Category: Teaching

EPPP (Instructor Teaching Evaluation or in Malay – Penilaian Pengajaran Pensyarah)

I don’t really care about eppp.  After all, it could be a mean for disgruntled students to “express” their emotions and thus, they don’t provide honest rating.  But, what a heck!  Once a while, I do get some unique comments.  Some are nasty ones but, let’s skip that one (not worth to be shared publicly).  Others are like these which give me warm fuzzy feelings that make my marking period enjoyable and bearable.  

I don’t agree with one of the comments though which says I am cute.  I am already in my 40s.  Cute might be used for teenage kids, not 40 plus lady like me 😀  But, looking at the feedback several times does make me feel good with the thoughts that somewhere out there, there is a student who thinks that I am cute.  

Feedback

When I did my Latihan Ikhtisas, I was entrusted to teach form 1, 4 and 6 (MUET).  For form 4, I have to teach five types of continuous writing.  One of it is descriptive composition.  For descriptive composition, one either has to describe a person, an event or a place.  There is no specific plot like narrative composition, yet it requires the writer to write detailed descriptions of a theme (either a person, an event or a place).

I don’t know how to give comments to students so I learn from one of my former students who happens to be an examiner for SPM paper (essay paper).  So, she told me that I need to give examples of sentences or paragraph and give some words of encouragement.  So, I tried it out.  But, it was a tedious process because I have to give different feedback to different students. 

Alhamdulillah, I am so used to give lengthy feedback for my UG and PG students, so I don’t have much problem in that.  It is just that unlike UG or PG students, I need to explain to the form 4 students what does the feedback mean because some of them don’t understand certain words that I used due to poor vocabulary.  But it is a learning process, so it is important to introduce them certain words so they could get familiar with the words and they can see how the words are used in sentences as I wrote it in my feedback.  For this particular student, he doesn’t know the word ‘appropriate’.  So, I explained to him what the word ‘appropriate’ means and how to use it.  

Example of the feedback as in the picture:

Hafid, 

You need to improve on your vocabulary and grammar.  The way you wrote this composition, it is as if you think in Malay and translate it into English.  This style of writing is not appropriate.  You need to practice to think in English when writing in English.  

Band of sisters

When I did my Latihan Ikhtisas, these three ladies are the ones who help me the most.  From the left: Fiza (wearing the sport attire), Aalia, me and Ita.  All of them are really passionate teachers.   I never had any teacher as passionate as them but I am glad that the school has them as their teachers.  May Allah Bless them with continuous hidayah, barakah and rahmah.  

Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the things you can think up if only you try!

At the point of writing this post, I am preparing my OBE report.  Alhamdulillah.  One course is finished.  Another two more to go.   In sha Allah I will try to finish everything before Eid.  

When I look at the students performance (i.e. marks), I could not help from wondering, do they study smart before the exam because apparently, some of them are not able to get good marks.  I know that I cannot assume their understanding based on the marks alone but it seems that some of them are not brave enough to challenge themselves to do better.  Perhaps I am wrong in this matter.  I have been wondering if it has something to do with reading (how much they read to make themselves understand certain concepts).

Language of depression

A friend of mine posted this on her FB.  An article about depression.  More often than not, people who are depressed show many signs such as the way they use certain words (i.e. language).  They speak “the language of depression”.  To untrained eyes, such things can go unnoticed.  

The two aspects that worth to be noted are content and style.  Content consists of emotion expressions, use of pronoun, rumination and social state (i.e. in the case of depression, social isolation).  Style relates to how one express oneself.  It relates to the former aspect, content.  For example, the use of absolutist words (e.g. never, always, nothing, absolutely etc.) might indicate how a person views certain situation.  A sentence like “There is nothing that I do matters” indicates how a person is using self-handicapping note in the language with reference to oneself (i.e. the use of the word “I”).  

So, please be aware of our own language or others to detect any sign of depression.  Indeed.  Mind your (and our) language, please!

Concept maps_Part 1

One of the juniors asked me if giving students a concept map assignment is appropriate to measure cognitive skills (the code C6 – creating level).  I asked him back what makes him think otherwise because to produce a concept map is not easy.  It is not simply cut-copy-paste thingy (unless one copies other’s concept map).  To produce one as your own, you need to have a good understanding about a concept and how it relates to other sub-concepts.  It is not easy to produce a good and meaningful concept-map.  I guess, this junior rarely uses concept maps to be articulated and reflective.  Apparently from his question, it does resonate with that parts that he seems to be lacking of.  

While doing my PhD, I did many concept maps like this.  But, I find it difficult to draw a concept map in a white A4 paper.  So, I changed the medium.  I wrote on brown paper napkins that I could find inside any toilet in my school and it is FOC.  It did help me to stay focused on what I want to write and organise my thoughts.  In fact, a concept map is one of the ways that self-regulated learners will use to be reflective in a pictorial form.  There are research about this.   

So, when I crafted the assignments that I want to assign to my students taking SPPP1012 Educational Psychology, I want to them to be reflective.  Being reflective demands a person to have a certain routine and habit.  In this case, to produce a concept map for every topic learned also means helping students to develop a routine which I hope will turn into a habit.  2 in 1 thingy.  Students will learn how to produce concept maps and hopefully they could teach it to others.  Secondly, students might also develop good habits to summarise their thoughts in different forms i.e. pictorial format.  

What a heck!  As a teacher later on, the students will have to teach their secondary students how to illustrate points using I-think note (I-think note is a form of concept map).  How can they teach the students if they never had any experience to draw concept map before?   As an instructor, I ask the students to submit the concept map on regular basis because I would have a look at their concept maps and give my feedback so that their concept maps would be useful and more meaningful.  This is an example that I “show” real example to my students so that when they become teachers, they would make it as part of their habits to give feedback to students.  

For more information about I-think, check it out on KPM website.

What are the impacts of Latihan Ikhtisas?

I have been wondering about it myself.  Well, to tell the truth, what I gain from the LI is a new experience of teaching adolescents (and its challenges).  Well, that’s it.  Networking?  Indeed.  Networking with the school.  Yup.  I still conduct tuition class and whatnot as a form of my after-LI-service.  

Making impact or difference in the students lives?  How on earth would I know that?!!!  I am not going to be overambitious on this part.  After all, only Allah knows best on this matter.  

Other than that?  Nothing much.  For example, did I get any  Industrial grant?  Nope.  So, it does resonate with the survey findings.  

Well, perhaps I can tell what I have gone through instead.  Yup.  It might take a while since I need to look at evidences that I collected in various forms such as daily journal, students reflective notes and such.  

I have posted some personal rambling on various posts.  Here are some of them:

Things that I produce when I did Latihan Ikhtisas_Part 1

Things that I produce when I did Latihan Ikhtisas_Part 2

Teaching poetry and literature

Latihan Ikhtisas Part 1

Latihan Ikhtisas Part 2

Latihan Ikhtisas Part 3

Latihan Ikhtisas Part 4

Latihan Ikhtisas Part 5

Gamification

I first came across this concept in late 2016.  I attended a one day course about Gamification by a former senior of IIUM (Zayd Ali Alsagof).  I never met him while at IIUM.  He was two years senior.  The chances that I would take the same class would be slim if he majored in psychology.  Most of the time, we would take the courses based on level (of difficulty).  Looking at the course code, you can understand that the course is meant for students at certain year of study.  It does not mean that if you are a first year student, you can’t take courses which are meant for final year student.  It is just that you will “struggle” a lot because the courses would be much complicated and most instructors would assume that you already know some of the theories that you would learn in different classes that you take in junior year.  

So, here I am teaching at a university and yet I am struggling to learn about the current things in education.  I went to this gamification workshop on volunteer basis because I feel that I need to improve my teaching practice.  I want to “inject” something new in my teaching every semester.  That’s my aim.  In sha Allah 

I learn a lot from the course.  But there are so many things that I have yet to explore even though some of the things are not free like Prezi. or Padlet.  One thing at a time. 

One of the things that I immediately implement in my class is online assessment. It is not that we don’t have online assessment on UTM elearning, but the feature is different from other online assessment such as Quizziz, Kahoot! and such. 

So, I tried Quizziz in my MPPU1024.  The students felt excited because it is like playing a game, rather than taking a test.  There are immediate feedback/answers using memes and there is also a ranking.  Yup.  All “players” will be ranked.  At the end of semester, I asked the students to give me feedback about the activities that we did in class.  Some of them give positive notes about Quizziz.  I wrote a paper and presented it in a conference in 2017.  Since then, I start to collect more data every time I use Quizziz in my class.  But, it is kind of challenging to get feedback from students unless it is considered as a part of the grading.  Another challenge, another way to tackle.  One thing at a time.  This is what make teaching interesting.  There would always be challenges that you need to deal with.   Never ends.  

Why do students leave question(s) unanswered?

I have just finished marking the final exam of one course.  Other than multiple choice questions, there are also open-ended questions (short answer questions).  Not that difficult or challenging.

How wrong I was?  When I first marked few of the students exam scripts, I was impressed because they can use their own words to explain various concepts.  So, I gave full marks for this.  Then, as I read the answers of other students (by this time, it was the tenth student), I started to notice a decline of satisfactory answer.  Am I being too strict because of the different time frame of marking?  The first tenth were marked after sahur and the remaining ones were after I have started fasting more than 2 hours.  No.  It couldn’t be that.  I was still feeling fresh and alert.  Am I being affected by the noise of scam phone ringing?  It couldn’t be it.  I felt a bit annoyed but I took a break for a while before continuing marking.  

I further read more exam scripts.  Yup.  I started to find that some students even left one or two questions unanswered.  What went wrong?  I guess, perhaps they cannot find any clue from the MCQ section.  Well, a good question will not give hint of any answer to the other question.  

When I looked again closely the five questions, well, the questions seem complicated but the answers to all of the questions are straight forward.  It does resonate with this saying “sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple“.

So, why do students leave question unanswered?

There are many reasons.  One of it is perhaps they might not have enough time to write the answers.  Second, rather than writing a wrong answer, some might perceive that it is better not to write any answer at all.  Third, they simply do not know the answer or don’t have any idea/clue to write anything at all.  As a teacher, what should I do about this?