Dr Tianchong Wang

Biography

Dr Tianchong Wang is currently a Lecturer (Secondary STEM Education) in the Department of Education at Swinburne University of Technology. He also serves as a Human Research Ethics Sub-committees (SHESC) Member and Research Ethics Advisor (REA) at Swinburne. Tianchong has an Ed.D. from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, an M.Sc. from the University of Hong Kong, and a B.A. (Hons) from Hong Kong Baptist University. Tianchong also holds several ICT professional qualifications such as MCP, MCSA, MCSE, MCDBA, MCTS, MCITP, ACSP and ACTC. He is a member of IEEE.

With his dual expertise as pedagogist and technologist, Tianchong’s academic journey has been a quest to explore promising and inclusive technology-enhanced practices that improve learning experiences; identify effective technology-enabled solutions that promote positive change in learning environments; search for sustainable technology-driven approaches that can empower teachers and learners in under-privileged communities; and inform policies that can close gaps in educational access and quality. His current research interests focus on Artificial Intelligence (AI) in education – a global priority area and a cutting-edge component of STEM education for the upcoming Industrial 4.0 era. Before relocating to Melbourne, Tianchong served as a post-doctoral fellow at the Education University of Hong Kong, where he explored how best to infuse AI into the Special Administrative Region’s K-12 STEM education curriculum and identified missing links in current teacher education programmes. He also developed and taught Hong Kong’s first-of-its-kind master-level course Artificial Intelligence in Education (MITE7353) as a PT Lecturer at the University of Hong Kong.

Being an advocate of the United Nation’s Education 2030 Agenda, Tianchong has been actively engaged with international and national-level stakeholders. He has contributed to several large-scale research and development projects to promote education quality, equity, and inclusion, especially those involving new technologies. In 2016, Tianchong co-developed UNESCO’s framework and self-assessment tool for quality blended learning adoption. Over 3,000 copies of the publication have been distributed to all 46 UNESCO member states in Asia-Pacific as a policy advocacy tool. Notably, the framework and self-assessment tool were successfully applied in Cambodia’s higher education system in 2017, where Tianchong worked closely with the kingdom’s Directorate General for Higher Education via a jointly funded IDRC (Canada) and HEAD Foundation (Singapore) project that introduced blended learning as a possible solution to urban-rural disparities in STEM education quality. These projects were featured in IAU Horizons, the official magazine of the UNESCO-affiliated International Association of Universities.

To catalyse further positive changes in education, Tianchong advises governments and NGOs in various capacities. In 2022, he served as a consultant for UNESCO Asia and Pacific Regional Bureau for Education. In this role, he drafted UNESCO’s synthesis report Transforming Teaching and Learning through New Digital Technologies and reported his findings in UNESCO and UNICEF’s 2nd Asia Pacific Regional Education Minister’s Conference. Tianchong is often appointed as a resource person by development aid agencies to conduct teacher capacity-building activities in the Global South. Recently, as a content expert of the UNESCO International Centre for Higher Education Innovation, he led workshops for the centre’s IIOE Pilot Project Digital Educator Micro-credential in Malaysia.