Sharon Lau
Member
NUS Institute of System Science
My teaching philosophy begins with a simple belief: knowing is not the same as being able to act. Drawing on over two decades of industry experience, I design learning around real workplace tensions and trade-offs that require adult learners to connect concepts with experience, question assumptions and exercise judgement about how to use what they have learned in their own workplace contexts.
Sharon Lau is a Principal Lecturer and Consultant at NUS-ISS, where she teaches digital leadership to adult learners and working professionals. Before becoming an educator, she spent over two decades in technology leadership roles with global retail companies across Asia-Pacific, leading regional digital initiatives and organisational change.
Her industry experience shapes her practice-centred approach to teaching. She often uses inquiry-based and blended learning to help learners connect concepts with experience, question assumptions and apply learning to workplace challenges. Her research work examines instructional video pedagogy, how adult learners can use AI effectively for learning, and how perspective-taking can support interdisciplinary learning. She brings these research insights back into her course design and facilitation.
As a NUSTA Fellow, I hope to contribute by investigating how NUS educators can design learning experiences that enable adult learners to use AI in ways that support meaningful learning outcomes. Drawing on my experience in adult and professional education, I bring a practice-grounded perspective to this work, focusing on how learners frame meaningful questions, consider different perspectives, evaluate AI-generated responses and exercise their own judgement. Through collaboration with other Fellows on research and pilot studies, I aim to translate the findings into practical teaching approaches and share evidence-informed guidance that our NUS colleagues can adapt across disciplines.
Griffith Award for Academic Excellence – 2023
Griffith Award for Academic Excellence – 2022