Category: COVID-19_Teaching and Learning

COVID-19 pandemic has thrown us with challenges that we have to face with resilient.  Overcoming the challenges with limitations of resources is not easy but with assistance from others, things are bearable and manageable.  Printed and non printed books can be costly especially if it is textbooks.  No doubt about that.

But Alhamdulillah, Springer,  Elsevier, and other publishers have stepped up their effort to assist students to get access to materials needed for their learning.  Among the free books are like Educational Technology: A primer for the 21st century and such.

I hope that my students will use this opportunity to be more independent in searching resources.  Of course, there are others with limited dataplan and internet connectivity who might difficulty to search resources through the internet.  I pray hard that the situation that we are facing right now might not increase the social divide.

The crisis of COVID-19 does not end with the medical domain.  It affects other social domains as well.   One of the concerns of recently graduated students is employment opportunity.   With many lost their job during the MCO, companies have to be closed down or reduced their services, new jobs creation is really scarce.

The issue is real.  But the panelists from the forum have presented and discussed the issue thoroughly.  It is indeed a new normal in the way we perceive about employment and employability.   For more details, HERE is the slide.

With the new order from MOHE for universities to conduct classes through online, it means that there will be less physical face to face classes.  Due to this, students would not be using any physical facilities that available at their respective universities such as classroom and such.

But there are other facilities that are offered through online such as library (even though they cannot borrow physical printed books), eLearning and others.  In fact, online classes are conducted by the same instructors (who are paid) but it is just the classes are conducted through online medium.

Of course, there are some courses which need hands-on practices like science experiments which might require the need of laboratories or specialised equipment, workshops for courses involving tinkering, sewing, cooking – referring to technical and vocational courses  or design studios which equips with costly or bulky equipment such as 3D printers or cutters.   For such cases, students need to attend physical face to face classes.

But, with the  decreased limited usage of university’s facilities and services, should the university fees be reduced?   That’s a question that would be thought well and it is something that is being discussed at the moment (HERE is the recent article from a internet).

For more information, you can find it HERE and HERE.

Since last March when the MCO was implemented, I have been improvising my class with various challenges that I have to overcome from my part and my students.  I can somewhat control how to find the solutions to the challenges that I have to face but I have little control on how to help my students overcome their challenges especially when it comes to the infrastructure or tools that needed for online classroom such as a smart phone or laptop or computer and internet connection.

But with the new normal and as what has been emphasised by the Ministry of Education and UTM, I have to find more alternatives to help my students with no or limited internet connection.  I search for alternatives such as Google Drive features (apparently, students can still view and work on Google Docs or Slide offline – HOW?  I still need to learn about this feature).