Technology-enhanced student-centric learning in information and multimedia technologies in the new normal era

Information and multimedia technologies (IMT) teaching requires theoretical and practical sessions. The practical sessions are essential for students to build an in-depth understanding of the principles and theories. Unlike some other areas where practical sessions require completely face-to-face teaching. Information and multimedia technologies area is unique such that practical sessions can be delivered in online mode via innovative approaches, thereby the overall purely face-to-face contents can be reduced.​ The purpose of this study proposes decomposed teaching strategy with virtualized practical sessions as the innovative approaches in the new normal era. The proposed strategy is composed of two phases: (1) decompose of the teaching content into theoretical sessions and software and hardware related practical sessions. (2) deliver the software and hardware related part via virtualization tools to maximize the understanding of the practical implementation. A pilot study of 31 IMT students for 14 weeks is conducted to find out the effectiveness of the proposed strategy. Copyright © 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.