The Open University of Cyprus (OUC) secured another distinction at the Cyprus Education Leaders Awards 2022 for innovative applications of digital technology in education for the fourth consecutive year. The silver award in the category “Best Learning Experience” concerns the project “Design and implementation of a SimCity-type simulation educational tool for virtual city waste management”. This Waste Management Tool is perhaps the first SimCity-type simulation application developed in Cyprus, and one of the first in the world that deals entirely with waste management. The project was jointly designed and developed by Dr. Giorgos Pappas, staff member of the OUC Laboratory of Educational Material and Methodology (LEMM), Associate Professor Antonis Zorpas, Director of the Laboratory of Chemical Engineering and Sustainability Engineering, and PhD candidate Ms Iliana Papamichael. It dealt with the design and development of a “top-down” application representing a virtual city, where the user has the possibility to interactively monitor the environmental effects of strategies that deal with urban waste management, while at the same time it can measure the impact of various actions on the environment. An important feature of the tool is that the measurements and limits of the indicators come from long-term field research, giving great realism to the results students receive. The application will be used in the context of the OUC Master’s Programme “Environmental Conservation and Management”. The Open University of Cyprus is the only University in Cyprus specialised in open and distance education. With the aim of providing a high-quality learning experience to students, OUC not only invests in already existing technological tools, but also develops new eLearning applications. Through these applications, students can utilize interactive activities and optimize their learning experience. Important distinctions, such as this silver award at the Cyprus Education Leaders Awards (CELA), are supporting OUC’s efforts and vision in facilitating students to study from whenever they wish, adjusting their study programme to fit in with their other job, family and any other commitments, without the limitations of conventional education. The ceremony of the CELA for 2022 took place on March 10, 2023, organized by BOUSSIAS Cyprus.
Source: Cyprus News Agency