LT’s Dr. Angel Pazurek was recently a guest speaker at Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM), whose main campus is located in Shah Alam, the capital city of the state of Selangor in Malaysia. She was invited by Dr. Nurul Hijja Mazlan, a faculty member in the College of Computing, Informatics and Media at UiTM. Despite the 14-hour time difference and using the magic of video conferencing to virtually bridge the 9,000-mile distance from St. Paul to Shah Alam, Pazurek joined Dr. Mazlan and undergraduate students in the instructional design program in real time to talk about pedagogical and learning design considerations for formative assessment.

Universiti Teknologi MARA is the largest public university in Malaysia with 514 academic programs; nearly 166,000 students; and 34 campuses all over the country. To put this in perspective, the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities currently has a student enrollment of approximately 55,000 students. Instructional design at UiTM is an honors bachelor’s program in the School of Communication and Media and the College of Computing, Informatics and Media. The aim of the program is to “nurture Instructional Design Specialists and Master Trainers in supporting the [country of Malaysia’s] aspiration of becoming a major global center and premier hub for communication, multimedia information and content services.” 

Global collaboration and community engagement is a core commitment of the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Minnesota. And Pazurek has earned international recognition as a leader in learning design, distance education, and online teaching and learning. With an interest in comparative international [tech-mediated] education, she has presented her scholarship and collaborated with educators and learners in higher education across North America, South America, Europe, Africa, and now Asia– thanks to the generosity of Dr. Nurul Hijja Mazlan and students at Universiti Teknologi MARA in Malaysia.