The first semester of 2024/2025 session is over. Marks have been keyed in and finalised, course assessment and continuous quality reports generated, and course files prepared. While waiting to present marks for the undergraduate and postgraduate programs next week, I’m taking some time to look back upon the running of the Introduction to Engineering (ITE) course this semester.

Ever since I’ve joined UTM, I’ve been assigned as one of the lecturers for this course. As a degree student in UTP, I’d never experienced such a course. Even though the Basic Engineering Calculations part of the course involves materials similar to most Chemical Engineering courses, with quizzes and tests, it takes up just a small part of the course (only 20% worth in terms of marks).

What makes up the lion’s share of the course is the Cooperative Problem-Based Learning (CPBL) sustainable development project. Every year, the lecturers for this course (a whopping ten lecturers overseeing five sections) get together and decide the sustainable development (SD) issue that we’d like to focus on. Being SD issues, all projects typically address at least one Sustainable Development Goal (SDG). Ever since I’ve been teaching this course, and a few sessions prior, the SD issues typically revolved around energy crisis, water security, and climate change. This semester, I suggested we tackle a different SDG — SDG 3: Good Health and Well-Being.

With SDGs like SDG 6: Clean Water and Sanitisation, SDG 7: Affordable and Clean Energy, and SDG 13: Climate Action, the role of engineers is very clear. Personally, when I think of SDG 3, the first related professions that come to mind are doctors and nurses. Isn’t it that way for many of you too? However, when I thought about it further, there are many ways that engineers contribute to health too. And I want the students to be able to think more creatively, as well as for them to see that trans-disciplinary efforts are vital for human and technological advancement. These skills will be a great quality for them to have as future engineers.

Designing the problem, as always, is a challenge. Thankfully, with everyone lending a hand starting from the workshop conducted prior to the start of the semester and after that, we managed to work something out. The project is called the CheME4Health campaign, and as always, divided into three parts; Stages 1, 2, and 3. There are Engineering Education papers published on this, as this CPBL method was developed by Prof. Khairiyah, so I won’t go into the details of the design here. Instead, I’ll just write what I feel like writing based on my experience this semester for this course.

Two lecturers are assigned for each of the five sections; one lecturer who is “senior” and more experienced in running the course, and a “junior” lecturer who supports the “senior” lecturer (by ITE teaching experience, not by age). Why this dynamic? It’s because like myself, most lecturers have never experienced the CPBL method as a student, and thus would usually not be able to properly conduct it without observing the running of the course by a more experienced lecturer. Not to say that one can’t do it by studying the method, but as with many things, it’s a lot easier to do when you’ve seen it first hand. 

This semester is the first time I played the “senior” role in the course. Honestly, I don’t think those paltry few past years have prepared me to lead the course. There’s still so much for me to learn, plus with my forgetfulness, it means that when I’m paired with someone who has never experienced this course, if I forget something, it stays forgotten! My partner did great with what she was given, but there are so many things that I think I could have done better. One incident that comes to mind is when I forgot to bring post-its to class for the gallery walk session. Students were supposed to use them to write questions and paste them on their classmates’ mind maps. I did wonder why the gallery walk session ended so quickly — it was because we didn’t do the question and answer session! I don’t think anyone missed it but me (afterwards), and I really feel like that was a lost learning opportunity.

Whoa, I did the reflection part really soon this time, huh? Despite my shortcomings, the students did very well, for the most part. It was fun seeing them prepare their mahjong papers for the gallery walk. Especially those who went so far as to lie on the floor! We could see the information that they have gathered on their own based on the campaign, which was focused on non-communicable diseases (NCDs), put on the mahjong papers. Then during the gallery walk, we could listen to them explaining their assigned topics to their teammates. During this session, we could gauge not only their knowledge and understanding, but also their language proficiency and presentation skills.

Usually at the end of the semester, students would come up with engineering solutions to the problem that they have identified (either in Stage 2 or Stage 3, depending on the design of the project) and present their solutions at an exhibition. It’s always quite an exciting event — in addition to juries from the academic staff, there are always experts from the industries related to the campaign theme invited, the dean and program director normally make an appearance, many groups prepare a model or prototype for their engineering solutions, there are monetary prizes, and so on. Unfortunately, due to some issues, this semester was the first one in my experience that had the exhibition cancelled.

Still, we did prepare prizes for three winning groups for each section, and invited academic staff to evaluate the e-poster presentation done in-class. I believe that it was still a great learning experience for students to learn teamwork, communication skills, presentation skills, and most importantly, critical thinking and problem-solving skills. All these make up very, very important building blocks for engineers. And I hope that the students were able to gain these skills, even though ITE is a tough and tiring course for them. Hey, it’s really tough on us lecturers too! No other course demand so much work and effort from us than ITE hahaha XD

ITE this semester has seen quite a few changes compared to previous years. Other than the uncommon SDG focus, there was also the presentation modes and logbook assessment, as well as changes in the students’ reflection. However, I think this post has been long enough, so I won’t touch on those. I’d say perhaps in another post, but given how rarely I write, it doesn’t seem likely haha. There are so many other things I’d like to write about first. If you’ve read this far, thank you for taking the time to read my ramblings. Until next time.