Unforgettable moment

I never dream of having opportunity to rub shoulders with the best intellectuals of our country. The guy who sat beside Tan Sri Dzulkifli Abdul Razak aka IIUM rector is Professor Afifi Al-Akiti of Oxford University. But, meeting them is indeed a blessing of Allah after our LRGS grant was rejected few months ago. Prof Amir‘s meeting with Tan Sri Dzul after our proposal was rejected was predestined. Going back to my alma mater with such opportunity to meet and discuss issues about our education system is a humbling experience for me. Alhamdulillah.

A sharing session

We had an opportunity to share our experiences with our colleagues from School of Civil Engineering. They are engineers. Yup. I feel small to share my experience with them about e-content. Since the semester will start next week, I just want to share with them about what we can do to prepare our e-content for this semester. It is not about getting the extra bonus marks per se but it is about how to document our teaching practice through digital means.

I met some brilliant minds in our country who went to some of the best ivy leagues in the world such as Cambridge University, University of California, Sacramento and such. I feel small indeed.

When I share my experience filling in TESDCP and TES (E-content), there was a little commotion. Wow…. it is indeed a quite controversial thing. I told them why it is important for us to link URL on our self-assessment (TESDCP). Some of them lamented that nobody told them before about it. Well, I told them honestly that I thought that everyone knows the importance of linking URL (even though it is stated if applicable) on each aspect of their self-assessment and reflections because it carries certain weight on how our self-assessment and reflection is being evaluated.

I told them that we need to strategise now. Since all of us have to prepare our OBE, we can put our reflection on the CQI part on our webometric and later on link our reflection (that we write on webometric) on certain aspects such as Goals of student learning and such on TESDCP. In this case, we fulfill three things which are required on us: OBE (CQI), webometrics and TESDCP. It is a matter of how we simplify things. One of the members asked me “Why do we have to do redundant things?” I don’t have any idea or answer to that. My reply is “It is about how we help UTM to be more visible“. One of them who is very well-versed in developing learning management system (he even develops his own personalised system) asked me further, “Why can’t CTL make our e-learning as public instead?“

It makes me think why are we in this predicament on a first place. Why do we have to document our teaching practice? Does it mean that if we don’t well-document our teaching practice we are not doing our job appropriately as university instructors? Clearly, I don’t have definite answers to this.

Full house. I was feeling so anxious at this moment. Alhamdulillah there was no little accident happened at that moment. The guy who sat behind me is the recipient of Anugerah Webometric 2017. I learn a lot from these guys.

Why do I post posters that I receive from UTM email?

Let’s face it. I am not getting any younger. There are times when I have the tendency to spring clean my email without thinking too much about whatever information I should take note of or concern about. Some of the information is presented in poster format. So, what I do is before I delete any of the email that I receive, I will “transfer” whatever information/posters that I consider as “worth” to be shared and remembered.

I know that some might feel “disturbed” to find irrelevant information from my post. My stance: Just ignore whatever information is not important to you. But I would like to thank you because you take the time to read my post. This is why I feel shocked when someone accidentally came across my post about the pouches. My first reaction is “Alamak, malunya ada orang baca“. But, when Assoc Prof Dr Nadiatulhuda emailed me asking to let her know if I would make a sewing session, I was starting to think that perhaps I should have a support group to unwind doing common thing. It does make me to question myself “Am I a loner?” Indeed. I don’t change much over the years apparently.