CIC warmly welcomes Muna Musarrat who recently came on board the team. Muna is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at CIC, with a keen focus on U@Uni Academy project.
I was born in Chittagong, Bangladesh as the youngest and eight
h member of my family. We all moved to Malaysia when I was four. I went to primary school where I was first introduced to computers at the age of six. Later, I returned to Bangladesh and ended up studying Business Administration (not because I wanted to do business, but because it was convenient). While working as an educational administrator for a new university, I got interested in researching on teaching and learning. My passion for research, combined with my newfound interest in teaching and learning soon ended me on a PhD program researching on technology acceptance by academics. I was always fascinated by technology but researching on educational technology opened my eyes to a whole range of different emerging technologies and the huge potential it has for teaching and learning.
I am constantly intrigued by how technology and other forces are rapidly changing the world we live in. Besides being a researcher, I am a mother of two young children, so I am always looking for answers to two Big Questions: “How can we prepare our next generation for the challenges that awaits them?”, and “What can we do today to leave the world a better place than we found it, for our next generation?”
An exciting opportunity to work with the Equity and Diversity Unit on the U@Uni Academy project, which will help high school students develop 21st century skills besides their academic performance and prepare them not only for the university, but the life beyond. My role, as a Postdoctoral Research Associate, would be to research and identify ways of assessing these skills using different tools, including software that has been developed by UTS academics and the CIC team.
My first impression of CIC is that its culture is a stark contrast to the building it’s located in. Although the building is a heritage site reminding of the Victorian era, the culture and the approach to work at CIC struck me as very much “21st century”. It seemed to me that the people here are very open to new ideas and encourage everyone to be creative in their approaches. I especially loved the Ideation Studio. I am sure many ground-breaking ideas have been generated here, and many more are yet to come.
Feel free to email me at maimuna.musarrat@uts.edu.au