First COLLA Regional Workshop, Putrajaya, Malaysia, 28-29 June 2004. 236 MALAYSIAN SMART SCHOOL EXPERIENCE: PROCESS, MODEL, AND DEVELOPMENT APPROACHES. Tengku Mohd T. Sembok, Halimah Badioze Zaman, Norhayati Abdul Mukti, Mohamed Yusoff, Azlina Ahmad & Azizah Jaafar Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) Bangi, MALAYSIA Abstract Malaysia is aspiring to move from an industrial to an information economy by the year 2020, the country will become a fully developed nation and would have created for herself a multimedia utopia where world class companies can use it as a regional hub. Plans towards this are presently being carried out rigorously with the plans for the formation of the Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC). One of the seven flagship applications created to jumpstart the MSC is the flagship on Smart Schools. Malaysia feels that with the advent of the information society and the need for knowledge technopreneurs and knowledge workers, a new system of education with information technology and multimedia as the enabling force is needed. This new smart school system is hoped to enhance creativity among Malaysian students; democratize education, improve pedagogical approaches; enhance teaching and learning materials; improve school management; improve school assessment; improve IT literacy and skills; and thus improve the education system generally. The success of the MSC depends not just on the participation of the public sector but also the private sectors. The success of the smart school flagship requires a concerted effort between the government, industry, and university. The project of this nature also requires involvement of many experts, namely, educationists, content expert specialists, creative designers, computer scientists, system integrators, infrastructure specialists, project managers, lawyers, business analysts, and entrepreneurs. This, thus, requires various experts from both the government and the business sector so as to leverage from each other’s strengths. This paper hopes to highlight a success story of a model adopted between a university and a corporate sector in bidding for and in the development of mathematics courseware for the Malaysian Smart School project. The business model adopted highlights the close collaboration in the processes involved in software development and the creation of effective knowledge workers as a result of transfer of technology. The paper also attempts to highlight the conceptual model of ME (Multimedia in Education) that is based on the learning and pedagogical approaches deemed suitable for the learning and teaching of mathematics. The design of ME courseware is based on FITTINGS principle that uses six guiding criteria in the designing process: flexible, indirect, thematic, technological, interactive, navigative, gaming and simulative. Introduction This paper hopes to highlight a success story of a model adopted between a university (Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia) and a corporate sector (Digital Technologies Sdn Bhd) in bidding and development of courseware for the Smart School project of the Malaysian Multimedia Super Corridor. The model adopted highlights the close collaboration in the processes involved in software development. The paper will discuss both the Collaborative Courseware Production Model (CCPM) adopted by the two organizations in software development and also the Multimedia in Education (ME) Model and FITTINGS principle used in designing the courseware. Problems of the collaboration like differences in working culture, differences in attitudes of the different experts (academia, graphic artists, programmers, system integrator and others), differences in business environment, differences in budgeting practices, differences in project management approaches, distribution of work and responsibilities, interpretation of views and suggestions and how these differences were overcome (some, during the process) while others were thought of at the very early stage in order to avoid it from happening at the later stage which can then be very costly. This successful model which contributes to the two organizations winning the bid for the MSC smart school project, and contributing to effective creation of knowledge workers can be emulated by other organizations for a successful strategic alliance between the public and the private sector which will eventually contribute to the success of Malaysia’s mega dream-the MSC.