Dr Nur Ayuni, Engineering Education

As an academic, I believe that blended traditional and alternative teaching and learning techniques can enhance students’ learning and thinking. These T&L techniques can avoid the students to become passive learners who cannot give an opinion and share their ideas. Although active learning is a bit challenging to implement and must have cooperation from every student, it proves that students can understand knowledge through it.

 The flipped classroom, debates, and video recording are some of the active teaching methods that I used in my class. Alhamdulillah, I am glad to find that my students enjoyed it and they also make all the effort to familiarise themselves with this active-learning pedagogy.

Despite the challenges, classes were successfully conducted with several active T&L activities that had already been outlined in the CI. These activities complied with the SLO stated and facilitated students to complete their assignments.

Instead of that, I also used online teaching tools such as Google Jam board, quizzes, and interactive videos to give an active online learning experience to the students. Besides online teaching tools, I have given them a real-life case study in which students must solve and relate the theory that they have learned before with the real problem given.

Instead of a case discussion, a reflective 5 minutes session has been implemented at the end of my class by asking students to reflect on what they have learned in class and any issues related to it. Each student must give their opinion and this was done via a short 1-3 minute video recording and they need to upload it in the e-learning.

Therefore, I believe that through such active learning activities, I could nurture my student’s thinking skills and their intensity of seeking knowledge. This process would also represent the achievement for each targeted learning outcomes.

After several years in this education field, I believe a good educator must also be a good learner. A good educator must constantly learn what is new in the discipline.

To live this belief, I continuously examine my teaching methods and try to find new ones that are more innovative and can enhance my students’ learning. Besides, I eagerly and willingly learn from other peoples’ points of view although they come from different backgrounds. Instead of that, I believe to boost students learning spirits, my teaching styles must be updated. Pedagogically, this can be achieved through the active learning strategy which allows students to share their ideas or opinion regarding certain topics. The contribution of students in a class can spark them to critically think and not only become a passive-listener. I believe recommended activities including student-led class discussions, presentations, flipped classrooms, debates, collaborative project-based learning, and industry-site visit can be implemented to enhance this active learning process in face-to-face or online classes.

 Creating an effective education system requires an educator to know what learning outputs they want students to achieve. The learning outputs also must be aligned with the pedagogical methods implemented during the class so that the students’ assessments will truly represent students abilities and skills. I believe educators are responsible to make the future the best possible place for all of us to live. These are the challenges I accepted when I chose to be an educator. I remain committed to them.