The collaboration that occurs with other people enables us to construct and expand our knowledge.
Teaching has always been my passion, but at the same time, I know I can do more than just teach. In academia, our role as an academic goes beyond the four walls of classroom. Our role is to lead, inspire, influence, and guide the future generation. My strong ability to multitask has opened up opportunities for me to explore and share my knowledge with others while making an impact on my students’ lives.
Being a lecturer, your students are your biggest stakeholders. Their learning experiences at the university will definitely shape their life as a unique individual with their own strengths. My job is to lead them; to ensure that when they leave their university life, they are ready to face the real world and find their true calling.
My road to be a great academic is still long and far, but I have exceptional mentors for me to learn from and I am eternally grateful for that. These mentors have taught me the importance of planning ahead; be it for my career, my teaching or my research collaboration. Setting a clear direction is vital to ensure that everything we do is achievable and most importantly, productive. In order to achieve this, I have my own yearly Vision Board to plan out my work, including my research, publications and supervision. This really helped me to stay focus on my yearly goals and work my way towards it as I do tend to get swayed away with other miscellaneous work.
I have identified some areas of self-improvement that I can do to enhance my skills as an academic. In terms of teaching, I need to be more adventurous in trying out innovative and transformative teaching and learning methods that suit today’s generation. This will surely improve my students’ learning experiences. I have started to explore the use of AI and planning to integrate it in my future courses. I am currently taking some AI workshops and trainings to improve my knowledge on the effective use of AI tools. Aside from that, I need to move towards the use of active learning to inculcate students’ critical thinking and problem solving skills, that will surely come in handy when they embark on their working journey.
In terms of research and scholar development, I need to connect with more people to expand my collaboration. I have started to provide trainings on the use of AI tools to my faculty members and I will soon be joining my mentors to train teachers on how to use AI in schools. I also need to aim for high impact publications more just to challenge myself on how far can I improve research and writing quality. I still join writing workshop on high impact publications to gain more knowledge and skills on this. I have learned that the best way to improve yourself is by surrounding yourself with successful people. I always meet my mentors and discuss with them about future research projects and collaboration that can be done within our field. They have also helped me to connect with their research collaborators.
Being a new academic, I always have to be on feet; be ready for new opportunities and new tasks to learn from, hence my adaptability skills will always be tested. Being able to work well under pressure really help me to cope well with all the new things that I need to adapt fast.
To be a great academic, you need to be a good leader. But, before you can lead others, you need to able to lead yourself to success.
