co-organise high performance computing workshops for students and competitions in AI applications. Together, we will build strong AI capabilities among ITE students and enable ITE graduates to be ready for new employment opportunities. 

5. On behalf of ITE, I would like to thank NSCC for valuing ITE students and their potential,  and supporting ITE in enabling them to be ready for the new digital economy, powered by AI and super-computing.

6. This partnership between National Supercomputing Centre and ITE is meaningful, and will reap much benefit and impact, especially for ITE students and the future generation. We look forward to a successful partnership that will continue to grow in the years ahead.

Thank you.