Self-reflection of teaching development over time and how this relates to future goals (with relevant evidence)

Reflections from students outcome and work

Understanding and reflecting the outcome of your students submission work, will show the reality of the teacher and learner. There is always a mismatch in expectation between both the facilitator and student, as the output of the work is based on the input and teaching preparation given by the former. Meanwhile the diligence and hard work of the latter, is the other factor that determines the quality of the output.

The reality is that the learner is learning and output performance should be gradually better as the learner evolves. As a facilitator of learning, we sometime rush through things and become unrealistic in our expectations. Is there a problem with the student or with ourselves? What is the reality?

Learning is a product of a continuous real-time feedback loop – as mentioned by Ray Dalio in Principles. From the feedback we encounter decision making dilemmas and we need to take the best decision based on the reality. Hence the question is what can we improve more in the process and habits within the learning and development scope?

Improving weaknesses

Proper reflection and pausing session is important within the face-face learning sessions and after the sessions, where we can evaluate further the work submissions. Hence the improvement is always real-time when we have to encounter the learner. He or she needs to be communicated and a functional feedback loop should always be there to improve the learning process and experience.

In the previous reflections, I have most of the time renewed the contents of the syllabus based on the student current needs. Few assessment methods have been revamped in order to make it more impact full  as the workload are sometimes unnecessary to the objectives. These are few steps taken for my subject Systems Engineering MANN1013 and System Processors and Peripherals MANN1053.

  1. Updating the slides for both subjects with new examples for Systems Engineering. For System Processors and Peripherals, the slides was revamped by inculcating new ARM based MCU contents.
  2. Introducing ARM microcontoller and RTOS labs after attending MDEC training on ARM Cortex-M3 MCUs that is the basis for IoT processors.
  3. Streamlining the project and paper for Systems Engineering subject as the paper review exercise is quite difficult for the students that has no research background.
  4. Introducing utilization of the mBed NXP LPC1768 based on Cortex M3 as a replacement of the MCB Keil board that is based on ARM TDMI7 (an ARM processor in the 2009).

Refresh always

In the future several ideas for improvement are suggested as follows:

  1. To make a competition based submission for the project as students will enter the annual Innovation competition at UTM KL.
  2. To target the paper submission for PARIS for the projects given for both subjects.
  3. To apply for ARM university program for System Processors and Peripherals MANN1053 as in this link https://www.arm.com/resources/education/education-kits
  4. To enhance the IoT lab for learning and developmental purposes.