You do need to have the ability to spot turning points in any project of your endeavour. In my case I spotted the turning point to make little bulbs out of my daffodils/narcissus in test tubes. And my PhD supervisors made sure I scaled the most important turning point – the completion of my PhD thesis on schedule!
你确实需要有能力在你努力的任何科研项目中发现转折点。在我的例子中，我发现的一个转折点就是怎样使得试管培养的水仙花芽丛形成小鳞茎。我的两位博士导师确保我完成了最重要的转折点：就是如期完成博士论文！
About 35 years ago, having cracked how I could make a lot of daffodil shoots in test tubes (that’s another story!), I was faced with a great hurdle that for the life of me I had no idea how to tackle. How could I turn these shoot clumps into little bulbs for planting in the field? After all, my PhD’s goal was to produce a complete protocol from multiplying massive number of daffodils/narcissus shoot clumps in test-tubes and getting these growing ‘normally’ in the field. Based on literature reviews, I knew that plating shoot clumps had been successfully done by other researchers. But this had two major disadvantages:
There would be a danger of these shoot clumps not acclimatizing well when planted out in the glass house. 25 – 30% casualties would be “normal”.
These shoot clumps were behaving like young narcissus seedlings and would need up to five years to grow to flowering stage.
My late supervisor, Dr. Barbara M.R. Harvey suggested I should look at other plant models in tissue culture for inspirations. The light-bulb moment came when I had a chat with Dr. Nikki Evans on how she got her potato shoots in test-tubes to form small tubers. Evans used high sugar content in her culture medium and I went along this line. A few months later, I was elated to see little bulbs (which I termed ‘bulbils”) formed in my test-tubes given high dose of sucrose in their culture media. That was the turning point of my PhD and 6 months later I submitted my thesis…and the rest as they say “was history”!
Narcisus shoots in various stages of forming bulbils. From left: Starting with single leaf with basal plate tissue; after 3 – 4 weeks of culture duration signs of bulbil formation were clear; after 6 – 7 weeks a bulbil (about 1 cm in diameter) was formed; after 10 weeks of culture the bulbil had grown to be around 2 cm in diameter, the equivalent size of a one-year-old seedling. [Photo’s copyright: Dr. Chow Yong Neng]For this part of my work I am indebted to Dr. Evans for her generosity in sharing her ideas.
I owed it to my two supervisors, Dr. Barbara Harvey and Dr. Christopher Selby for putting their feet down shortly after I had completed the “bulbils” experiment by stopping me from doing any more work in the lab (they literally banished me from my lab!) and by pushing me to write my doctorate thesis which I completed about 6 months later! This was the most important turning point! My research project goals were attained, but my doctoral studies goal was still not reached. I had to write, submit and defend my thesis (successfully) to earn my PhD!
A few months after that (in December 1990), I was conferred the degree of Doctor of Philosophy by my alma mater, the Queen’s University of Belfast. Shortly after, I left Belfast to take up a post-doctoral research officer post at the National University of Singapore.
It was around late 1991 that I received the great news from Dr. Harvey, she wrote in an email: “Chow, some of the “bulbils” that you had planted out in mid 1990 are flowering!”
This was exciting news indeed because:
it proofed that my bulbils, after going through the “stressful” process of my protocol were not any different from those multiplied conventionally;
of more significance is the fact that this meant my protocol had cut the “shoot clumps/seedlings to flowering bulb stage”by at least 3 – 4 years!
I wished I had the chance and resources to carry on with this work to collect more data on this observation but disappointingly this was not the case.
In research work, you do need to have a keen eye to spot trends & changes but what you need most is the guidance of experienced researchers. I was lucky to have both! The keen eye helped me to spot the resemblance between the potato tuberization process and the bulb formation of narcissus/daffodils. The guidance of my supervisors ensured that I scaled the last but most crucial turning point of my PhD journey. They put a stop to my laboratory work and made sure that I stuck to the PhD research schedule (and more importantly, my scholarship tenure) to compose and submit my PhD thesis way before the last of my scholarship cheques was issued!
If you are interested, a brief introduction to a paper published by my supervisors and I have just been written & published in Kudos by me.
Someone who obviously never taught a single class commented that “teaching online is easy”. How wrong this person is? Check out my sharing!
It is definitely not a piece of cake to teach online! I know. This is because I had taught for over thirty months online.
网上教学绝对不是一件轻而易举的事！ 为何我有此见解？这是因为我在网上教了三十多个月。
I was (until the end of July 2022) engaged as a full time teaching staff of Zhaoqing University, Guangdong Province, China (ZQU). I came home for a short winter break in January 2020, well “Mr. COVID-19” messed up a lot of lives and things, including my return from Malaysia to teach in China! In this rather long post I try to share my own experiences and learning in conducting delivery of classes online (and supervision of students’ graduation thesis work remotely in Part 2).
With the new semester fast approaching, in late January 2020 I received instructions from the International Office of ZQU to NOT return to campus. I guess we were luckier than most as I was able to cancel my wife’s and my AirAsia tickets on time to get a refund. By late February 2020, all my Taiwanese colleagues who had gone home (Taiwan) for the winter break and yours truly were getting anxious. One of our China colleagues, Mr. Yan Dan Feng was even stuck at his home town near Wuhan, the epicenter of the COVID-19 outbreak. We all really did pray from his (and his family’s) safety!
Finally, in early March 2020, with students and many staff not being allowed to return to the campus the leadership of ZQU finally received the green light from the power that be to allow all classes of the new semester (Spring 2020) to be delivered online. The scrambles for gears and internet bandwidth began at every academic’s and student’s household.
A shaky start to my online teaching class 我的在线教学课程的一个不稳定的开始
It happened that both Mr. Yan Dan Feng and I were assigned to teach the same course (管理学概论 – Introduction to Management Science) to two different classes. To make life easier for both of us, Mr. Yan and I had decided to merge the two classes (luckily the two classes’ respective timetables did not clash). I would be doing the lecturing while Mr. Yan would be working behind the “scene” to trouble shoot and observe students’ performance. Prior to this, with the help of the class leaders (yes we did have class monitors班长; class learning committee members学委; and class discipline committee members纪委) we had sorted out the online chat groups for classes in the platforms described below. So communicating with our students was more or less settled, so we thought!
Locations of lecturers —- one in Subang Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia; one in his hometown close to Wuhan in China. 讲师所在地点： 一位老师在马来西亚雪兰莪州梳邦再也，一位在靠近中国武汉的家乡。
Locations of students —- in their respective homes, scattered throughout Guangdong Province. Some would be in cities or towns with good internet connections while a good number would be at their home villages remotely located (internet connection and bandwidth were issues). 学生所在地： 在各自的家里，分散在广东省各地。一些人住在有良好网络连接的城镇，而很多人则住在偏远的家乡。（互联网连接和带宽可能具有问题）。
Online teaching platforms —- DingTalk (for live broadcast), Rain Classroom (a PowerPoint add-on from Qinghua University, as the in-class interaction engine), and QQ Group Chat (as the backup live broadcast platform). While WeChat remained the only direct link between the class leaders and the lecturers (we did not want the rest of the students onto this WeChat group to complicate matters), the rest of the class had to communicate with the teaching staff using DingTalk (backed up by QQ Group Chat). We did have another option: Tencent Meeting (腾讯会议) but this platform was a bit more complicated for me to use. So we ruled it out. 在线教学平台：钉钉（直播）、雨课堂（清华大学PowerPoint插件，作为课堂互动引擎）和QQ群聊（作为备用直播平台）。虽然微信仍然是班长/学委和老师之间唯一的直接联系方式（我们不想让其他学生加入这个微信群，让事情变得复杂），但班上其他人必须使用钉钉（QQ群聊为备用平台）与教师交流。我们确实有另一个选择，腾讯会议，但是当时我们觉得该平台的操作是有点复杂。所以腾讯会议被排除了。
The first class was chaotic to say the least. The first 30 minutes of class was “eventless”. We started a few minutes late as my teaching partner and I had to do a headcount of the number of students who signed in on our two classes. Luckily DingTalk allowed the “merging” of the two class groups into one for direct broadcast of my lecture. Hence we saved a lot of work in this merging so that my teaching partner could “supervise” the students and monitor them while I concentrated on the delivery.
Then our trouble started: some of the students reported that they were unable to get a good connection to DingTalk and on my end, with my own monitoring, I was informed by DingTalk that the connection I had was shaky. Thus collectively, Mr. Yan and I (with the help of the leaders of the two classes) had to inform our lot to “switch to QQ Chat Group”.
So we continued on QQ Group Chat direct broadcast (it was more like video group chat). The thing was, on QQ unlike DingTalk, I could not mute the microphones of the students. Despite Mr. Yan’s urging at the “back” of the online class for everyone to “mute your mic”, during the 90 minutes class, we had many instances of interfering sounds: door slamming, people talking, traffic noise. It was to be expected as our students were all stuck at home, some would have to share facilities with siblings etc. Compound this issue with the fact that not all students were having access to stable and good internet connections and most had to use their mobile phones to attend classes.
Nevertheless, we were still able to carry on with our class. Then our next major trouble started!
尽管如此，我们仍然能够继续上课。然后我们的下一个大麻烦开始了！
One of the female students decided to read her Chinese literature lesson out loud in my online class. Reading out loud is one way of learning Chinese literature but one would be well advised to do it when one is in solitude! So we had 80 students in the online class, 79 of whom was tuned in to my class with one blabbing away and “fighting” with me for the attention of her course mates! Despite my repeated requests to my students to “check your mic and mute your mic NOW“, the blabbing female student was not listening and she continued! It took the combined efforts of Mr. Yan and our class leaders a good 15 minutes to locate this “blabbing” person! So my “reserve” platform was not a viable alternative after all!
At that time (March 2020) Rain Classroom did not have a working live broadcast function, and I should have used Tencent Meeting (腾讯会议) as the backup. Lesson learned!
当时（2020年3月）雨课堂还没有实时直播功能，我应该用腾讯会议作为备选平台。我又上了一课！
In addition, March 2020 was the time when all educational institutions in China (from primary all the way to tertiary institutions) were teaching their students online. Bandwidth and other internet resources were stretched to the limits. Hiccups were to be expected. But true to the efficiency in which China technology companies were operating, most obliged to contribute during the nation’s critical needs and solved most technical glitches effectively. Hence within a few days most of these hiccups were more or less ironed out.
August 2020 – the return of staff & students on campus, but NOT ME! 2020年8月-教职员工和学生重返校园，但不包括我!
It was August 2020. All my Taiwanese colleagues received the order to return campus (subject to quarantine measures — this was a nightmare for many at the start, being “caged up” for weeks etc.). By then, my Zhaoqing City resident permit had expired. I needed a special letter of invitation from the provincial authority to get an entry visa. That took over 10 weeks to obtain. When this letter finally arrived, my rush to the Kuala Lumpur China Embassy’s visa centre proved to be fruitless – the nice manager at the visa centre advised us that the China authority were closing the boarder and even if we could get our visa, there were few flights (that cost at least ¥9,000 or around MYR5,625, but mostly in the ¥35,000 range for chartered flights) available. So I had to break the bad news to my colleague at the International Office of ZQU taking care of my case, Ms Zeng. All her great efforts in rushing around and chasing the special invitation letter for me was wasted!
I was fortunate to have very accommodating and kind leaders at my School of Life Sciences. The leadership took up my case to the power that be at ZQU and convinced them to grant me the privilege of being the only academic staff (one out of 2000) to be allowed to continue to teach online. Of course there were many rules /arrangements that I had to adhere to. Some of these were:
All my online classes must be delivered at the assigned classroom on campus and students must attend in person (that is, students must gather at the assigned time and venue as per ‘normal’ classes) 我所有的在线课程都必须在校园内教务处指定的教室授课，学生必须亲身到课室上课（也就是说，我的学生必须按照“正常”课程在指定的时间和地点上课）。
My School must arrange for another staff to be in attendance who would supervise my students during class (监督老师）. I was delegated the task of find volunteers to fill up this role. Luckily the four Taiwanese colleagues at my School volunteered to help out and they enlisted other staff to back them up too. 我院必须安排另一位教学人员来监督我的学生上课（监督老师）。我被委托寻找志愿者来执行这个责任。幸运的是，我院的四位台湾同事自愿帮忙，他们还代我招募了其他教学人员来支持他们。
I must provide an online delivery plan to my School for endorsement and to seek final approval from the Academic Affairs Office (教务处). 本人必须向我院提交网上授课计划，以供教务处审核。
At the end of the semester, I must submit a report on each of the classes I taught online to the Academic Affairs Office via my School. 在学期末，我必须通过我院向教务处提交一份关于我所教的每门课的报告。
For practical/laboratory classes, I must find a suitably qualified colleague to run these classes on my behalf. 对于实践/实验课，我必须找到一个合适及合格的同事来代替我来运行这些课程。
For any classes with final examinations, the students must sit for the examination physically and thus I must find a colleague to grade the examination scripts on my behalf. 对于有期末考试的班级，学生必须参加纸质考试，因此我必须找一个同事代替我评分试卷。
I fully agreed and endorsed the Academic Affairs Office’s views on the conduct of my online classes. My students’ learning experience must not differ too much from “truly” face-to-face delivered classes. In shorts, they must not be disadvantaged on my account.
With the mandate from my School and ZQU, I then set about re-adapting my lectures to ensure that I had a fair chance of fulfilling (surpassing) the basic requirements laid down for me to deliver my classes online.
Adapting face-to-face presentation for online classes 调整面对面演示为在线课程
One major flaw of online delivery compared to face-to-face classes is the lack of a “feedback” from your students. If you cannot “see” and “hear” them, it is very hard to gauge your students’ engagement and attentiveness. The presence of my colleague as class supervisor (监督老师）would just ensure that there were discipline in the class. I would need to find ways to engage my students. If not it would be easier for them just to watch a pre-recorded video of my lectures!
The inventors of Rain Classroom from Tsinghua University must have heard the collective prayers of many teaching staff like yours truly. They invented an add-on to foster in-class engagement for presentation slides that can also be adapted for online delivered classes. This add-on, Rain Classroom was easily installed (on PowerPoint as well as WPS) and more importantly was very user-friendly.
At the end of each class, the leaderboard would be posted in the group chat showing the top 3 scorers of the in-class quiz along with a link to the lecture slides. 在每节课结束时，我会将领导板贴在小组聊天中，显示课堂测验的前3名得分者，以及与讲课幻灯片的链接
I therefore set out to add at least four but mostly 5 – 6 in-class quiz questions in every lecture. I made all these quiz questions carry marks towards the “class participation and usual grade” (班上互动和平时成绩）segment of the final result. To excite the students a bit more I even, for some of my classes, put up “hong bao – 红包” – a small red-packet of e-money for the top scorers for every session. Rain Classroom would generate these data at the end of each class with a chart showing who were the top three scorers of a session. I would post this data to our DingTalk chat group at the end of each lecture.
This “leaderboard” gave an element of competition and thus help to gamify my lectures a little. The most important thing was, with these set up, I ensured some sort of engagement from my students. In addition, these in-class quiz question and the scoring also helped in making sure students were learning progressively and we were not relying on one final examination to verify the learning attained by students (a practice that I, as an educator would try to avoid if possible). Rain Classroom also has a very effective way to log in students’ activity. Hence I would require all students to log into system using a link that I would provide at the start of each class. If you are not signed in, you will be considered as “absent”. Of course in a few odd cases (students forgot to bring their mobile phone to class; mobile phone missing / damaged) I would take note of the class leader’s verification and marked this lot as “present”. However, this lot would not be able to take part in the in-class quiz (and was destined to lose the marks for these too).
The “randomness” in the appearance of the in-class quiz questions also served one good purpose: students would have to pay attention as they would not be forewarned when my question would spring up. As the duration for answering these questions was 2 -3 minutes on average, looking up the answers on the internet would not be facilitated. With these in-class quizzes I achieved one thing that mattered most – keeping students on their toes, well most of the times!
So within a couple of lessons all my students taking my classes online learned the drill 所以在几节课之内，所有上我网课的学生都学会了以下几点 : –>
Charge up your mobile before class; 上课前给手机充好电；
Make sure you have your mobile phone with you when attending my class; 上课的时候一定要带着手机；
Log into Rain Classroom before the start of each class; 在每节课开始前登录雨课堂；
Pay attention as the in-class quiz question could come out at any moment! 上课时必须注意，课堂提问随时都有可能出现！
Although we only needed the class leader to log into DingTalk on the classroom PC to ensure that my live broadcast was projected to the large screen for everyone’s viewing, other students could also log into DingTalk during class to communicate with me (and the rest of the people who had signed in) .
One of the best features of DingTalk is its ability to record and archive all online classes (if one chooses to do so). I would not mind letting my students re-watch the recorded broadcast as some of the points I raised might need a student to look at it a few times to grasp. The recorded classes would also ensure that students who took leave had a chance to learn what they missed out (of course they would not score marks on the in-class quiz). So at the end of each lecture, I would publish my recorded lecture and post the relevant link to the class’s DingTalk group.
Unlike some of my fellow educators, I have no issue for my students having a copy of my PowerPoint presentation used in class. Rain Classroom has a function that I could “enable” to ensure that my students could review the lecture presentation slides. This feature coupled with the recorded class lecture would help student in their revision immensely (how I wish I had these during my student days!). These same features also enabled students who were unable to attend my class, to view the re-play along with the presentation slides so as to catch up with the course.
Tools and Gears for online delivery of classes 在线授课的工具和设备
I knew back in May 2020 that the most important gear that I had to procure was a semi-professional microphone. The interferences picked up by the cheap old mic were just too much to bear. But at the height of the Movement Control Order in Malaysia (where there was almost a blanket restriction on movement of people nationwide for weeks), getting geared up even with online purchasing was a bit challenging. But I did mange to get a reasonably good microphone that has done a good job in filtering out background noises.
早在2020年5月，我就知道我要买的最重要的设备是一个半专业性的麦克风。廉价的旧麦克风所带来的干扰实在太大了。但当时马来西亚是处于“行动管制令 – Movement Control Order” (几周来几乎对全国范围内的人员流动实行了全面性的限制)，即便是在网上购物，也是相当困难的。但在“行动管制令”放宽后我确实得到了一个相当好的麦克风，它在滤除背景噪音方面做得很好。
The camera that came with the laptop was another issue. It was not versatile enough to give a good view of me for my lectures. Luckily my son’s ‘hand-me-down” Logitech webcam came in handy.
As I had to “see” and ‘hear” what my students were seeing and hearing at their classroom in China, I knew that I would have to set up another DingTalk account on my old laptop. I would run DingTalk simultaneously but to avoid the “echo and feedback” effects I had to use a headphone to listen to my own live broadcast. The time lag was around 10 seconds for my live broadcast to reach my students in China. This served me fine in my monitoring of my own online classes in a “live” manner.
For communication with the class monitor (班长） and/or class learning committee representative （学委), I would have a direct chat line opened with one of these class leaders so that they would be able to alert me of any issues while the live broadcast was going on. Thus I would have to monitor WeChat too during class.
As all the classroom’s computer, projector and sound systems were kept in lock and key, to make life easier for my class leaders, I had, at the start of each semester, sent out an “SOS” message to all my teaching colleagues, alerting them of the locations of my classes. I sought out their help to, if they were having classes nearby, unlock these teaching gears for my class leader(s) for them to set up the PC, projector and sound systems before the start of each class. The “show” would commence as soon as I receive a “all ok” signal (in this case just a “2”) from one of the students.
Needless to say, not every class could proceed smoothly, technology and people had a way in messing up plans. One of my classes was late in the evening, and in one of the sessions my class monitor could not find a staff member to unlock the teaching gears (and that was the day when the “supervising staff” was not at the class early). It took my “SOS” call to my School’s academic administrative colleague to send someone to the rescue! There were also times when either the PC or the projector (or the sound system) or the internet access was not behaving properly. But credits to my different class leaders in different classes, they somehow managed to get these systems working again in good time.
So in every live broadcast lecture I would be: 所以在每一次直播讲座中，我都会：
Hooking up the PowerPoint software with Rain Classroom to ensure that the class interaction will be presented and students’ responses were captured (and graded). 将PowerPoint软件与雨课堂连接，以确保课堂上的互动将被呈现，学生的反应将被捕获（并进行评分）。
Looking at my PowerPoint presentation, which was often set to “presenter mode”. 在另一个视频看我的PowerPoint演示文稿，它经常被设置为“演示者模式”。
Ensuring that the PowerPoint presentation screen was captured by DingTalk so that it could be projected in my classroom in China. 确保PowerPoint演示的屏幕被钉钉捕获，这样它就可以在中国我学生所在的课堂上投影。
Checking and ensuring that my sound and video streams were reaching my classroom in China on my “old” laptop. 在我的“旧”笔记本电脑上检查并确保我的声音和视频流能到达我在中国的课室 【监控我学生所看到-听到的视频】。
Communicating via WeChat on my mobile phone with my class leader, he/she would use this channel to alert me privately of any issues during class. 在我的手机上通过微信与我的班长/学委沟通，要是有需要，他/她会用这个渠道私下提醒我在课堂上的任何问题。
Looking at the Rain Classroom screen to monitor the signing in of my students to ensure everyone who was supposed to attend had signed in (because if they were not signed in to Rain Classroom, they could not participate in any of the in-class quiz questions, and so would score no marks for this class!) 查看雨课堂的屏幕来监控我的学生的签到情况，以确保每位应该参与的同学都签到了（因为如果他们没有登录雨课堂，他们就不能参与任何课堂测试问题，所以得不到这堂课测试的分！）
Periodically checking DingTalk’s group messaging section to monitor messages sent to me in-class by my students (and to respond accordingly). 不时检查班钉钉群群聊部分，以监控我的学生在课堂上发送给我的信息（并相应地回应）。
Mobile Phone view of my online class: I had to constantly monitor the interaction section in order to respond to students’ in-class communication.从手机上检查我的在线课堂：为了回应学生的课堂交流，我不得不不断地以手机监控钉钉互动部分。
So there you are, I had to monitor at least six different screens for sound and video! Most were things that a person delivering face-to-face lectures would not have to worry about! All these constant (and at times simultaneous) monitoring and keeping alert were very taxing on my energy to say the least.
On top of that, I had to be aware of my own internet connection and bandwidth (and power supply) which to the credit of these utility suppliers in Malaysia, I did not face any cut in services during any of my classes over the 30 months period. I did had a couple of incidences when my “better half” accidentally dropped a metal mug cover and the lid to a cooking pot very near the closed door of the room where I had my live broadcast. My students nevertheless did not complain, a consolation perhaps?
Even before the online teaching stint, I had already put almost all of my assignments and coursework on the “online submission” mode. This was because I had a fall while pushing my electric bicycle up a ramp on campus on April 25, 2019, this had resulted in a broken right wrist and I could not even hold up a single piece of paper for days.
April 25, 2019 was a bleak day, Dr. Chow YN broke his right wrist in a fall. That prompted him to think of ways to minimize handling of physical papers – so online assignment submission was adopted! 2019年4月25日是一个倒霉的日子，周永能博士在一次摔倒中摔断了右手腕。这促使他想办法尽量减少对实物论文的处理——所以采用了在线作业提交！
At that time my application of online submission initially was a bit crude (students emailed their lab reports shot on mobile cameras to me for grading). But I soon learned, to my great advantage later on, to use wen-juan-wang问卷网 （an online survey platform that could handle marking/collecting/compilation of data/upload of documents etc.) coupled with QQ documents to lay out readings and other assignment content/questions to run my online assessment system rather efficiently and effectively.
QQ docs sharing feature was often used to share assignment content/reading. In this case, after reading the content, students were to proceed to Wen-Juan-Wang to answer the assignment questions. A link was provided for checking the submission status too. QQ文档共享功能经常用于共享作业内容/阅读。在这种情况下，在阅读完内容后，学生将继续到问卷网回答指定的问题。我还提供了一个链接，让学生用于检查提交状态。
Students could attempt quizzes online that would often be graded by the system immediately so that they could re-attempt (I usually set a maximum of 3 attempts) to improve their grades. For some assignments, students would upload their papers onto the platform where I would download these papers, grade them (with comments) and return these papers to students (via a selection of online storage platforms in China such as Tencent Drive, Baidu Cloud, Aliyun Drive) with my feedback, comments and manual grading. For group assignments, I would just post the graded papers on DingTalk chat group for students to download.
The beauty of online submission /online quizzes is that there would be a paper trail. The lecturer could easily assign deadlines and for quizzes the number of attempts as well as the duration of each attempt could be customized. I even set up a link for students to make use of Wen-Juan-Wang’s feature of letting students check the status of their own submissions (thereby nullify the work needed on my part to respond to such requests!).
With the online submission framework, I was able to monitor the status of submission as the deadline came closer to remind and “chase” those who were still lagging behind. Putting this status up in DingTalk chat group had one great advantage: I could use peer pressure to “force” the “usual suspects” (yes, in each class there would be at least one such individual) to comply. As almost everything of this framework was “transparent”, I minimized the chances of students giving lame excuses for their not submitting their work on time. Unlike hardcopies of assignment papers, I always had a copy of each students graded work. This made reviewing of students’ performance for the end-of-semester final grading a lot more efficient.
The video above was captured by my kind colleague, Associate Professor Xing Zhi-Hang (郉志航副教授）when he was supervising my “Professional English” class. Apart from the fact that my physical self was not at the podium, everything else “looked” and “sounded” not much different from a truly Face-to-Face class. Personally I only realized this fact after Dr. Xing sent me this clip. I knew then at least in this aspect, my students were not disadvantaged much!
In the 2021 spring semester (Mar – Jul 2021) I was assigned to teach “Biostatistics 生物统计学” along with Professor Su Jun-Kui (苏俊魁教授）who taught his class in the Face-to-Face mode. As the subject had a compulsory final examination element and the two classes were to take the same paper, it gave a very good opportunity for me to compare if the teaching-learning processes of the online class differed much from the Face-to-Face version. In our case, the composition of students of the two classes were very similar. They signed up based on the time table slots available (as such the academic background of the students for both classes were very similar and “semi-randomly” assigned). In late July 2021 I was very happy to learn from Professor Su that the final results of both his and my students were very similar (my students’ examination scripts were graded by Associate Professor Hung Shuo-Ting 洪硕廷副教授 ) . This showed that my students, despite having me as a lecturer (I was not that good in biostatistics and had to rely on and learn a lot from Professor Su during the course of my delivery，to whom I am greatly indebted) who delivered my classes online, did not appear to be disadvantaged at all!
I did a quick compilation of data about my three and a half year of serving as an Associate Professor at ZQU 我做了一个关于我在肇庆学院担任副教授三年半数据的快速汇编：
The number of different classes taught = 24 [6 were Face-to-Face; 18 were online] 所教的不同班级的数量=24班 【6班是面对面；18班是在线]
The total number of students taught = 1066 [of these 786 were different individuals] 所教学生总数=1066人【其中786人是不同的个体】
The number of students taught online = 813 [of these 556 were different individuals] 在线教学的学生人数=813【其中556人是不同的个体]
“The proof the pudding is in the eating”. Feedback from students in Jul 2022 largely showed that most didn’t feel disadvantaged by taking my online classes. 有句英语术语：“布丁的好坏在于吃的过程”。2022年7月学生的反馈主要表明，大多数学生认为他们并没有因为上了我的在线课程而感到处于劣势。
The teaching evaluation exercises towards the end of each semester was taken very seriously at ZQU. While I was never the “top teacher”, nevertheless I was never in “danger” of being the lowest scorer. If you could read Chinese, you would notice that the bulk of my students in the July 2022 session who responded were giving my online teaching positive reviews. That was the most satisfying outcome for an academic, I could not have asked for more! I guess those students who like to learn would have found my online classes beneficial while those on the “muddle along” (得过且过）mode would have been very intimidated by my online delivery style.
In Part 2, “Remote supervision of students’ thesis work – a tall order” I will share my experience in remotely supervising students on their graduation thesis. Stay tuned! 在第二部分，“远程监控学生的论文工作-一个很高的要求”，我将分享我的远程指导学生的毕业论文的经验。请继续关注！
This film review and critique is the first by Leland Chow which is reposted here. Leland is a junior reading Finance, minor in communication & economics at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Since this is technically my first review, I would like to explain some of the features I would use in my blog. The title, as you could see has hard brackets ([ and ]) first. This denotes the category I will be writing about. This is followed by the title of the post, which is usually the title of the film, music, or something that I want to write about specifically. Sometimes, a plus (+) sign is used to denote that I will also be writing about another film, music or other things. In this post, I will be writing about a film that is released on 14 August 2015, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., but in the theater near where I live, most, if not some, films are released a night earlier. Therefore, I have actually watched this on 13 August.
Without giving too much details (for now), The Man from U.N.C.L.E., or in short UNCLE, showcases an American spy and a Russian spy being forced to work together during the Cold War to, in general, save the world. This film is based on the 1964 television series of the same name that featured David McCallum as the Russian spy, Illya Kuryakin, and Robert Vaughn as Napoleon Solo. People might recognize McCallum’s name because he currently portrays as Ducky Mallard, one of the major characters in NCIS, and Professor Paradox in the Ben 10 series.
This film adaptation stars Henry Cavill (Superman, Man of Steel) as Napoleon Solo, and Armie Hammer (the title character in The Lone Ranger) as Illya Kuryakin. The female lead is Alicia Vikander (Vera Brittain, Testament of Youth), who portrays as Gabriella “Gaby” Teller. In the film, Cavill’s Napoleon Solo is charming, handsome, and quite a womanizer, dressed up very neatly (and probably very expensive as well), and speaks in a calm manner. Hammer’s Illya Kuryakin can be considered to be Cavill’s polar opposite. Kuryakin is quiet, dressed up more casually, and speaks in a less calm manner, sensing that he has slight temper issues.
Cavill’s portrayal of Solo was simply breathtaking and funny, and it was very enjoyable watching him being Napoleon Solo because he can crack a joke while speaking in a calm manner. Hammer’s portrayal of Kuryakin also did not disappoint because his Russian accent was quite convincing, and his background with a troubled family did aid in explaining his temper issues.
However, the film is not without its flaws. The plot was enough to explain the reason of the creation of UNCLE, but not enough to explain the backstory of both Solo and Kuryakin. I was left dumbfounded on what exactly did Illya Kuryakin’s father do to be a shame of Russia. Conversely, Solo’s backstory was well-explained, but it had not a lot of information of how exactly did Solo get caught stealing expensive artifacts. Besides, the plot itself, although sufficient to explain the creation of the agency, was not entirely interesting because it followed the standard spy film: Damsel in distress, saving the damsel, receiving mission, meeting the antagonists, spy in trouble, spy receives help from another character, spy manages to save the world. As you might be able to see, the flowchart is the standard flowchart used in spy films, and UNCLE used a similar formula.
In general, I, as a typical moviegoer, enjoyed this film for its funniness and sexiness (Cavill and Vikander). UNCLE, however, cannot be compared to Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation, because both of them had different settings, though they are both spy films. Rating: 4/5 (Why did I give such a high rating? As much as I found flaws to the film, I thoroughly enjoyed the film and would be willing to watch it again.)
Fantastic Four
I did not watch Fantastic Four, not only because of its very low rating on Rotten Tomatoes (8%), but also because I felt that they did not have to remake the film. However, my largest issue was the casting of Miles Teller as Mr. Fantastic or Reed Richards, because I did think that Miles Teller was not the most suitable actor to portray as Reed Richards, as the Reed Richards I have read about was more matured. Miles Teller did not have the mature vibe, but he had a face that I could see that can portray an evil character. Unfortunately, Reed Richards did not have an evil-looking face. Rating: 0/5 P. S. This is my first full-scale review on a film. I have never written reviews for films for this length. Hence, I do apologize if it is not up to the standards of a typical film critic.
How many identities do you think you have? What is your cultural & social identities? What about your regional & religious identities? What about age and national identities? Read on to find out more.
Introduction
Cultural identities are identities that each person has, no matter where he or she is. Cultural identities ultimately form who we are and what we do. Therefore, in the following discussion, I would investigate my own cultural identity in a few sections. The first section is the cultural and social identities, where I will discuss about the identities which I have since I was born, which are my racial, ethnic, religious and regional identity. This is followed by cultural space, where I will talk about identities that I have formed since I am in the United States, which are racial, national and age identity. Next, I will discuss about the technology I use in my life and how it relates to my cultural identity. The final section will talk about my cultural future, which is to become a financial advisor. Hence, I believe I have many cultural identities that I have instilled since I was born, and I have a few more when I came to United States.
Section One: Cultural and Social Identities
Racial Identity
Since I was born, I have identified myself as a Chinese in terms of racial identity. This is because I was born to a pure Chinese family. Being Chinese has been one of my proudest achievements. The Chinese people put a lot of emphasis in education, and hence, since I was a young boy, my grandparents and parents have taught me words every day. My parents said that I could read the newspapers when I was about 1 year old, and also could tell the time after that. Because of this, I was fluent in the language I spoke when I was young, which was surprisingly English. This was because my mother and my maternal grandparents did not understand Mandarin Chinese, and as my father was travelling abroad nearly every year, he was not able to teach me Mandarin before I learned the language in kindergarten school. This is also the reason why my weakest language is in fact, my “mother tongue”, Chinese. I also learned a dialect of the Chinese language, which was Cantonese when I was young, because although my mother and maternal grandparents could not understand Mandarin Chinese, they were fluent in Cantonese. However, unlike them, until today, I am still not entirely fluent in Cantonese, but I improved myself since then by watching Cantonese dramas from Hong Kong, my favorite pastime.
Ethnic Identity
In terms of ethnic identity, I identify myself as a Chinese Malaysian. Chinese Malaysians were Malaysians whose ancestors were from China. As a fourth-generation Chinese Malaysian, I have grown to love the food I had in Malaysia. The Chinese cuisine in Malaysia is different from the Chinese cuisine in China, as the Chinese cuisine in Malaysia tends to use both ingredients that are predominantly used by Chinese and other races. Hence, the staple food in Malaysia, “nasi lemak”, which has a literal translation of fats rice, has been cooked by the Chinese as well. Because I am Chinese Malaysian, I also get to experience the food from different races and learn to love all of them. I love the “roti canai”, which means flatbread made by Indians, the chicken shredded noodles made by the Chinese and the “nasi lemak” made by the Malays. The food in Malaysia is diverse, but all cuisines have a similarity: They have spicy cuisines which I personally love. The spiciness of Malaysian cuisines is considered very spicy to a lot of people here in the United States, but it is not very spicy for me. As a Malaysian, I have been trained to eat and enjoy spicy food as an enhancing flavor.
Religious Identity
In terms of religious identity, I identify myself as a person practicing three religions that intertwine each other, which are Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism, also known as the Three Teachings. This might seem to be a little weird to other people, but in Malaysia, although people label themselves as Buddhist, they also incorporate Taoism and Confucianism as well. Honestly, I am not a religious person, nor are my parents. I do not usually celebrate Buddha’s birthday, the Wesak Day, nor do I remember every god’s day, but I still stand strong with my beliefs as a person practicing Three Teachings. The Buddhism and Taoism parts of me are strong when I am facing major examinations, where I pray to the gods using incense, or during the first day of Chinese New Year, where I go to temples and pray to the gods for a good year ahead. On the other hand, on my everyday life, I practice Confucianism because it is not just only a religion, but also a way of life. For example Li, or morals, means that I should be polite and kind to everyone I meet, and Xiao, or filial piety, means that I should respect my elders, especially my parents. Confucianism, to me, has played a major role of shaping me into myself today, and I believe that every Chinese, no matter the religion, would agree on this with me that Confucianism is a way of life for the Chinese.
Regional Identity
I am from a suburban city not too far from the capital of Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, which is called Subang Jaya. Subang Jaya is about 15 minutes from another large city, Petaling Jaya. Subang Jaya is a part of the Klang Valley, which is a term for the most advanced modern and fast-paced areas of Malaysia. Because I have lived in Subang Jaya since young, English was the main language I spoke in school. This was because nearly everyone in Subang Jaya spoke English, which was unlike the case in my birthplace and hometown, Ipoh, Perak, where people mainly spoke Cantonese. English was very important there as it was considered the business language in Malaysia. Malay, as it was the official language in Malaysia, was important as well, but English was the language used in everyday communication. However, the English used in Malaysia may be incorrect in syntax and grammar as Malaysians use a variety of languages in one sentence, which in a way, is somewhat like interlanguage. Traffic congestion in Subang Jaya was one of the worst in Malaysia, as there were many people living here, and every house in Subang Jaya would have a minimum of a car because the public transport in Malaysia was not entirely reliable, especially during peak office hours.
Section 2: Cultural Space
I currently live in Selleck Quadrangle, or more commonly known as Selleck, which is a traditional residence hall in campus. The residence hall itself is mainly catered to international students, which is why there are many international students like me living in here. Selleck is a coed traditional hall, and has 5 blocks from the 4000 to the 8000 block, each block containing 3 floors. I live in the 4200 floor, which means I’m at the second floor of the 4000 block. My floor consists of Brazilians, Chinese, a few Americans and Malaysians like me. Selleck has become my first home outside of Malaysia, and I treat it as my home as my home is a few thousand miles away from here and I will not be able to go back to Malaysia for the time being.
Racial Identity
My roommate is Daniel, and he is from China. Although we are both Chinese, as we are from different countries, our values are somewhat different from one another. As an example, I come from a tropical country, Malaysia, and because of this, I prefer the colder climate and I like to turn on the air-conditioner. Daniel, on the other hand, comes from a colder part of China, Xuzhou, where he prefers the room to be a little warmer and dislikes having the air-conditioner on for the whole day. Although we may have the same racial identity, we do not have the same likes. However, we have managed to solve the problem by accommodation, which I will accommodate him by turning off the air-conditioner when it is bedtime and leave the windows open instead. We solve it through discussions that start with “I think…” or “I believe…” which is politer than just shouting rudely to one another.
National Identity
My neighbors around my floor are mainly Brazilians and Chinese, and I do realize that when Brazilians and Chinese are with their own nationalities respectively, they communicate with one another in their native language, Brazilian Portuguese and Mandarin Chinese. However, when I am around usually, they will speak to me in English, as a sign of courtesy. Brazilians have difficulty trying to understand what I speak sometimes because I speak very fast naturally, as in Malaysia I have been trained to do so. My accent is considered clear by them, but because I may use adjectives and vocabularies which may not be understood by them. As an example, to describe a shirt’s color, I would use “dark red”, whereas the Brazilians will use just “red” to describe the color of the shirt. Because of this, I have to simplify my sentences and choice of words to accommodate their understanding so that I would not have misunderstandings with them. However, all of us as international students are trying to have integration with the people here so that we can communicate with other cultural groups to understand better and also to maintain our own unique cultures.
Age Identity
My neighbors at my floor are either around my age or older, and we are all in different years in college. As the legal drinking age is 21, my neighbors usually go out during the weekends to the bars and clubs in Downtown Lincoln to consume alcohol. I am underage, and hence I have to stay in my rooms, or go to the basement and talk to my friends to find some entertainment. Because of this, my Brazilian friends and neighbors often call me a baby, which is a way of teasing me being underage and unable to consume alcohol. I feel somewhat insulted, as the drinking age in Malaysia is 18, and I have consumed alcohol there before coming to Lincoln. However, as this is a small matter, I just laugh along with them and say that I will just wait for two more years.
Section Three: Technology in Life
The platforms I use the most in communicating with other people are Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and an online forum named Southperry.net. These platforms have made me aware about my culture, as unlike most people my age; I like to convey my messages in full sentences. I am very particular about the syntax and spelling I use in writing statuses on all social platforms. I have seen many people, no matter the race or ethnicity, typing in grammatically incorrect sentences, which really irks me. However, I do also realize that I tend to use words which are commonly used in Malaysia, but not here in Lincoln, such as colloquial words (“Kena”, which means got in English), or Malaysian English words which are not used in here (“Handphone”, which means mobile or cell phone). It made me feel aware about my Malaysian culture which I thought was universal before this.
Besides, using these platforms also ignites my cultural and social identities. My national identity is very significant here as I have posted pictures of myself attending the Homecoming Parade as an international student from Malaysia. Besides, my racial and ethnic identity is also quite significant in the platforms I use because I use Chinese to post my status sometimes, and I also comment about the Cantonese dramas that I watch which a lot of people may not understand the content. My regional identity is also quite obvious as I complain about the traffic congestion back in Malaysia nearly every day. All these examples simply show that I embrace all of my cultural and social identities using technology.
Technology also provides an opportunity for me to connect with individuals from other cultural groups. Southperry.net is the place where I met with individuals which are very different from one another. There are Americans, Brazilians, and Australians and then there’s me as a Malaysian. However, everyone shares their interests in the same game, Mafia, and thoroughly enjoy the game all together as teams. We communicate with one another using a common language, English, naturally, so that everyone understands what are talking about. However, we do not know the true identity of one another, as it is an online forum and private information need not be disclosed by anyone. Hence, identity tourism takes place here because I do take on a different identity when playing Mafia in Southperry.net than in real life. I become a little more clueless and argumentative than usual, as Mafia requires me to do so. Besides, I also use Twitter to communicate with other cultural groups. There are various people from other nationalities that communicate with me via tweets, retweets and favorites. As an example, I talked about the play I have recently watched, Unity (1918) in Twitter, and a friend whom I have not met personally from here commented about the play, asking me if I enjoyed plays. We were literally talking to one another publicly about the play, saying that plays are a good way of entertainment. It was really an exciting experience because I have never thought of talking to people of different cultural groups on Twitter.
Section Four: Cultural Future
I am currently majoring in Finance, and minoring in Communication Studies. I have chosen this major because I am really interested in the mathematical side of business, though I am not interested in the closer major, Actuarial Science as I do not want to take professional papers in order to become a fully acknowledged professional. I chose Communication Studies as a minor because I took communication subjects back in Malaysia and I have grown to love those subjects. I can see myself in the future being self-employed, working as a financial adviser as I like communicating with people, helping them when I can, relating to the major I have chosen.
I believe I will need a lot of communication skills if I have gotten the job as a financial advisor working for myself, as I will have to communicate with various people, from clients to my employees and partners. I imagine myself working in New York City, New York, where it is one of the main financial hubs in the world. Hence, I believe I would need a suitable age identity, as I would have to dress appropriately according to my age, to work. I believe in first impressions, and I know that many people believe in that too. I would also have to act like my age and not a kid, being responsible and serious when the time arises. Besides, I believe I will need to stand strong in my religious identity as a person practicing Three Teachings. One of the Three Teachings is Confucianism, which plays a major part in my life. To me, I will need to respect and be polite to every person I meet when I am working, no matter the class and age, which is one of the foundations of being a Confucian. As I come from a collectivistic country, I would need to get used to the individualism here as United States is more individualistic than Malaysia as well. Unlike in Malaysia, where I can depend on my family to help me in solving problems in my daily life, I will have to learn to be independent, and rely on myself instead.
Conclusion
As a summary, in the first section, I have talked about my social and cultural identity that I have instilled since I was born, such as racial, ethnic, religion and regional identity. This was followed by cultural space, where I obtained new identities such as racial, national and age identity during the time in United States. The third section discussed about how technology was used to show my identities and played a role in connecting with other cultural groups. Finally, I talked about my cultural future, and how cultural identities can affect my future career as a financial advisor.
In conclusion, I realized that I have many identities that I had instilled since young, and I obtained new identities when I was and still am in United States. I am pleasantly surprised that these identities are appearing in me, and I embrace all of those identities. I believe everyone should embrace their identities, because these identities are unique and can differentiate people as individuals and a member of a group at the same time.
Leland Chow is a sophomore reading Finance and Communication Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This is an essay written as an assignment for one of the subjects he is currently undertaking.
![[FILM] The Man from U.N.C.L.E. + A little of Fantastic Four](https://slc4u.org/wp-new/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/man-fr-unclecombo-1200x756.png)
