Rate My Professor Kin Loke

Dr. Swee-Kin Loke is the Teaching & Learning Professional Practice Fellow at the Occupational and Aviation Medicine Unit (OAMU) within the Department of Medicine at the University of Otago, Wellington. In this role, he supports lecturers in designing and developing online courses using educational technologies. His academic background includes a Graduate Diploma in Teaching from the National Institute of Education (NIE), a Master of Science in Education from Curtin University (CU), and a PhD from the University of Otago awarded in 2018. The doctoral thesis, titled "Explaining how students can learn the dispositional components of physical world actions by performing virtual world actions," examines simulation-based approaches to learning professional behaviors.

Dr. Loke's career in staff and academic development began in 2003 and includes roles at the Ministry of Education in Singapore, Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, Otago Polytechnic, and the University of Otago, where he previously worked at the Higher Education Development Centre. His research specializations encompass educational technology, virtual worlds, and computer simulations, particularly in health sciences contexts such as pharmacy and medicine. Key publications include "SimPharm: How pharmacy students made meaning of a clinical case differently in paper- and simulation-based workshops" (2011, British Journal of Educational Technology), "Challenges in integrating a complex systems computer simulation in class: An educational design research" (2012, Australasian Journal of Educational Technology), "In search of a method to assess dispositional behaviours: The case of Otago Virtual Hospital" (2012, Australasian Journal of Educational Technology), "How to do things with mouse clicks: Applying Austin’s speech act theory to explain learning in virtual worlds" (2016, Educational Philosophy & Theory), "Discursive constructions of teacher in an educational technology journal" (2016, Australasian Journal of Educational Technology), and "Using a coagulation simulation software to learn a complex dose-response relationship" (2016, DEANZ Conference Proceedings). These works demonstrate his contributions to simulation-enhanced teaching and learning practices.