Category: COVID-19_Teaching and Learning

We were bombarded to give our response in a survey. At first, I just did not pay any attention to that. I just have a quick look and moved on to other things. But, it keeps on appearing on the email and Whatsapp. Then, this made me to stop for a while and closely inspected the survey.

As I was preparing notes for my research methodology class yesterday, something bugged me. I just could not help from thinking about certain things that I know very well are not ethical when conducting research. What makes it unbelievable is the fact that we have abundant professors at the university and yet such unethical aspects are so glaringly happened right in front of our eyes. These highly esteemed professors should be consulted to avoid this kind of things from happening.

I discussed this with few friends. Some said that they refuse to answer the survey regardless of the consequences. I told one of my seniors, I wanted to check out the rest of the items to confirm my hunch. Since there are certain things being forced on us (uhuk uhuk to answer first before moving to the next part), I decided to look at the survey closely.

I answered all of the items but at the same time, I wrote down certain things that I found in the survey about some of the items (unethical things). I discussed this again with my seniors. We agree that something is not right about the survey.

After completing the survey, I wrote an email to the person in charge. My intention is to raise the awareness about certain things that might be overlooked by them. I also gave the person in charge a title of a book that can be referred if they want to know more about research ethics (tongue in cheek remark!).

The title of the book is “100 questions (and answers) about research ethics” by Emily E Anderson dan Amy Corneli (Sage, 2018).  

There was a briefing by Dr Nihra about TESDCP. For teaching track, there are several things that we need to fill in the information (plus document if relevant) at different systems such as ELPPT (B6, B7, B9, B10) and RADIS (B11).

There are rubrics too. Looking at the rubrics make me asking myself, “What are the things that I aim for?” Do I really need to care about being penalised i.e. losing marks for not able to provide evidence of my research in teaching? Well, I take a baby step in this case. Conducting a research relating to my teaching practice involves conscious act of revising, replanning, reevaluting and restructuring (it is cyclical process). I know that as a start I need to share my teaching practice to people outside UTM. For this reason, I make sure that I participate (and present) in a relevant conference or exhibition. I did that in June (IUCEL/IIDEL2021) and October 2021 (IQRC2021).

It is in my plan to publish the findings of my action research. But getting comments and whatsnot from people that I met during conferences, I realise that I need another cycle of data collection. But nevertheless, there will be another upcoming conference in December (INCULT2021) and I am preparing a paper for that.

But by that time, I know that I would have only few days to fill in the ELPPT. Well, I will try my best.

I am not a techno savvy person. But I try my best to learn new things. So, I challenged myself to participate in a virtual conference this year. The first one I attended was in June. IQRC 2021 is my second.

One of the things that I notice is how QRAM (Qualitative Research Association Malaysia) organises the virtual conference. It looks neat and user-friendly. At first I was struggling to navigate the virtual conference venue but as I tried several times, it did help me to “survive” in navigating the venue. I got lost few times but it was alright. A new learning experience for me.

Unlike the conference bag that we usually get with goodies and stuff, this time around, we got a swag bag. The term sounds classy! We can choose to “bag” in the things available such as discount for books, videos and stuff. One of the things that I “bagged” is this video about qualitative research. It is kind of straight forward for students to use. I like the simple yet concise presentation of information. Here is the video.

For the programme book, it is in PDF format. As a reference, here is the programme book.

It is a new semester. So there are few technical glitches that might happen as usual. But I find myself getting emails from students asking about things that they can find on their own by googling up information themselves. With classes, meetings, a workshop and a conference, I got easily annoyed with students who emailed me asking such mundane thingy. Just because they pay the tuition fees, does it give them the right to treat me like an information counter personnel? I wonder where these students come from. Why are they acting like a kindergartener who ask questions that they can find the answer themselves through Google?

Several postgraduate students asked me a list of reading materials. For goodness sake! Some of them are PhD candidates even – who are supposed to be trained as independent researchers. If they depend on me as their supervisor to give them a list of things to read, they should register for my undergraduate courses where I provide a course information with list of reading materials like textbooks and such.

What should I do about this? To relieve stress dealing with these students, I read PhD comics by Jorge Cham. It gives me an idea to contribute to the comic. I think I will email the cartoonist to share my predicament (tongue in cheek remark!)

This is interesting! A new thing for peer assessment. Being me who is not a tech-savvy, I normally use Google Form. This app was developed by UTM academicians from the Faculty of Engineering and Faculty of Computing. I might use it if I have to assess team working aspect.

Dr Fauzan provides a manual book as a guide within the system (you need to log in to the system to get accessed to the PDF manual book). I will try to explore it later.

One of the challenging decisions to make in assisting students is extension of deadlines for assignments. Even though from the first day of class I normally will explain the assignments and deadlines yet towards the end of the semester, there will be students asking for extension for whatever reasons. In this case, it seems there are enormous tasks they have to complete at the end of semester i.e. week 12 onwards. Thus it will indirectly make them feel more stressful at the end of semester. For some people, stress will affect their immune system. So falling sick when there are lots of assignments to be submitted around the corner is normal.

But, should we aka the lecturers to be blame if students feel stress due to students own “failure” in managing their time to study? Is it fair to blame the lecturers who do not give extension? Looking back at this situation, it seems the fault lies with the way the lecturers conduct their class, in this case relating to assignment submission.

Of course there are only “some students who are struggling to be responsible and accountable of their own action”. Blaming others is an easy way out. Indeed. Suddenly I remember about “minah t test tak tau”. What happens to her now? Hopefully, things go well in her life. As a teacher, I always hope for the best for my students even though they hurt my feelings (and never apologise). In minah-t-test-tak-tau case, I have forgiven her but I will never forget what she and her father did for the rest of my life. It is lesson that I will treasure as long as I live.

I attended a session today. At first, I was a bit reluctant to attend. After all, it is the same Elearning. But something inside me was bugging me to attend the session. Well, there are some new things indeed that have been improved since last year. Indeed.

One of the things is there will be a direct link of blended learning rating to TESDCP (under the category of T&L Delivery Resources. You can see other information like E-content (but you cannot add your E content materials here. There is another system for that).

I learn (relearn) on how to do backup/restore (again). It is simple but I have to be extra careful in doing it. If not, I might accidentally delete the students who might have registered for the upcoming semester (which is in another one more week). Since we are using two course codes (old vs new version) for certain courses, I asked if we can merge the courses into one. Dr Nihra gave a tips. We can either (1) metacourse link the courses or (2) import or enrol the students from either one of the courses (old or new code) to another one. But there is a catch. You might not comply to the blended learning rating. For the metacourse link, you need to request it to your faculty’s IT manager.

So what I did is for one course that I pair with another colleague, I did the backup/restore of the course, but I hide it from students. In this case, we are going to maintain the course with two codes.

For another course that I pair with juniors, I decided not to do the backup/restore thingy. Let’s start afresh! Another tips that Dr Nihra shared which some others have done it before (and will continue doing it in this upcoming semester) is we can prepare our Elearning in advanced and can get 4 rating if we comply to all the things (ABCD) [Refer to the picture]. So what left is the active involvement of students with the materials, activities and assessments that we prepare in the Elearning. For that, we have to achieve at least 28 active index. Any lesser than that will lead us to get 4 band. There is a calculation but I am not sure about that. But if I am not mistaken, the 28 active index depends on how many students log in to Elearning and get accessed to our course.

Another thing that I just noticed (after Dr Nihra showed it to us) is a box on the right side “Course Blended Status“. If you want to know if you have complied the blended learning requirement, you can check it in your Elearning. The example that I show in the picture (below) shows that I have achieved band 4 rating. But let’s see how it goes.

I bought a tablet. After contemplating for a year, I decided to get a tablet with a pen that I can use to write . Like always, I used one of my postgraduate students as my guinea pig. I already commented her proposal but I want to use the pen. So I scribbled new comments, drew an arrow here and there to show my points.

But one of the things that I noticed on the first day I bought the tablet was it turned into a sleep mode after 7pm and only can be switched on back at 7am. It is like I can only use the tab for 12 hours!!!. This continued for nearly a week. I tried my best to change the setting but to no avail. It did not work. So I decided to go to the service centre, and got things fixed. Alhamdulillah. It can be switched on after 7pm.

I shared my experience with some friends. Some even joked “The tablet is smart because it wants you to have a work-life balance. No more work after 7pm“. Yeah, right. I am ok if the setting is from 7am to 9pm. Not 7pm. It is too early!

Since I installed basic apps, I do not have any game etc installed. To get myself familiar with the tablet, I wrote this post by using the pen. A small step indeed.

It was Friday. Even though officially it was my day off but due to the urgency to amend something for the extension of UTMER, I grudgingly prepared the mitigation plan as needed. At first, I did not have any idea on how to simplify the presentation of the mitigation plan. I googled up on the internet and found some examples using PowerPoint. I thought to myself “This is doable”.

While preparing the mitigation plan, I chatted with a junior about a course that we will offer next semester. Since she knew that I was preparing the mitigation plan, we just chatted using Whatsapp. At the same time, I noticed that there were emails coming in – almost non-stop. It was a bit unusual. Normally, I will not get many emails on weekends.

I opened one. Well, it was a former student asking me to be his supervisor. Within another half and hour later, I got similar emails from other students. On top of that I also got messages from some students. Alhamdulillah, not many of this batch have my number.

All in all, guess what? I had more than 10 students asking me to be their final year project (FYP) supervisor. Well, the last time that I had was in 2013. Yup. That was a long time ago. I do not know what is the current practice so I asked around. I asked the course coordinator. She replied: “I will assign them with supervisors from ………….”.

Now, how am I going to break the news to these students? I have to be tactful. So I decided to create a simple poster.

Some of them replied back. Well, I did not expect that they would reply my email back. Here are some of their responses:

Student A: Ah that’s okay Dr. Your response is very cute and heartwarming hahaha

Student B: Noted, Dr. Thank you for the reply, I’m glad that I had the chance to take your classes before. Have a good day, Dr. 

Student C: I adore your effort in creating the e-poster, Dr. It somehow makes me feel special and appreciated. Thank you too for your prompt reply to my inquiry, Dr Hadijah. I clearly understand your email, always be safe and healthy Dr <3

Student D:

Noted Dr 

 . Thank you for your response.

Student E: Assalamualaikum & good morning Dr. Hadijah. I understand Dr. I’m quite disheartened you cannot be my supervisor, but having you as my teacher is good enough! Thank you very much Dr. Hadijah and have a nice day ahead! :DD