Role of Technical Teacher Training Institution in a Knowledge based economy

Abstract

Abstract Fast proliferation smart systems and smart technologies provides academic institutions including technical teachers training institutions, faculty, students, professional staff and administration staff with enormous opportunities in terms of new highly technological approaches to increase the quality of teaching strategies and learning outcomes. In addition, these technological advances provide remarkably effective management and administration of the main functions and services of training institutions/colleges/universities. The concept of a ‘Smart institution’ is an emerging and fast evolving area that represents the creative integration of innovative concepts, smart software and hardware systems, Smart Classrooms with state-of-the-art technologies and technical platforms, Smart Pedagogy based on modern teaching and learning strategies, Smart Learning Analytics and academic analytics, and various related branches of computer science and computer engineering. Current need of technical teacher training institution should be in the area of Smart Pedagogy and are focused on various innovative technology-based student-centered learning and teaching approaches such as (1) learning-by-doing (including active use of virtual labs), (2) collaborative learning, (3) adaptive teaching, (4) serious games- and gamification-based learning, (5) flipped classrooms and flipped classroom pedagogy, (6) learning analytics and academic analytics, (7) context-based learning, (8) e-books, (9) personal enquiry based learning, (10) crossover learning and other innovative strategies. This paper presents the outcomes of the experience gained during the past two decades by the author, analyzed with systematic literature review and creative analysis of professional publications available in those areas. The premise is that the outcomes of the performed systematic creative analysis will enable researchers to identify the most effective and well-thought ideas, approaches, developed software and hardware systems, technical platforms, smart features and smartness levels, and best practices for the next evolutionary generation of a smart technical teacher training institution. The proposed idea can be viewed as an evolutionary approach for a traditional training institution to progress to various levels of maturity of smart institution.