About

Abd Karim Alias

PROFESSOR ABD KARIM ALIAS

EDUCATION:
B. Applied Science (Food Technology), Universiti Sains Malaysia;
Masters (Food Process Engineering), University of Reading, UK;
Ph.D. (Food Technology), University of Reading, UK.

AFFILIATION:
1. Lecturer (Food Technology Division, School of Industrial Technology,
Universiti Sains Malaysia.
2. Director, Centre for Development of Academic Excellence (CDAE)

More about me...

Dr. Abd Karim Alias is a Professor of Food Technology at the School of Industrial Technology, Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) and current Director of the Centre for Development of Academic Excellence. He has been teaching at USM for over 28 years (since 1994).

As a teacher, he always aspire to nurture and educate his students to become lifelong learners. He believes that the role of educators goes beyond transmitting knowled—ge--that ——is to nurture students to become lifelong learners -- to teach them the skills of 'learn how to learn' and to teach them the appreciation and the love for knowledge. As Socrates said, "I cannot teach anybody anything; I can only make them think". He believes that teaching is an exciting adventure in which both the teacher and the students participate and cooperate to achieve a common goal.

He is a strong advocate of leveraging the Internet as an alternative medium for learning and teaching. His mission is to step out from the physical boundary and comfort of his classroom, to reach out as many global learners as possible by sharing whatever little knowledge and skills he has for the benefit of mankind. To achieve this mission, he has developed and maintained several teaching portals, websites, online courses and blogs related to teaching/learning and research.

He made my work accessible and visible for the masses. As of March 25, 2022, his teaching videos on YouTube Channel have received just over one million views from 190+ countries, with an estimated watched time of 62.5 thousands hours and a total of 7.5 thousands subscribers.

He started blogging way back in 2005 with his first blog, 'One Stop Learning', as a way to share resources and express his thoughts on issues pertaining to education, particularly higher education. Currently, he maintains one blog on Medium platform, which focus on teaching & learning and discussion on issues related to higher education and several blog publications.

He is also visible on Slideshare with close to 85,000 views and 4,000+ download by users from 190+ countries. He is active on Twitters and other social media such as facebook, Pinterest, Wakelet, etc., as well as a professional network such as LinkedIn, Academia.edu and ResearchGate. He is maintaining several Facebook groups, the most active being Aspiring Young Academics.

In 2002, he received the inaugural USM Excellent Educator Award and in 2010 he received the Anugerah Tokoh (Distinguished Person) in Anugerah Sanggar Sanjung.

He was the recipient of the prestigious National Academic Award in 2008 for teaching from the Ministry of Higher Education (Malaysia). He has been recognised as the Top 50 Educators in Asia Pacific (2015) by Terrapin Asia and has been awarded with the Malaysia’s Rising Star 2015 Award (Highest research citation in Agricultural Sciences/Food Science & Technology), Malaysia Research Star Award for four consecutive years (2016, 2017, 2018, 2019) and the World's Most Influential Scientific Minds by Clarivet Analytics. At national level, he is a Master Trainer for AKEPT and involved as a writer for Malaysia Education Blueprint 2015-2025 (Higher Education).

In his current role as the Director of the Centre for Development of Academic Excellence, he is responsible for designing and running a professional development programme in technology-enhanced learning and student-centred learning for the academic staff.

He is a master trainer for the Academy for Higher Education Leadership (AKEPT) and also involved as a trainer in the technology-mediated learning workshop. He has conducted more than numerous workshops especially on using technology in teaching and learning in university in Malaysia.

He has become a staunch advocate of open education and online learning. He has developed a number of open online courses, available free, on several open learning platforms. Two of his open online courses are Flipped Classroom and Copyright for Educators, available on OpenLearning platform. He is now leading a project to develop open educational resources (OER), MOOC@USM and Micro-credential@USM agenda for the university. With his active involvement in online learning, he has been appointed as a co-Chairman of the Technical Committee for Malaysian MOOCs initiative, a project by the Ministry of Education of Malaysia.

Since 2018, he has been advocating the idea of micro-credential as an enabler to support flexible and inclusive education. He has been working together with the Malaysian Qualification Agency (MQA) to develop the Guideline for the implementation of micro-credential in Malaysian educational institutions.

On the research front, he has published more than 130 papers (h-index 44) in international citation-indexed journals and several book/encyclopedia chapters. He has also published/presented more than 70 conference papers (7 of them as a keynote speaker) (Google Scholar). He was the recipient of more than 30 publication awards from USM. Under his supervision, 10 Ph.D. and 30 MSc students had graduated. In addition, he has supervised five post-doctoral fellows.

Currently he is in an editorial board of the Journal of Physical Science and Tropical Life Science Research (USM Publisher), the International Journal of Food Research (UPM Publisher), Food Hydrocolloids (Elsevier) and Journal Food Packaging & Shelf Life (Elsevier).

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"The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will" ~ Vincent T. Lombardi.