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!)
It was the second of Ramadhan. Two days after I had my viva. How time flies! It has been nearly ten years since I had my viva. Feeling a bit overwhelmed with what I experienced two days ago and now, I was on my way back to see my family to share the good news. Well, technically they already knew the news immediately after my viva. Even though my friend, Putri lent me her phone to call my family back home but I just informed my sister using FB.
Normally, I would sleep throughout the journey but not this time. I was fasting and I decided to watch whatever movies available. I decided to watch “Guess who’s coming to dinner”. A classic movie. I was mesmerised with the story line. It is beautiful!
Sydney Poitier is a great actor. The story line and great actors and actresses make the movie a class of its own. It is a rare thing to watch a movie like that nowadays.
When it was about the time for me to break the fast, a stewardess handed me a tray of meal with few packets of dates and biscuits. I was so engrossed watching the movie that I finished the whole thing on the tray without realising it. When I wanted to return the tray, a stewardess asked me if I was still hungry. I replied sheepishly that I was still feeling a bit hungry. She gave me few packets of biscuits and chocolates.
After returning back to my seat, the guy who was sitting next to me asked if I enjoyed watching the movie. I just smiled while saying Yes. He told me that it is one of his favorite movies. Our conversation ended shortly after that as both of us knew that we needed to rest well. He fell asleep not long after that. I was fully awake. My mind kept on thinking about the movie.
Racism, social class, generation gap and parental concern are things that we find it difficult to overcome at certain times. But what matters most is to be open-minded and willingness to take a risk in life. Life is too short to be egocentric and not willing to take any chance that life provides.
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.
One of my postgraduate students asked for my home address. I was reluctant to give it to her. But then I remember that she borrowed my book when she started her research. So, I don’t have other choice than to give my home address for her to return my book.
It was nearly maghrib when I heard someone was talking outside my house. I went outside to see the person. It was a delivery guy. The package delivered was for me. Who is the sender? I didn’t buy anything online. Well, the only thing that I buy online is book. It is essential.
The package that I received was carefully wrapped. As I opened layers of bubble wrap, I finally saw a box. A watch? A pen? I looked at the name written in the box. Unfamiliar name. I googled it. I find out about this company that I never knew exist.
There is a card. There are only few students who addressed me (inaccurately) as Prof. I cringe whenever people call me that. I am not one (yet) and do not aspire to become one either.
I remembered when she asked me what I want for a gift. I told her that an e card that she can make using Canva is sufficed. FOC. But she said that it is not enough to show me her appreciation. I don’t need material things. The watch that I got from a former student lies on top of my dresser. Rarely been used. I never bought myself such an expensive watch nor gifted someone with such an expensive give. The pen that I got from another student also was left unused in my office.
When I opened the box, I was speechless. I saw an engraved pen with my name as I opened another smaller box. This will be the second pen that was gifted to me that I would probably will not use. Let’s face it. The most expensive pen that I use costs me less than RM10 (highly recommended by fellow teachers). My favorite pen costs me RM1 which I bought in bulk (when I was at school in 2018 which I still have until now).
Now, what should I do with this gift? I cannot regift it because it has my name on (tongue in cheek remark!).
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 am not that keen to have a reunion. But I just went along with the idea to keep in touch with my primary school mates. Alhamdulillah I got a chance to meet my former school mates after more than 30 years leaving school.
10 October 2020. It was a year ago when I had the reunion with my primary school mates. How time flies! Indeed.
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 one of the days that I have packed schedule starting from 815am. Is it normal? It is normal but what makes it challenging is having to attend more than one event at the same time. Some people can do it well. I am not one of those people.
I had a meeting about a course and we needed to decide on the rubric etc. While attending that meeting, I also attended the Majlis Apresiasi FSSK. Using two devices, it seemed things could go smoothly. But there is only one “me” with one brain that needs to process overloading information at once. By 12pm, I was exhausted. Then someone asked me about a copy of course information that he cannot open using his laptop. I gave three versions: Words 2003, Words docx and PDF versions. He still cannot open any of the files. *sigh* My patience was wearing thin. I still remembered back in the days when I used a “dumb” phone. He chided by saying “Apa ni telefon cap ayam?”. I have the urge to say the same thing to him now “Apa ni laptop cap ayam?” but I bite my tongue and said “Try to open it again using PDF version and then you convert the PDF to Words”.
What makes me wonder is he taught the course last semester and thus it does not make any sense to ask me to give him the course information this semester. He should have the course information already since last semester. It is the same course information that will be used in the upcoming semester. I am not even the course coordinator. What is wrong with this picture?
