Teaching – Page 10 – Hadijah binti Jaffri

Be creative

Be creative. One of my colleagues lamented that some course require face to face interaction. Then this person later said “It is ok if you just teach theoretical stuff.” Who says I only teach theoretical stuff? For my Fundamental Pedagogy, I use Tarsia and all. Hands-on stuff.

But still when times like this, I don’t want to jeopardise my life and my students lives. We need to take action. So, I told my students “I know that some of you might need to go home and your home might not have internet connection. It is ok. But if you have no other means to go back home and need to stay inside the campus, you can go to the Elearning. I leave some materials that you can use to revise on your own and keep yourself occupied. I also create a forum so if you have anything to ask, you can ask me or others. So you will not miss out anything”

So, I have been busied finding materials and linking it on my elearning plus creating forums and whatsnot. I hope that the students would learn on their own (self-learning) with the support that I give (scaffolding).

My second attempt using BigBlueButton: SPPP1012/SHPP Educational Psychology

I really need to learn this new thing fast. I really have to master it well. These are my aims. But when the reality starts to hit me hard, I know that there are some of things that are beyond my control: server congestion.

Kudos to CICT and UTMLead teams who work extra hard and go extra miles to make sure that we can use the available platform to conduct our class. It is not easy to be done. But everybody is doing their best job

I was starting to get panicky when thing happened like this. I got disconnected. I had a crash course session with my colleague on using Google Meet. We experienced some technical glitches. But, never mind. We will try again.

I just renewed my Prezi subscription. I just learn that it has a new feature. Video presentation with the usual Prezi notes. Alhamdulillah. A good news for me. I have started to learn creating video-slides presentation using Prezi. I know that it is a new challenge for me. I know that I might need extra time to learn it well. But I will not give up. I am not in a race to get to any finishing line. I will get it done somehow In sha Allah. May Allah ease my journey to learn these new things.

Unsolicited testimonies

Students come and go but there are few who would leave indelible marks in my life. I learn a lot from them as much as they learn from me. Learning is a mutual process. You teach as you learn. At the same time, you learn as you teach. Indeed

Lavender tea? Me? The thought that counts

BigBlueButton…. oh… BigBlueButton

I attended a workshop on using BigBlueButton last week. It is very interesting until it dawns to me that I have a large group of students for my UG courses. But the facilitators assured me that since all of the students will log in at different places, unlike the computer lab, there won’t be any internet glitch.

Suddenly, I remember the student that I had last semester who didn’t own a smartphone. It makes me to start thinking further “Does this student has a laptop that can be connected to internet/wifi?” or “What if there is a student like that this semester?”

So I decided to conduct a simple survey to explore this issue especially with regards to the ownership of a smartphone and a laptop/computer which is crucial if I want to use BigBlueButton later on. It is like I am asking students to write using a pen whereas the students do not have any pen. We cannot simply assume that students can afford to have smartphone or computer.

On top of that, since BigBlueButton is like Skype, you need a headphone (at least with or without the microphone). You cannot get a headphone for RM5 to RM10. Based on my observation on the Free Meal/Market, there was time when 50 pens were taken by students. It means that 50 students need a pen that to us might cost pittance. If they cannot afford to buy a pen, what more something like a headphone, smartphone or computer, right?

I met Hadi on my way back to my room. He also just finished his class. We talked about this possibility. He said that he is aware about this too because back in the days when he was the student leader, he knows some students who would give all of their PTPTN loan to the family. They would do odd jobs to survive at UTM. Similar scenario is still happening now.

As an instructor, is it fair to conduct an online class where your students do not have the tool to get connected to you? Anyway, I am still waiting for the students to respond to the survey. So, until then, I will keep waiting before deciding on the next course of action.

Chocolate, anyone?

Every semester, I aim to do something new and learn at least one new thing. I know some might say that I am capable to do or learn more than one thing but my aim is to do something or learn something new extremely well. That is challenging.

I had a quick look at my Elearning before coming to my first undergraduate class today. I noticed that there were three students who have “visited” my Elearning five days ago (5 February 2020). At that time, Nihra told me that the Elearning was not that stable yet so I have to wait at least few days to start uploading materials and whatsnot. I uploaded some materials on Friday (7 February 2020).

What should I do to reward the students who made such attempt to visit my Elearning? I looked around my office. Apparently, my junk food stock has “diminished” and all what left is the chocolate that one of my seniors gave me when she went to Jogjakarta last year. An artisan chocolate. So, I looked at the names again and wrote it down before I went to class.

As I started my class with introduction to the course, I remembered about those students. So, I stopped my explanation for awhile and started to call their names. They were shocked. But I know that they are flattered as well. Something that might has never happened to them before. Who would care to reward a simple attempt of logging to the Elearning, right?

I reward them because it is unusual for students during their semester break to log in to Elearning, just to have a look at “what’s-new”. Of course, it is related to the things we are going to discuss this semester.

This is not the chocolate that I gave them. They are not that lucky though (tongue in cheek remark)

Blended Learning Course at FSSH- All notes

I attended Blended Learning Workshop today. There are new things that I have learned today. So many notes that I have to study. Since I am not really techno savvy, I have to take some time to master this. But, I will try the best I could.

Here are the notes:

The last round robin activity for this semester

It is never my intention to torture my students with Round Robin activity this semester which I conducted more than twice. But, the thing is they are future teachers. I hope through experiential learning, they would remember how they go through the process of this activity. Hope they would store the information in procedural memory and episodic memory (there are steps involved that they have to go through i.e. relate to procedural memory as well as event where they go through i.e. related to the activity itself).

Please ignore the way they dress. After all, they are TEASLIAN. As you can see, they might have resemblance with LA lecturers too who teach them. An example of modelling (social learning) by Bandura in action. Indeed

Last day of my class….. errrr

I had a blast with this group of students. Few of them took my Personality Psychology class before. When I asked them why they took my Human Development class, they said that they want to learn from me. They enjoy taking my class. What a bluff! That is my first impression. I know that I should trust my students but due to previous experiences, I still have some reservation when they give me sugar-coated compliment.

One of them suggested that we took a class picture. This is not what I normally do in class. I feel cringed (you can see it from my face). But for the sake of group dynamics, I played along with their request.

Have self-compassion towards yourself…..

Each of us have professional or personal goals that we want to achieve. Some might resort to underhand means to achieve their goals. Well, what is wrong or right is clear if you use religion as your benchmark. Yet again, whatever benchmark is a personal choice.

Most of us equate achievement with self-esteem. You evaluate yourself positively or favorably when you achieve something. This notion would means that you are relying on evidences of your achievement to evaluate yourself. If you think about the hereafter, whereas you don’t know what you will get (gladtiding or not), you will reevaluate again your professional and personal goals and think carefully how to act in achieving the goals.

Again, all will come back to how compassionate you are towards yourself. To know more, read more HERE.

New Academia Learning Innovation (NALI) Active learning: Using Gallery Walk (more)

I am a novice in active learning. I have tried jigsaw, think-pair-share, 2 minutes paper and STAD (student-teams achievement division). I challenge myself to learn a new cooperative learning strategy this semester. I choose Gallery Walk (well, I also use Carousel but that one is for poster evaluation).

When I google about Carousel , I find so many versions of it. But the bottom line is, Carousel is a strategy that you use WHEN you want to “semi-force” each individual student to take turn in giving their opinion/answer/response and they “have” to share it with others. Ideally, 4 to 5 students per group.

But in my case, I used Gallery Walk for my PG class. They are more matured students so the whole class is considered as one group. But in this case, I increase the number of questions (each question is position in one station) so they can move around to answer the questions at their own pace and preference. There is no compulsion or assignment of which station would be their first station. They can start at any station to give their response.