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CommerceNet Singapore's Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Jeh Shyan Wong spoke on "Paradigm Shift: Its Effect on the Learning Communities" on the occasion of Temasek Polytechnic (TP) special event, "CITE Graduation and Staff Incentives Award" on Saturday, 22 April 2000. The event is an annual staff event in which TP awards staff members who have used IT in their teaching and learning areas.

Mr. Wong focused on the needs to develop niches among educators on subject matter expertise, and working across domain knowledge in a project framework manner. Keen competitions from regional and global entities mean that competitions and competitors can emerge from the least likely places, and everyone will be fighting virtually for the same talent pool of limited resources. And it is not necessary that the best equipped will win. The ability to re-position oneself, and the speed of leveraging meaningfully on existing network with cutting-edge business models will enable one to have better chances of survival. Lessons should be learnt from regional countries that had experienced sudden shifts that had left them with obsolete structural framework, one that they need to reinvent and transform just to remain relevant in the new economy.

Delivery mechanisms, methods and the evolving role of educators are also touched upon. The spirit of 'anywhere, anytime', usually at a pace comfortable to the learners are expected to be common. Move towards self-reporting structures, changing evaluation criteria and reward mechanisms will require some mode of transparency, trust and also strong commitments from not only the institutions, but the staff as well.

Earlier, TP's Chief Executive Officer, Dr. N. Varaprasad had encouraged staff to become more enterprising, and to get their innovative works transformed into products for commercialization. Giving the introductory speech, Dr. Varaprasad reminded the staff to ensure clear guidelines are followed in dealing with areas concerning Intellectual Property Rights. Staff should learn to write clear specifications for coursework development, and retain the expertise coordinator role in coursework development. Time to market would be faster, and the quality is expected to improve through outsourcing the coursework programming and design to professionals.