这篇文章的长度促使我使用Notebooklm（或Gemini Notebook）来生成内容的视频。这像是一种TLDR演示。

在校指导毕业论文学生

2019年3月，当我开始在肇庆学院任教时，我并没有被分配任何毕业论文指导任务。到了2019年8月，当我回来迎接新学年时，有五名学生被分配给我——三名来自师范班（生物科学），两名来自生物技术班。因为我曾在不同科目中教过这些学生（生物科学的学生上过我教的两门不同的专业英语课；生物技术的学生上过我的管理学课，后来又上了我的营销学课），所以我很容易就能让学生们开始行动起来。唯一困难的部分是找到一个共同的“空闲时间”和一个合适的场地来进行我们的每周例会（这是大学规定的）。

由于我没有被分配办公室，而且为每周的例会预订会议室有点太复杂，再加上我的宿舍太小，容纳不下所有人，我不得不为我们的每周例会寻找一个合适的场地。我在校园4号饭堂三楼的尽头发现了一个相对安静的区域，那里有几张大桌子。因此，我会安排在这个场地进行每周例会，我和妻子会在下午5:00左右去吃个早晚餐，会议则安排在5:30左右。白天很难找到合适的时间，因为学生们来自三个不同的班级，各有各的时间表，这让我很难找到一个共同的“空闲时段”。我还记得一位台湾同事的建议：如果可能的话，我们应该在校园内与学生见面，以避免不必要的麻烦。

由于我没有实验室，而且我在植物科学领域的研究需要太长时间才能观察到结果，我自然而然地选择让学生们关注生物科学的其他领域作为可能的研究课题。在我的台湾同事许光廷副教授的帮助和指导下，我学会了使用艾灸作为中医治疗方法来治疗我在2019年4月骨折的手腕，我希望我的学生能专注于这个领域。每个学生都被分配了与艾灸相关的不同方向进行研究。

每周的例会持续了大约10周；到那时（2019年11月），学生们正忙于准备学期末（2019年12月底/2020年1月）的期末考试。我万万没有想到，由于新冠疫情的爆发，我与学生的面对面互动会在2020年1月后突然终止。

远程指导及相关问题

2020年1月14日，我离开中国，回到马来西亚的家中度过寒假/农历新年。随着新冠疫情的爆发，我与所有回家过寒假的台湾同事一样，不被允许返回校园。到了2020年3月，大学领导层决定（按照国家指导方针）通过线上方式恢复授课。然而，毕业论文指导被暂时搁置，但导师们仍在努力与学生保持联系并了解他们的进度。这个学期过得很快，因为线上教学带来了许多问题，需要学习者和教职员工（以及大学的技术团队）付出大量努力来解决。

到了2020年8月，中国当局有选择性地开放了边境；我的台湾同事被允许返回（但所有进入中国的人都必须经历漫长的隔离期）。遗憾的是，身为马来西亚人，边境对我仍然关闭！与此同时，学生被允许返回校园，但每个人都必须遵守严格的新冠防疫程序。肇庆学院领导也特别批准我继续在线教学，这意味着毕业论文指导也将继续远程进行。当时尚未被分配毕业论文学生的许光廷博士，自愿担任我学生的副导师。他安排定期与学生见面。到那时，其中一名生物科学的学生已经申请了休学一年（她将在下一学年继续学业），因此我只剩下四名论文学生。到了学期中旬，所有大三学生都要开始为期六周的专业领域实习。两名生物科学的学生属于师范方向；自然而然地，她们被分配到了学校。研究艾灸贴效果的丽敏（LM）被派往城市学校，而晓明（SM）则被分配到通信设施较不完善的乡村学校。两名生物技术的学生也被分配到生物技术公司实习（当时正值新冠疫情，这些公司非常渴望招收这些学生）。就在这个时候，SM向我申请将她的毕业论文题目改为关于乡村学生生命科学教育的内容，以反映她的实习情况，这样她就能从乡村教育环境中获益最多。由于许博士来将中医作为业余兴趣研究，他非常希望看到LM的工作成果，而LM在城市学校，通过微信与许博士和我沟通没有任何问题。但SM的情况就不同了。SM所在的乡村学校非常偏远，网络连接很差。作为一名乡村实习教师，SM大部分时间都被年幼的小学生包围。她必须找到一个网络信号尚可的安静角落，避开学生的干扰，才能通过微信与我沟通。

两名生物技术学生的“消失”

2020年11月底至12月初，所有实习的学生都应返回校园继续学业。然而，我收到许博士的消息说，两名生物科学的学生出席他会议的情况很好，但两名生物技术的学生则不然，他们各自只在2020年9月参加过一次会议，之后就再也没有出现过。他们无视了许博士联系他们的所有尝试。在我这边，我也向这两名生物技术的学生发送了许多微信和QQ消息，要求他们立马向许博士报到，但他们并未照做。我还请SM和LM帮忙，在校园内实地找到这两名生物技术的学生，并转达许博士和我的消息（SM和LM都确认在校园里见过他们）。但这两名生物技术的学生就是拒绝配合。

2020年10月初，我校引入了一个毕业论文监控和管理平台（维普论文管理系统，VGMS平台）进行测试阶段。我被允许试用该平台。VGMS平台会追踪学生和导师的输入内容，并允许各学院院长和高级学术人员对学生的学习成果以及导师的决定和输入进行监控和评估。论文准备和提交各个阶段的系统化且具时效性的流程，意味着学生和导师都将被迫遵守大学规定的时间表，以确保这一学术过程能够按时有序地完成。然而，对于2021年春季的毕业论文环节，VGMS的使用是可选性的，仅处于试运行阶段，学校考虑在下一学年全面实施。

2020年12月初，在多次尝试（由我、许博士， SM和LM）试图从两名生物技术学生那里得到回应均告失败后，我最终向他们发出了最后通牒：“你们要么现在就联系我（或许博士），否则我将给你们俩论文登记为‘不及格’！”我还请SM和LM口头传达了这个信息。人们可能会认为，任何想要毕业的学生都会立即采取行动。但这名对生物技术的学生却没有。他们继续无视最后的警告。于是，我别无选择，只能正式通知他们，他们的毕业论文“不及格”。{论文最终提交截止日期是2021年4月底/5月初}。

2021年2月，出乎意料地，我收到了其中一名生物技术论文学生的微信消息（随后又收到了他的QQ消息）。紧接着，第二名生物技术学生也发来了几条消息。他们显得很焦虑，迫切地想要联系我。我向他们明确表示，就我而言，他们的毕业论文已经不及格了。当时我正忙于准备2021年3月春季学期的开学工作。许博士告诉我，在那个阶段，最好由我亲自指导SM和LM，而他会在任何与论文指导相关的行政工作上支持我。我很高兴这两名论文学生进展顺利。LM已经完成了大部分的实地工作——从女性教职员工和学生中招募志愿者，尝试在“三阴交”穴位贴上艾灸贴，并记录她们的反应。另一方面，SM正忙于为她的论文工作收集调查问卷的回复。

数据收集与统计分析

为了准备给生物技术学生教授生物统计学课程，我在2020年8月至11月期间自学了R语言的一些基础知识（学习R语言也帮助我更好地重温了这门学科）。从SM和LM那里我了解到，所有生物科学的学生也都上了一门与生物技术学生类似的生物统计学课程。此外，所有学生都必须参加关于论文准备的课程（由其他同事讲授）。因此，我并不担心被我指导学生的统计分析背景知识。然而，除非一个人的专业是统计学（或相关领域）要有效地完成分析任务，更关键的是解读收集到的数据的统计分析结果，将会困难得多。因此，我主动承担起（凭借我基本的R语言知识）分析所有学生原始数据的任务。一开始，我着手优化SM和LM的数据收集方法，以便我们能更轻松地将数据导入R语言进行分析。我们使用Excel进行了一些原始数据的处理和清理，然后我使用R语言为这两名学生的数据进行所需的统计分析。我还指导她们如何解读这些统计分析结果。我们全程借助VGMS来把控时间进度。

两名生物技术学生的重新出现

2021年5月，对于毕业生和他们的论文导师来说都是一个紧张的时期。这是因为需要完成论文定稿、按要求提交论文，并为论文答辩做准备。对大多数毕业生来说，论文答辩可能是最困难的部分。如果你的论文导师在你进行20-30分钟的关键陈述和问答环节时无法亲自到场，情况就更是如此。尽管许博士在SM和LM的论文答辩会上都出席了，并且很好地完成了“保驾护航”的工作，但我仍觉得我的缺席会打击学生的信心。在2021年，要在我的两名学生进行陈述和答辩期间安排腾讯会议连线实在太复杂了。错过了这些，至今仍让我感到遗憾。过后我从许博士那里高兴地得知，LM顺利通过了论文答辩，而SM只需要进行一些小的修改。

在论文陈述和答辩之前，所有导师都有义务为非自己指导的学生的论文评分。作为生命科学学院生物技术系的一名教职人员，我自然被分配去评审生物技术学生的论文。我最大的惊讶还在后头……我之前判定为“不及格”的那两名生物技术学生的论文，竟然就在我需要评分的论文之中。为了对所有被评分的学生公平，学校为评分者提供了一套我们必须严格遵守的评分标准。最让我感意外的是，我那两名“不及格”的论文学生是如何在论文上进展得如此之快的（SM和LM花了3-4个月收集数据，再花了3个月才达到最终提交阶段）。由于这两名“不及格”的生物技术论文学生研究的都是生物信息学领域的课题（还有其他学生提交了同一领域的论文需要我评分），我不得不深入挖掘我在生物信息学方面的知识（并阅读大量资料以跟上该学科的发展），以便有效地对学生的作业进行评分。当我将这两名“不及格”的生物技术学生的论文与其他学生进行比较时，很明显，他们工作的深度和广度都不在同一水平上。尽管如此，我还是必须遵守给我的评分标准。经过与其他生物信息学论文的深入比较和评审后，我那两名“不及格”的生物技术学生勉强过关了，但我提出了许多意见和进一步的提问。有趣的是，许博士碰巧出席了这两人的陈述和论文答辩会，他后来告诉我，他们都被评审考官提出的几个基本问题打了个措手不及。尽管如此，考试委员会最终还是决定让这两人通过。许博士后来得知, 这两名学生其实早就想更换论文课题, 但一直没有正式向任何人咨询, 直到我判他们不及格才有所行动! 如果他们能及早向许博士(或本人)说明意图, 我们本可以毫无问题地放行。

鉴于我与这两名生物技术学生的经历，我向学校正式提出申请，要求在下一届学生中实施VGMS系统。不久后我很高兴地得知，我的建议被领导层采纳了。VGMS的实施意味着在下一届学生中，我们将能及早发现“逃避论文学生”，并能够迅速及时地进行干预。此外，论文准备和提交过程的所有步骤和阶段的数据都将被记录在案，由指定的各高级学术人员进行监控，以确保（导师和学生完成任务时）遵守程序、保证质量和时效性。

从过去的经验中学习意味着更系统的指导制度

2021年春季学期末，我被分配了九名学生（或者更确切地说，是在生命科学学院学术秘书同事的远程协助下，从抽签箱中随机抽取的，他们碰巧都来自生物科学领域）。之前在2020年休学的那名生物科学学生也被重新分配回我的指导小组。由于当时仍没有任何迹象表明我何时能返回中国，我已经做好了远程指导所有论文学生的准备。此时，许博士自己也已经带了满满的一批毕业论文学生已经让他忙得不可开交，我不便再给他增加负担。

对于下一届由我指导的毕业论文学生，我决定在VGMS系统接管流程之前，在初始工作流中应该更加系统化。我实施了以下措施：

1. 所有学生都需要在一个所有学生可见的合适在线表格中注明他们感兴趣的主题（如果有的话）。我在表格中“预设”了一些学生可以选择的可能主题，但他们也可以自由提出自己的主题（需经我批准）。我给学生设定了一个截止日期，要求他们在此日期前注册他们打算研究的主题，之后我会为那些没有及时回复的学生分配论文主题。这样做是出于务实的考虑；如果学生研究的是自己感兴趣的主题，他们会更有动力。此外，研究主题必须经过生物科学系主任的审查，并且在学生开始工作之前必须获得他的批准。在10名学生中，有6名选择了自己的研究领域（在我的指导下确定了学术上合适的论文题目）。其余4名学生选择从我提供的列表中选择他们的研究主题。

2. 我要求所有学生参加一次特别的在线讲座，在讲座中，我将（基于我对上一届学生的经验）详细说明在研究项目设计、数据收集、撰写准备、参考文献引用等方面“应该做什么和不应该做什么”。特别是，我强调了在调查类研究工作中量化的重要性。在这次讲座中，学生还学习了量化数据的正确方法，以及如何设计有效的数据收集调查问卷。

3. 对应VGMS系统中的各个截止日期我制定了一个会议时间表。我所有的学生都有义务参加，并提出他们需要解决的任何问题。这是为了确保论文准备过程中每个步骤所需的工作（如VGMS系统中所构建的）都能按时完成。在每次会议之前，我会完成对每个学生进度的监控工作，并利用“同伴指导与支持”来确保任何懈怠的人都能被其同伴发现并得到（如果需要的话）帮助。通过“同伴指导与支持”的努力，我确保研究重叠或相关主题的学生可以交换找到的参考文献并互相帮助。由于我的10名学生都来自生物科学领域，同伴指导与支持变得很容易。尽管他们分布在三个不同的班级，但学生们在学习期间的某个时刻，肯定会在不同的科目或学生活动中遇到过彼此。我还在这10名学生中找出了一位最平易近人且具有良好领导才能的学生，作为我论文指导小组的非正式组长。（正是这种支持，在后期阶段让我在很大程度上依靠它来保持学生们的士气）。

2021-2022届会一帆风顺吗？

从2020-21届毕业论文指导的运作中吸取教训，我实行了相对严格的制度。任何需要缺席预定会议的学生都有义务事先向我请假，并且她/他必须观看录制会议的回放，并完成我分配的所需任务。幸运的是，我指导的所有10名学生都完全遵守了这一要求。由于我所有的论文指导学生都是正在接受教师培训的生物科学学生，毕业论文指导过程的所有关键步骤/阶段都在我院生物科学系主任的管辖范围内。VGMS系统强制要求导师必须获得相关系主任/院长的批准，才能让学生进入下一阶段。当然，其中最关键的是每个学生的毕业论文主题。在我的论文学生中，有三名学生的论文主题是关于英语教与学的，一名是关于学生网络成瘾的，还有一名是关于大学生如何选择其专业领域的。其余五名学生则研究与生命科学教与学相关的主题。由于我小组的所有10名成员都毫无异议地获得了生物科学系主任的批准，我和论文学生们迅速开始了艰苦的工作。

接下来，为了确保我的论文学生能够有效地收集数据，我非常注重指导他们设计数据收集调查问卷。这直接使得收集到的数据能够被分析，而无需进行太多的数据清理工作，并确保收集到正确且有用的数据。我还确保我论文学生收集了相关的、来自可靠来源的参考文献，并与我分享。我还强调了任何论文工作的首要规则：避免任何形式的抄袭。我接着分享了如何在论文中引用他人作品的想法。我还列举了学生应该避免的陷阱示例，并给出了几篇他们学长学姐的“优秀引用作品”供他们效仿。此外，我还演示了如何通过编译相关已发表论文的关键发现，然后构建一个表格，并对该表格进行评论和提取事实，从而有效且高效地整合和综合知识、观点和结论。VGMS系统有一个有效的抄袭检查器（简称 – 查重），所有提交的论文都必须通过这一关才能被接受。我之前使用VGMS查重的经验让我很好地做好了应对这项任务的准备，这项任务在2020/21届中曾让许多毕业论文学生栽了跟头。为了方便指导工作，我要求学生定期更新我设置的进度追踪表，说明他们各自的实习情况（无论是在校园内、城镇还是乡村）。这是必要的，因为这10名学生的实习时间并不相同，有些人较早（2021年3月至7月），有些人则晚得多（2021年9月至12月）。追踪表还让我在论文准备过程的最后阶段，能够知道每位被指导学生的实际物理位置。这是为了确保我的每一位被指导学生都能参加他/她的毕业论文答辩。

与2020-21届一样，为了获得可验证、正确且体面的统计分析，我承担了使用R语言分析所有被指导学生数据的任务。但在进行统计分析工作之前，每个学生都必须相应地“清理”他们的数据集，以便将其导入R语言。我花了大量时间帮助每个学生解释他/她的统计分析结果。令人惊讶的是，每个人的撰写过程都非常顺利，被指导学生们肯定已经学会了按照大学规定的正确格式进行写作。VGMS系统也在每一步指导着我的被指导学生，当出现问题时，我能及早发现，而相关学生的整改相对轻松（对学生而言）。随着毕业论文提交的最终截止日期临近，自然有些学生能从容应对压力，而有一两名学生则需要一些精神支持和额外指导。我建立的“同伴指导与支持”系统开始发挥作用，我的被指导学生们能够借鉴彼此的经验、资源和鼓励，以克服所面临的困难。这对我的被指导学生群体来说非常重要，因为我在物理距离上远在4000多公里之外。

尽管我身在马来西亚，但我院的领导层仍努力帮助我履行作为同事学生毕业论文评审专家的职责。在陈述和答辩环节之前，我收到了论文的电子版副本进行评分。毕业论文考试委员会主席确保我可以通过腾讯会议在线观看所有学生的陈述（包括我的10名被指导学生）。然而，在长时间的会议中实时收听和观看这些陈述对我来说相当耗费精力。尽管如此，我还是能够毫无问题地对相关学生的陈述进行评分（除了我自己的学生，他们由我的一位同事评分）。

然而，当一位资深同事在论文答辩会接近尾声的问答环节，对我的一名研究学校英语教与学相关主题的学生发表评论时，这向我（以及研究该领域主题的被指导学生）发出了一个巨大的警报信号。这位资深学者认为，作为一名生物科学的学生，他期望该学生的研究工作能触及生命科学的某些方面。在我的论文学生的案例中，他们的所有论文主题在开始工作前都经过了我的妥善审查，并获得了生物科学系主任的批准。作为教育专业的学生，他们没有理由不能将论文工作集中在英语的教与学上。然而，学术礼仪规定，我不应就此与这位资深同事进行任何辩论，而应接受批评并采取必要的行动。我知道，研究“学生如何选择大学和专业”的学生没有问题，因为事后看来，她很幸运地从生命科学学院招募了大量的受访者（因此建立了与生命科学的联系）。其他四名学生必须进行额外的数据收集工作，以满足他们作品中“生物科学元素”的要求。这时，就需要那位非正式组长（幸运的是她未受影响）发挥领导作用，安抚和缓解一些受影响学生的紧张情绪。那些未受影响的学生随后团结起来，帮助受影响的同伴准备补充材料。远在4000公里之外，只能通过微信提供鼓励的我，感到有些无能为力！

几天后，所有四名受影响的学生都设法满足了“生物科学元素”的要求，并重新提交了论文。最终，我的10名学生全部通过了！考官小组的一个普遍评价是：我所有被指导学生的数据分析和展示都很好！一位同事甚至征求我的同意，想阅读一名被指导学生的论文，以获取进一步研究的灵感。

学习要点与结论

只要有既定的系统、程序和指南来处理各个流程，毕业论文的指导工作就可以有效地远程进行。

但我认为最重要的一点是，学生在整个毕业论文工作和流程中必须经历的学习和训练。开始毕业论文工作需要学生磨练以下技能：

1. 战略性选择论文主题的技能：学生必须选择一个自己感兴趣的主题，并结合其实习环境的实际情况，最终确定一个不仅与其兴趣相关，而且属于导师专业领域/兴趣范围内的主题。在毕业论文工作的这第一步中所涉及的批判性和战略性思维，训练学生运用他们积累的所有技能组合进行自我反思、协商（彼此之间以避免主题重叠），并与导师进行沟通（在这种情况下是通过电子方式），以说服导师相信他们最终主题选择的合理性。
2. 组织毕业论文工作的技能：学生必须成为自己项目的项目经理。尽管VGMS平台为导师（和高级学术人员）提供了一种有效的方式来监控学生在所有关键步骤中的进度，但及时组织和执行所需工作仍取决于学生自己。学生是他们自己的“质量保证经理”，因为他们有责任遵守学校的指南，生产出符合所需标准的论文作品，并按照VGMS系统规定的时间表完成。
3. 以可进行统计分析的格式收集相关数据的能力： 学生必须（在导师的指导下）深思熟虑，设计出一种合适的数据收集格式，以便他们能够与调查的受访者进行互动和沟通。这意味着他们需要设计出合适的问题以及答案选项，从而使收集到的数据能够产生具有统计学意义的结果。导师提供的准备讲座只是学生所参加的论文准备课程、生物统计学和写作技能课程的精髓。每个学生必须能够将这些不同来源的知识转化为最终可操作的调查数据收集表。尽管繁琐的统计分析是由导师使用R语言完成的，但学生需要具备生物统计学的基础知识，以便理解R语言的输出并相应地解读结果（在导师的指导下）。
4. 撰写最终提交稿的技能： 尽管VGMS系统和学校的指南为毕业论文最终稿的撰写提供了充分的说明，但学生必须学会写作、引用参考文献、提取并展示统计分析结果，并从他们的毕业论文工作中综合新知识。最终版本论文的起草和反复修改，迫使学生必须注意细节，以符合要求的格式。在最终准备阶段，学生与导师之间的来回沟通，将真正考验学生和导师的耐力。当导师无法亲自到场，只能依靠微信和QQ作为沟通渠道时，情况更是如此！
5. 陈述和辩论以捍卫论文的技能： 对学生来说，站在考官小组面前陈述和捍卫自己的毕业论文是非常令人畏惧的。在我的学生的案例中，导师无法亲自到场提供令人安心的支持（通过面部表情和肢体语言），会对他们的士气产生负面影响。因此，我认为在这种情况下，我的学生必须依靠“同伴的精神支持”。在这种情况下，他们的劣势可能会产生积极的效果，即训练他们忍受相关的压力和紧张情绪，从而更好地为未来在工作中面临更大的心理挑战做好准备。

鉴于毕业论文工作能赋予学生如此多技能组合的重要性，学校在处理“逃避毕业论文的学生”时的宽容态度仍然让我感到困惑。我那两名“逃避毕业论文的学生”所呈现的论文在广度和深度上的缺乏是显而易见的，这对双人组在仅相当于其他学生三分之一的“孕育期”内，无法产出具有足够水平的作品。依我拙见，鉴于妥善执行的毕业论文工作所能赋予的技能组合（如上文所述），对此类“逃避”案例的学术处罚还有很大的审查空间。

The length of this article prompted me to use Notebooklm (or Gemini Notebook now) to generate a video of the content. This is a sort of TLDR presentation.

On Campus Supervision of Graduation Thesis Students

When I started my teaching stint at Zhaoqing University in March 2019, I was not assigned any graduation thesis supervision duty. By August 2019, when I went back for the new academic year, five students—three from the teacher training classes (Bioscience) and two from the biotechnology classes—were assigned to me. As I had taught these students in different subjects (the Bioscience students were in two different Professional English classes taught by me; the biotechnology students were in my management and then later in my marketing classes), it did not take much for me to get the students to start the ball rolling. The only difficult parts were to find a common “free time” and a suitable venue to have our weekly meetings (as mandated by the University).

As I was not allocated any office space, and it was a bit too complicated to book a meeting room for the weekly meet-up sessions—and because my small apartment was too small to fit in everyone—I had to look for a suitable venue for our weekly meetings. I discovered a relatively quiet area at the far end of the 3rd floor of Dining Hall Number 4 of our campus which had a few large tables. I would therefore arrange weekly meetings at this venue where my wife and I would go for an early dinner around 5:00 pm, and the meeting would be set at around 5:30 pm. Finding a suitable time during the day was difficult as the students were from three different classes with their own differing timetables, making it very hard for me to find a common “free spot.” I also remembered the advice from one of my Taiwanese colleagues that we should, if possible, meet students within the campus to avoid unwanted problems.

As I did not have any laboratory and my area of research in plant science would take too long for results to be observable, naturally I had chosen to take an interest in other areas of biological science for possible research topics for the students. With the help and guidance of my Taiwanese colleague, Associate Professor Dr. Xu Guang Ting (许光廷副教授), I learned to use moxibustion as a TCM treatment for my broken wrist, which happened in April 2019, and I would like my students to focus on this area. Each student was given a different area relating to moxibustion to work on.

The weekly meetings went on for around 10 weeks; by then (November 2019), the students were getting busy with their preparation for their final examinations near the end of the semester (late December 2019/January 2020). Little did I know that my physical interactions with my students would end abruptly after January 2020, thanks to the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Remote Supervision and The Associated Issues

On January 14, 2020, I left China to return to my home in Malaysia for the winter break/Lunar New Year. With the onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic, I was, like all my Taiwanese colleagues who went home for the winter break, not allowed to return to our campus. By March 2020, the University leadership had decided (in accordance with the national guidelines) to re-open classes via online delivery. However, graduation thesis supervision was put on the back burner, but supervisors were still trying to keep in touch with our students and check on their progress. The semester went by quickly as online teaching came with lots of issues that took a lot of effort on the part of both learners and teaching staff (as well as the technology team at the University).

By August 2020, the authorities in China opened the border selectively; my Taiwanese colleagues were allowed to return (but all who entered China were subjected to a long quarantine period). Sadly, as a Malaysian, the border remained closed to me! At the same time, students were allowed back on campus, but everyone had to adhere to strict COVID-19 prevention procedures. I was also given special permission by the leadership of Zhaoqing University to continue teaching online, and this meant graduation thesis supervision would continue remotely, too. Dr. Xu Guang Ting, who had yet to be assigned graduation thesis students, volunteered to be the co-supervisor for my thesis students. He arranged to meet up with the students regularly. By then, one of the Bioscience students had obtained a one-year break from her studies (she would continue in the next academic year), and hence I was left with four thesis students. By mid-semester, all third-year students were to embark on a six-week internship in the field of their studies. The two Bioscience students were in the teacher training stream; naturally, they were assigned to schools. While Li Min (LM), who was working on the effects of moxibustion patches, was sent to a city school, Xiao Ming (SM) was assigned to a rural school with poor communication facilities. The two Biotechnology students were also assigned internships in biotechnology firms (which by then, in the midst of COVID-19, were very keen to have these students). It was at this time that SM appealed to me to change the topic of her graduation thesis to that of rural students’ life science education to reflect her internship situation, where she could benefit most from the rural education environment. As Dr. Xu, who studied traditional Chinese medicine as a side interest, was very keen to see the results of LM’s work, and LM, being at a city school, had no problem communicating with both Dr. Xu and myself via WeChat. The same could not be said about SM’s situation. The rural school where SM was attached was very remote with a poor internet connection. As a rural trainee teacher, SM was surrounded by young primary students most of the time. She had to find a quiet spot with a reasonable internet connection and away from her students’ distractions to communicate with me via WeChat at all times.

The Disappearing Act of the Duo Biotechnology Students

Towards the end of November and early December 2020, all students on internships were to return to the campus to continue their studies. However, I received a message from Dr. Xu that the two Bioscience students’ attendance at his meetings was good, but the same could not be said about the two Biotechnology students who each only attended one meeting session in September 2020 with Dr. Xu and did not turn up for even a single session after that. They ignored all attempts by Dr. Xu to contact them. On my end, I also sent out many WeChat and QQ messages to these two Biotechnology students to report to Dr. Xu, but they did not comply. I also enlisted the help of the two Bioscience students to physically find and convey Dr. Xu’s and my messages to the Biotechnology students (both SM and LM confirmed that they had seen them on campus). These two Biotechnology students just refused to comply.

In early October 2020, my University had introduced a graduation thesis monitoring and management platform (VGMS platform 维普论文检测系统) on a testing phase. I was allowed to check this out. The VGMS platform tracks students’ and supervisors’ inputs and allows monitoring and appraisal of the students’ work as well as the decisions and inputs of the supervisors by the respective deans and senior academics. The systematic and time-sensitive procedures for the various stages of the thesis preparation and submission would mean that both students and supervisors would be forced to adhere to the schedule decided by the University to ensure timely and orderly completion of this academic process. However, for the Spring 2021 graduation thesis session, the use of VGMS was optional, on a trial basis only with a full implementation in the following academic year being considered.

In early December 2020, after many failed attempts (by myself, Dr. Xu, and the two Bioscience students) to get a response from the two Biotechnology students, I finally issued an ultimatum to the pair: “Either you make contact now (with me or with Dr. Xu) or else I will register a ‘fail’ grade for you both!” And I also asked the Bioscience students to verbally convey this message as well. One would have thought that any student who wanted to graduate would immediately spring to action. But not this pair of Biotechnology students. They continued to ignore the final warning. I then had no choice but to formally inform them that they had “failed” their graduation thesis. {The final submission of their thesis was not due until late April/early May 2021}.

In February 2021, out of the blue, I received a WeChat message (followed by a QQ message) from one of my Biotechnology thesis students. These messages were followed by a few more from the second Biotechnology student. The pair were anxious and desperately wanted to contact me. I made it very clear to them that, as far as I was concerned, they had failed their graduation thesis. I was busy preparing for the start of the Spring semester in March 2021. Dr. Xu informed me that at that stage, it would be best for me to supervise the two Bioscience students myself, with him backing me up in any administrative work related to thesis supervision. I was happy that both thesis students were progressing well. LM had already done the bulk of the fieldwork—getting volunteers from among female staff and students to try putting moxibustion patches at the “sanyinjiao” (三阴交) pressure points and recording their responses. SM, on the other hand, was busy collecting survey responses for her thesis work.

Data Collection and Statistical Analysis

In preparation to teach a Biostatistics class to Biotechnology students I had taught myself some fundamentals of R language from August to November 2020 (and learning R language helped me to relearn the subject better). From SM and LM I learned that all Bioscience students also took a course in Biostatistics which was similar to the one offered to Biotechnology students. In addition, all students had to attend classes on thesis preparation (which was taught by other colleagues). Hence, I had no issue with my supervisees’ background knowledge of statistical analyses. However, tackling the tasks of analyzing and, more crucially, interpreting the statistical analyses of the data collected would be much tougher to accomplish effectively unless, of course, one’s major is in statistics (or related fields). Thus, I took it upon myself (with my basic knowledge of R language) to analyze all my supervisees’ raw data. At the onset I set out to optimize the data collection method of both SM and LM so that we could render an easier path to import the data into R for analysis. We used Excel to do some of the raw data crunching and data cleanup, and I used R language to perform the required statistical analyses for both students. I also guided them with the interpretation of the statistical analyses. We used VGMS to help us keep to the timeline at all times.

The Resurfacing of The Pair of Biotechnology Students

May 2021 was a tense time for both graduating students and their thesis supervisors. This was because of the need to finalize the thesis, submit the work accordingly, and prepare for the defense of the thesis. Defending the thesis was perhaps the hardest part for most graduating students. More so if your thesis supervisor could not be physically present during the crucial 20-30 minutes of your presentation and question-and-answer session. Although the “hand-holding” work was done well by Dr. Xu, who was present at both SM’s and LM’s thesis defense sessions, I felt that my absence would dent the students’ confidence. In 2021 it was too complicated to do a Tencent Meeting session during the presentation and defense sessions of my two students. Missing these was a regret that I feel even today. I was elated to hear from Dr. Xu later that LM sailed past her thesis defense, while SM only needed some minor corrections.

Prior to the thesis presentation and defense sessions, all supervisors were obligated to be graders of theses from students other than their own. As an academic staff of the Biotechnology division of the School of Life Science, naturally, I was assigned to grade a great number of theses from Biotechnology students. My biggest surprise was to come… the theses of the two Biotechnology students whom I had failed were among the work that I had to grade. To be fair to all students whose work was graded, the University provided graders with a marking scheme that we were to adhere to rigorously. What surprised me most was how my two “failed” thesis students managed to work so fast on their theses (SM and LM took 3-4 months to gather the data and 3 months to get to the final submission stage). As both of these two “failed” Biotechnology thesis students worked on topics within bioinformatics (and there were other students submitting theses in the same field that I had to grade), I had to dig deep into my knowledge of bioinformatics (and read up a lot to catch up with the subject) in order to grade the students’ work effectively. When I compared my “failed” Biotechnology students’ work with the others, it was clear that the depth and breadth of their work were not on par. Nevertheless, I had to adhere to the marking scheme provided to me. After a thorough review and comparison with the work and grading of the other students whose work was on bioinformatics, both my “failed” Biotechnology students managed to scrape through but with a lot of comments and further questions from me. Interestingly, I was informed by Dr. Xu, who happened to be present during the pair’s presentation and thesis defense sessions, that both of them were thrown off guard by a few basic questions from an examiner. Nevertheless, the examination committee did finally decide to pass the duo. Dr. Xu later learned that the pair wanted to change the topics of their thesis but did not consult anyone formally until I had failed them! If they were to have their intention clearly explained to Dr. Xu (or yours truly) early on, we would have had no issue in releasing them.

In view of the experience I had with my two Biotechnology students, I filed a formal request to my University to implement the VGMS in the next cohort. I was happy to learn shortly later that my suggestion was accepted by the leadership. The implementation of the VGMS meant that in the next cohort, we would spot the “runaway thesis student” early, and interventions could be effected swiftly and timely. Moreover, data of all the steps and stages of the thesis preparation and submission process would be held on record where monitoring by various assigned senior academic staff would be effected to ensure adherence to procedures, quality, and timeliness (in the completion of tasks by both supervisors and students).

Learning from Past Experience Equals a More Systematic Supervision Regime

At the end of the Spring Semester of 2021, I was assigned (or rather randomly picked students from a ballot box, remotely via the helping hands of my colleague, the Academic Secretary of the School of Life Sciences) nine students (who all happened to be from the Bioscience field). The Bioscience student who took leave of her studies previously in 2020 was assigned to return to my supervision group. As there were still no signs of when I could return to China, I had made preparations to supervise all these students remotely. By then Dr. Xu had had his plate full with his own graduation thesis students, and it was inappropriate for me to burden him further.

For the next cohort of graduation thesis students being supervised by me, I decided that I should be more systematic in the initial workflow before the VGMS system took charge of the procedures and processes. I had implemented the following:

1. All students were to indicate their topic of interest (if any) in an appropriate online form which was visible to all students. I had “seeded” the form with possible topics that students could choose, but they were free to propose their own topics (subject to my approval). The students were given a deadline by which they should register their intended topics, after which I would assign thesis topics to those who did not respond in time. By doing this, I was being pragmatic; a student would be more motivated if she/he was to work on a thesis topic that was of interest to him/her. In addition, the research topics would have to be vetted by the Head of the Department (of Bioscience), and his approval must be secured before a student could commence work. Of the 10 students, six picked their own areas of research (with my guidance to finalize thesis titles that were academically appropriate). The remaining four students elected to select their research topics from the list provided by me.
   

   

2. All my students were mandated to attend a special online lecture where I would (based on my experience with the previous cohort) spell out “what to do and what not to do” in the design of a research project, the data collection, the preparation of writing up, referencing, etc. In particular, I stressed the importance of quantification in survey-type research work. During this session, the supervisees also learned about the proper way to quantify their data and how to design effective data-capturing survey forms.
   

   

3. I had set up a meeting schedule mapping the various deadlines in the VGMS system. All my students were obliged to attend and present any issues that they needed resolving. This was to make sure that the required work at each step of the thesis preparation process (as structured in the VGMS system) would be completed on time. Prior to each meeting, I would finalize my monitoring work on each student’s progress and use “peer guidance and support” to ensure that anyone slacking would be identified and assisted (if needed) by her/his peers. Through the “peer guidance and support” effort, I made sure that students working on overlapping or related topics could exchange references found and assist one another. Peer guidance and support was made easy as all my 10 students were from the Bioscience field. Although they were spread between three different classes, the students would have, at some point during their studies, encountered each other in different subjects or during student activities. I was also able to identify among the 10 one particular student who was most approachable and had good leadership qualities as the unofficial leader of my thesis supervision group. (It was this kind of support that I counted on heavily to keep the morale of my students up at the later part of the process).

Uneventful 2021-2022 Cohort?

Learning from the operation of the 2020-21 cohort graduation thesis supervision, I ran a relatively strict regime. Any student who needed to miss a scheduled meeting was obligated to seek prior permission from me, and she/he was to watch the replay of the recorded session and do the required tasks as assigned by me. Luckily for me, all 10 students I supervised complied with this requirement completely. As all my supervisees were Bioscience students training to be teachers, all the crucial steps/stages of the graduation thesis supervision processes came under the purview of the Head of Bioscience of my School. The VGMS system made it compulsory for supervisors to obtain the approval of the respective Head/Dean to progress their students. The most crucial of all, of course, was the topic of the graduation thesis of each student. In my supervisees’ case, there were three students whose thesis topics were in the teaching and learning of English, one was on internet addiction by students, and one was on how university students selected their field of major. The remaining five worked on topics related to the teaching and learning of life sciences. With all 10 members of my group obtaining the Head of Bioscience’s approval without any further comments, my supervisees and I commenced the hard work swiftly.

Next, to ensure my supervisees could collect data effectively, I paid a lot of attention to guiding them in the design of their data-capturing survey forms. This had the direct effect of allowing the collected data to be analyzed without too much data-cleaning work and ensuring that correct and useful data would be collected. I also made sure that the supervisees collected references that were relevant and from verified sources and shared these with me. I also stressed the prime rule of any thesis work: avoid any form of plagiarism. I went on to share ideas on how to cite others’ work in one’s thesis. I also cited examples of pitfalls that the students should avoid and gave several examples of “good citation work” of their seniors for them to emulate. In addition, I demonstrated how one could effectively and efficiently integrate and synthesize knowledge, viewpoints, and conclusions by compiling key findings of related published work and then constructing a table and commenting and drawing facts from the said table. The VGMS system had an effective plagiarism checker, and all submitted work would have to pass this hurdle before it could be accepted. My prior experience with VGMS’s plagiarism checker had prepared me well to tackle this task, which had floored many a graduation thesis student in the 2020/21 cohort. To facilitate the supervision work, I requested the students to update the progress tracking form that I had set up on their respective internship situations (whether they were on campus, in town, or at a rural location) on a regular basis. This was necessary as the 10 students did not have their internship at the same time, with some doing it earlier (from March – July 2021) and some much later (September – December 2021). The tracking form also allowed me to know, at the last stage of the thesis preparation process, the physical location of each of my supervisees. This was to ensure that every one of my supervisees would be able to attend his/her graduation thesis defense.

As with the 2020-21 cohort, in order to have verifiable, correct, and presentable statistical analysis, I took on the task of using R language to analyze all my supervisees’ data. But prior to the statistical analytical work, each student would have to “clean up” their dataset accordingly so that it could be imported into R language. I spent a good deal of time helping each student to interpret his/her statistical analysis. Surprisingly, the writing-up process for everyone was very uneventful, and the supervisees definitely had learned to write in the correct format as stipulated by the University. The VGMS system also guided my supervisees each step of the way and, where there were issues, these were identified early by me, and rectification by the student concerned was relatively painless (to the student). As the final deadline for submission of their graduation theses approached, naturally some students took the pressure in their stride, while one or two required some moral support and extra guidance. The “peer guidance and support” system set up by me kicked into action, where my supervisees were able to draw on each other’s experience, resources, and encouragement to overcome difficulties faced. This was very important to my group of supervisees as I was physically over 4,000 km away.

Although I was located in Malaysia, my School’s leadership had endeavored to help me in my role as an examiner of graduation thesis of my colleagues’ students. I was given electronic copies of the thesis to grade prior to the presentation and defense sessions. The Chairman of the graduation thesis examination board made sure that I could view all the students’ presentations online via Tencent Meeting (including my 10 supervisees’). However, it was rather taxing for me to hear and view these presentations live over prolonged sessions. Nevertheless, I was able to grade the relevant students’ presentations (except for my own students, which were graded by one of my colleagues) without any issue.

However, when a senior colleague, during the question-and-answer segment near the end of the thesis defense session, passed a comment to one of my students who worked on a topic related to the teaching and learning of English at schools, it sent a huge alarm signal to me (and my supervisees working on topics in this area). The senior academic was of the opinion that as a student of Bioscience, he would expect the student’s research work would have touched on some aspect of life sciences. In my supervisees’ cases, all their thesis topics were duly vetted by me and approved by the Head of Bioscience before they commenced work. As students of education, there was no reason why they could not concentrate their thesis work on the teaching and learning of English. However, academic etiquette dictated that I should not hold any debate with the senior colleague on this and to accept the criticism and do the necessary. I knew that the student working on “how students select their university and major” had no issue as she had, on hindsight, luckily canvassed a large number of her interviewees from the School of Life Sciences (hence the connection to life sciences was established). The other four students had to do extra data acquisition work to fulfill the requirement of “Bioscience element” in their work. This was the time when the leadership of the unofficial leader (who fortunately was not affected) was called upon to pacify and smooth the nerves of some of the affected students. Those who were not affected then rallied together and helped their affected peers to work on the preparation for their addendum. I felt a bit helpless, being 4,000 km away and only able to provide my encouragement via WeChat!

After a few days, all four affected students managed to comply with the “Bioscience element” and resubmitted their thesis. In the end, all my 10 students passed! One general comment from the panel of examiners was: all my supervisees’ data analysis and presentation were good! One colleague even asked my consent to read a supervisee’s thesis for ideas for further research.

Learning Points and Conclusion

Supervision of graduation thesis work can be effectively done remotely provided there are established systems, procedures, and guidelines to handle the various processes.

But the most important point, I think, is the learning and training within the entire graduation thesis work and processes that students have to go through. Embarking on the graduation thesis work requires the student to hone the following skills:

1. The skills for strategic selection of a topic for the thesis: the student has to choose a topic of interest to him/her, balancing the reality of his/her internship environment to finalize a topic that not only is relevant to his/her interest but one that also falls into the field of expertise/interest of the supervisor. The critical and strategic thinking involved in this very first step of the graduation thesis work trains students to use all their accumulated skill sets for self-reflection, negotiation (with each other to avoid overlapping of topics), and communication (in this case via electronic means) with the supervisor to convince him of the appropriateness of their final topic selections.
2. The skills involved in organizing the graduation thesis work: the students have to be the project managers of their own projects. Although the VGMS platform provides an effective way for supervisors (and senior academic staff) to monitor students’ progress through all crucial steps, it is up to the student to organize and execute the required work in a timely manner. The students are their own “quality assurance managers” in that they are responsible for adhering to the University’s guidelines in producing thesis work that is up to the required standards and doing so in accordance with the timeline as specified by the VGMS system.
3. The ability to capture relevant data in a format that is statistically analyzable: the students must think through (with the guidance of the supervisor) an appropriate format of data capturing that would allow them to engage and communicate with respondents of their surveys. That means they need to work out suitable questions as well as answer selections that could render data to yield statistically meaningful results. The prep-talk session given by the supervisor was just the essence of the thesis preparation course, biostatistics, and writing skills course that the students had taken. The students individually must be able to translate the knowledge of these various sources into the final survey data capturing form that is actionable. Although the number-crunching statistical analyses were done using R language by the supervisor, the students needed to have the fundamentals of biostatistics to comprehend the output from R and interpret the results accordingly (guided by the supervisor).
4. The skills to compose the final submission: although the VGMS system and the University’s guidelines provided sufficient instructions for the composition of the final draft of the graduation thesis, the students must learn to write, to cite references, to extract and present results from the statistical analyses, and to synthesize new knowledge from their graduation thesis work. The drafting and re-drafting of the final version of the thesis compels the students to be attentive to details in order to comply with the required format. The communication back and forth between the students and the supervisor in the final preparation stage would really test the endurance of both students and the supervisor. This is more so when the supervisor could not be physically present and relied on WeChat and QQ as the conduits!.
5. The presentation and debating skills to defend the thesis: it is very daunting for a student to stand in front of the panel of examiners to present and defend her/his graduation thesis. In my students’ case, the lack of a physical presence of their supervisor to provide the reassuring support (in facial expressions and body language) would have a negative impact on their morale. Hence, I think my students had to rely on “peers’ moral support“ in this context. Their disadvantage in this context might have the positive effect of training them to endure the associated pressure and stress which would prepare them better to face greater psychological challenges at work in the future.

In view of the importance of the acquisition of so many skill sets that the graduation thesis work confers, the University’s leniency in dealing with “runaway graduation thesis students” still baffles me. The lack of breadth and depth of the work presented by my two “runaway graduation thesis students” was evident enough that the duo could not produce work of sufficient standing within a “gestation period” of around one-third of the other students. In my humble opinion, in view of the skill sets that a properly executed graduation thesis work could confer (as outlined above), the academic penalty for such “runaway” cases has a lot of room for review.

• • 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”!

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.

中文版：

大约35年前，我成功的在试管里培养出了很多水仙花的嫩芽(其实这是首个转折点，也是另一个故事！)，我面临着一个巨大的障碍，费尽了心思我根本不知道该如何去解决。我怎么能把这些芽丛变成小鳞茎以便他们可以顺利的在田间栽种呢？毕竟，我博士科研的目标是产生一个完整的方案，通过组织培养大量的生产水仙花芽丛，并使这他们可以在田间“正常”生长。根据文献回顾，我知道其他研究人员已经成功地将组织培养的水仙芽丛栽种到田间。但栽种这组培水仙芽丛有两个主要缺点：

● 将这些芽丛从试管移植到温室中，有它们不能很好地适应环境的危险。25-30%的损失将是“正常的”。

● 这些芽丛的本质就像刚发芽的水仙幼苗，将需要大概长达5年时间从成长到开花阶段。

我已故的导师芭芭拉·哈维博士建议我从其他的组织培养植物模型中寻找灵感。当我和尼基·埃文斯博士聊到她是如何在试管中培育出小块茎的时候，我灵光一闪。埃文斯博士在她组织培养土豆实验中使用了高含糖量的培养基就使得小土豆在试管内形成，我就跟随她的实验方向这样做。几个月后，我欣喜地看到了我实验试管里有些芽丛已经有所变化：可以观察到在我给予高剂量的蔗糖培养基的水仙芽丛里有小鳞茎（我称之为“珠芽”）的形成。那就是我读博士的另一个转折点。6个月后，我成功的提交了我的博士论文…其余的，就是英语术语说的”是历史”！

在我的这一部分工作中，我要感谢埃文斯博士慷慨地分享她的想法。

我的两位博士导师，芭芭拉·哈维博士和克里斯托弗·塞尔比博士在我完成了“珠芽”实验后不久就很精明的阻止了我在实验室里做更多的实验(他们确实是把我“赶出“了实验室！) 。通过他们的催促，我全心全力的写好我的博士论文，大约6个月后我完成了这篇论文！这是最重要的转折点！因为当时我的研究项目目标已经实现，但我的博士研究目标仍未达到。为了获得博士学位，我必须写作、提交和成功的答辩我的论文！

几个月后（1990年12月），我被母校贝尔法斯特女王大学授予哲学博士学位。不久之后，我离开贝尔法斯特，到新加坡国立大学担任博士后研究员。

大约在1991年底，我收到了哈维博士的好消息，她在一封电子邮件中写道：“小周，你在1990年中所种下的一些‘珠芽’正在开花了！”

这确实是一个令人兴奋的消息，因为：

● 它证明了，在经历了我组织培养环境的“压力”及过程之后，我的珠芽和那些按惯例所被繁殖的鳞茎是没有什么不同；

● 更重要的是，这意味着我的方式方法成功的将“芽丛/幼苗到开花鳞茎期”缩短了至少3到4年！

当时我希望我有机会和资源在这方面进行更深入的研究工作，收集更多的数据，但令人失望的是，这已经是不可能的。

在研究工作中，你确实需要洞察力去敏锐地观察趋势和变化，但你最需要的是有经验研究人员的指导。我很幸运两者都有！敏锐的眼睛帮助我发现了土豆块茎化过程和水仙花鳞茎形成之间的相似之处。在导师的指导下，我攀登了博士之旅的最后一个但也是最关键的转折点。我的两位导师在我完成了“珠芽实验”后就停止了我的实验室工作，并确保我跟随学校设定博士研究时间表(更重要的是，我的奖学金任期)，在我的最后一份奖学金支票被发出之前完成撰写和提交我的博士论文！

如果你有兴趣，我刚刚在Kudos杂志上发表了一篇文章是描述我两位导师和本人发表的一篇有关水仙芽丛形成珠芽的论文。

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). 

从2019年3月直至2022年7月底我是在中国广东省肇庆学学院任教。2020年1月我从肇庆回乡（马来西亚）过了一个短暂的寒假，新冠肺炎的发生毁了很多人的生活和策划，包括我回中国教学的计划！在这篇相当长的文章中，我试图分享我自己在在线授课方面的经验和学习(在第二部分我将分享远程指导学生的毕业论文的经验)。

Prelude to the online teaching stint 网络教学的序幕

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!

随着新学期的临近，2020年1月下旬，我接到了我校国际处的指示：不得回校园！ 我想我和我”另一半“比大多数卡在乡的人都幸运，因为我能够及时取消我们的亚航机票，获得退款。到了2020年2月底，我校所有回乡过寒假的同事（包括本人）开始焦虑了。我们的一位同事，严丹峰先生甚至被困在位于新冠肺炎疫情严重区的武汉附近的家乡。我们都真的为他（和他的家人）的安全祈祷！

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.

最后，在2020年3月初，由于学生和许多教工人员都不被允许返回校园，我校领导层终于收到了有关部门的“绿灯”，允许新学期（2020年春）的所有课程在线授课。每个教学者，学生和他们的家庭对网络设备和互联网带宽的争夺也开启了。

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!

碰巧在2020年3月我和严丹峰先生都被排到两个不同班的教同一门课，“管理学概论“。为了更有效的教学我们俩决定合并这两个班（幸运的是两个班各自的时间表没有冲突）。我负责讲课，而严老师则在“幕后”工作，解决各项问题并观察学生的表现。在此之前，在各个班的班长/学委的帮助下，我们已经整理出了所运用的线上平台中的在线聊天群。所以我们与我们的学生交流课题大致上都解决了，但这只是我和严老师的想法而已！

Imagine this scene 想象一下这样的场景:

• 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.

我们网课的第一堂课可以说是蛮混乱的。上课的头30分钟“波澜不惊”。我们只是迟了几分钟开课，因为我和严老师不得不清点两个班的学生人数。幸运的是，钉钉在直播平台允许我们”合拼”两个班级为一个直播流的演示。因此，我们在这次合并中节省了大量的工作，这样严老师就可以专注“监督”学生上课的情况，而我则专注于课程的演示。

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”.

然而不久后，我们的麻烦开始了：一部分学生报告说，他们无法很好地连接到钉钉。在我这边，我接到钉钉系统报告说我与钉钉服务器的联系是不可靠的。因此，严老师和我(在两班的班长/学委的帮助下)不得不通知学生们“切换到QQ聊天组”。

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.

于是我们继续在QQ群上聊天直播（当时更像是视频群聊）。事情是这样的，在QQ平台上，不像钉钉，我不能把学生的麦克风静音。尽管严老师在网络课堂的“后面”敦促大家“把麦克风静音”，但在90分钟的课程中，我们还是听到了很多干扰的声音：开门声、说话声、交通噪音等等。这是意料之中的，因为我们的学生都被困在家里，一些同学将不得不与兄弟姐妹等共用设施。此外，并非所有学生都有稳定良好的互联网连接，并且大部分学生不得不使用手机上课。

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!

其中一名女生决定在我的网上课上大声朗读她的中文文学课件。大声朗读是学习中国文学的一种方式，但最好是当一个人独处时做！所以我们有80位在线的同学，其中79人用心上我的网课，可是其中一个人与我在吸引同学们的注意力上“竞争”！尽管我一再要求我的学生“检查你的麦克风，现在就静音“，在朗读的那位同学没在听，她继续在朗读！严老师，我们两班班长和学委花了整整15分钟才找到这位朗读女生！所以我的“后备”平台， QQ群聊根本不是一个可行的选择！

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.

此外，2020年3月，中国所有的教育机构（从小学到高校）都开始在线教育学生。带宽和其他互联网资源被用到了极限。发生故障是意料之中的。但实际上，中国科技公司的运作效率很高，大多数公司在国家的关键需求期间都有义务做出贡献，并有效地解决了大多数技术故障。因此，在几天之内，各个平台大多数的故障或多或少都得到了解决。

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!

到了2020年8月， 又是一个学期的开启。我校所有的台湾同事都接到了返回校园的命令(他们必须接受隔离措施–这对许多人来说是一场噩梦，一开始就被“关”了几个星期，等等)。当时，我的肇庆市居留许可证已经过期了。我需要省级主管部门的一封特别邀请函才能获得入境签证。这封信函需要花了十多周才可以办妥。当这封信最终到达我手时，我匆忙赶到吉隆坡中国大使馆的签证中心，但并没有获得我急需的结果—-签证中心的一位经理告诉我们，中国当局正在关闭其边境，即使我们能拿到签证，也几乎没有航班(至少花费¥9000或约马币5625，可能只有包机航班其机票大多在¥3.5万元的范围内)。所以我不得不把这坏消息告诉我校国际处处理我的案子的同事，曾老师。她为我奔波追逐这封特别邀请信的所有努力都白费了！

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:

但是我也很幸运，我院，生命科学学院有非常和蔼可亲的领导班子。我院领导们接受了我的恳求，并说服学校的领导给予我教学特权，让我成为唯一被允许继续在线教学的教学人员。当然，我必须遵守许多规则/安排。其中一些是：

• 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. 

我完全同意并赞同教务处对我的网络课程的处理要求。我的学生的学习经验不能与“真正的”面对面授课有太大的不同。换句话说，他们不能因为我的状况而处于不利地位。

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. 

有了学院和学校的授权，我开始重新调整我的课程，以确保我有公平的机会实现（并超越）我在线授课的基本要求。

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! 

与面对面授课相比，在线授课的一个主要缺陷是缺乏来自学生的“反馈”。如果你不能“看到”和“听到”他们，你是很难衡量你的学生对你课的参与和注意力。监督老师的存在只会确保课堂上有纪律。我需要想办法吸引我学生的注意力。如果不是的话，他们就不如看一段我事先录好的讲课视频就算了！

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.

清华大学“雨课堂”的发明者们一定听到了许多像我一样的老师们的集体诉求。他们发明了一个插件，教师可以通过该插件促进学生在课堂的参与和互动，该插件也可以适应在线授课。雨课堂是很容易安装（PowerPoint以及WPS），更重要的是非常用户友好。

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.

因此，我开始在每堂课中添加至少4题，但大部分是5-6题课堂测试问题。我把这些小测验的问题得分纳入最后成绩的“班上互动和平时成绩“部分中。为了让学生们更兴奋一点，我甚至在我的一些班级里，贴上了“小红包”–雨课堂的电子货币，奖励每一节课得分最高的头三位同学。“雨课堂”将在每节课结束时生成这些数据，并给出一张图表，显示谁是一节课的前三名得分者。每次上课结束后，我会把这些数据发到我们的钉钉聊天群。

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).

这个“领队板”给出了竞争的元素，从而使我的讲课有点游戏化。最重要的是，有了这些设置，我确保了学生们的某种程度的参与。此外，这些课堂测验问题和分数也有助于确保学生逐步学习，我们没有依靠一次性的期末考试来验证学生所取得的学习成绩(如果可能的话，作为一名教育家，我会尽量避免这种做法)。雨课堂也有一个非常有效的方式来记录学生的课堂活动。因此，我会要求所有的学生在每节课开始前使用我提供的链接登录到雨课堂系统。如果学生没有在雨课堂签到，他将被视为“缺席”。当然，在一些奇怪的情况下(如学生忘了带手机来上课；手机丢失/损坏等等)，我会在考虑了班长的核实后，将这批人标记为“在场”。然而，这批人将无法参与课堂测验(而且注定也会因此失去分数)。

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!

课堂测验问题出现的时间及其“随机性”也有一个好的目的：当我的问题出现时，学生们将不得不注意，因为他们不会得到预先警告。由于回答这些问题的时间平均为2-3分钟，是不利于在互联网上查找答案的。通过这些课堂上的测验，我实现了一件最重要的事情–让学生保持警觉，这情况可能在大多数时候是可以实现！

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) . 

虽然我们只需要班长在教室的电脑上登录钉钉以确保我的直播被投影到课室的大屏幕上供每位学生观看，但其他学生也可以在课堂上登录钉钉与我（以及其他已经登录的同学）交流。

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.

钉钉最好的功能之一是它能够记录和存档所有在线课程（如果该功能被启动了）。我不介意让我的学生再看一遍录制的直播作因为我提出的一些观点可能需要学生多看几遍才能掌握。录制课程也将确保请假的学生有机会学习他们错过的内容（当然，他们不会在课堂测验中得分）。所以在每节课结束的时候，我都会发布录制的直播供学生观看回播，并把相关链接发到班级的钉钉里。

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. 

与一些其他教育家不同，我认为让的学生使用我课上PowerPoint演示文稿是没问题的。雨课堂就有这一个功能，我可以“打开”该功能，以确保我的学生可以演示幻灯片来复习。这一功能，再加上录制的课堂讲座，将极大地帮助学生复习(我多么希望在我的学生时代有这些！) 。相同的功能也使那些无法上我课的学生能够随同演示幻灯片一起观看重播，以赶上课程的进度。

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.

笔记本电脑附带的照相机是另一个问题。它不够多功能，不能为我的演示提供一个好的视频。幸运的是，我儿子有个旧的“传”给我，这罗技网络摄像头派上了用场。

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. 

因为我必须随时“看到”和“听到”我在中国的课堂上学生所看到和听到的视频，我知道我必须在我的旧笔记本电脑上设置另一个钉钉帐户。我会同时在两部电脑运行钉钉，但为了避免“回声和反馈”的影响，我不得不使用耳机来听我自己的现场直播。我的直播时间滞后了大约10秒，这刚好让我很好地监控了我的在线直播课程。

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. 

为了与班长和/或学委沟通，我会与其中一位班领袖开通一条直接聊天线，以便他们在直播期间提醒我任何不常的状况。因此，我将不得不在课堂上监控微信

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.

由于教室里所有的电脑、投影仪和音响系统都锁得严严实实，为了方便我的班长/学委，我在每个学期开始的时候都会给所有的教学同事发一个“求救”信息，让大家知道我班学生上课的课室。我恳求他们的帮助，如果他们在附近上课，在每节课开始前，为我的班长/学委打开这些教学设备，以便他们可以在开课前启动课室电脑，投影仪和音响系统。当我收到一个学生发出的“一切正常”的信号（其中一位同学会发我一个“2”信号）时，我就知道是我“开锣”的时候了！

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. 

不用说，并不是每一节课都能顺利进行，技术和人们都有办法把计划搞砸。记得我有一堂课是排到傍晚，在其中一节课上，班长找不到任何教工人员打开教学装置 (恰好当天的监督老师还没到课室 – 监督老师不必全程在课室，有时会选择“突击”检查）。接到班长的通知我赶紧联络我学院的学术行政同事派人去“救援“！也有一些时候，无论是课室电脑，投影仪(或声音系统)或互联网连接都有机会不操作。我很幸运，因为我各个不同班的班长/学委们在面临困难时都设法去解决问题，使得我大部分的网课都顺利进行。

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）。
  

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.

由此可知，我不得不监视至少六个不同的屏幕的声音和视频！在大多数的情况，一位面对面教学的老师是不必担心以上的！所有这些持续的（有时是同时的）监控和保持警觉，是吸取我不少的精力。

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?

最重要的是，我必须意识到我自己的互联网连接，带宽和电源供应。归功于马来西亚的相关的设施供应单位，在我的30个月的课程中，我没有面临任何服务削减。可是我确实发生了几次意外： 有次我的“另一半”不小心把一个金属杯子盖在我”书房“门外掉下，另一次她将煮锅盖子在同一地方掉下！我没有接到的学生们的投诉，也许是一种安慰？

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.

其实在开始在线教学之前，我就已经把我几乎所有的课程作业都放在了“在线提交”模式下。这是因为2019年4月25日，我在校园里推电动车上坡时摔了一跤，导致右手腕骨折，几天来连一张纸都拿不起来。

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. 

当时，我最初的在线提交方式有点粗糙（学生们通过电子邮件将手机摄像头拍摄的实验室报告发送给我进行评分）。但我很快就学会了使用问卷网，这对我后来网课很有帮助。问卷网是可处理标记/收集/汇编数据/上传文件等工作的在线调查平台。再加上QQ文档来布置阅读和其他作业内容/问题，使得我可以有效地运行我的在线评估系统。

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.

学生们可以尝试在线测验，这些测验通常会由系统评分这样他们就可以重新提交（我一般设定最多3次提交机会）来提高自己的成绩。对于一些作业，学生们会把论文上传到这些平台上，以便我评分（包括评论和反馈），然后我将这些论文返还给学生（通过在中国的在线存储平台，如腾讯微云，百度云盘，阿里云盘）。对于小组作业，我会直接把评分后的文档发到班钉钉聊天群里，供同学们下载。

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!).

在线提交/在线测验的美妙之处在于会有书面记录。老师可以很容易地分配提交期限和测验的次数，以及每次尝试的持续时间也可以被定制。我甚至为学生建立了一个链接，让他们使用问卷网的功能来检查他们自己提交的状态（从而摆脱了我需要响应这些请求的工作！）

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.

有了在线提交框架，我能够在截止日期临近时监控提交状态，以提醒和“追赶”那些仍然落后的人。把这个状态放到钉钉聊天群里有一个很大的好处：我可以利用同学们的压力来“促使”这些“惯犯”遵守规则（是的，在每个班将至少有一个这样的个”惯犯“）！由于这个框架几乎所有的程序都是“透明的”，我尽量减少了学生不按时提交作业的蹩脚借口的机会。不像纸质的作业，我总是有每一个已经评分的学生提交的作业副本。这使得对学生期末成绩的回顾变得更有效率。

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!

以上视频由我的同事邢志航副教授在他监督我的“专业英语”课时所录制的。除了我的个体没有出现在讲台上，其他的一切“看起来”和“听起来”都和真正的面对面课堂没有太大的分别。我本人是在邢教授发给我这段视频后才意识到这一点的。我那时就知道至少在这方面，我的学生并没有遭受任何不利影响！

[在国内的朋友可以从百度网盘提取以上的片段：链接：https://pan.baidu.com/s/1EwJgzkf6vTnyNI4fe4JVeg 提取码：hlal】

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!

2021年春季学期（2021年3月至2021年7月）我被排到教“生物统计学”这门课。当时另一班学生是由苏俊魁教授以面对面授课方式授课的。由于这门课有一个强制性的期末考试，而且两个班要考同样的试卷，这给了我一个很好的机会来比较在线课程的教学过程是否与面对面课程有很大的不同。在我们的例子中，两个班的学生组成非常相似。他们根据时间表上的空档报名（两个班的学生的学术背景非常相似，进入哪个”生物统计学”班是“半随机”分配的）。2021年7月下旬，我很高兴地从苏教授那里得知，他的学生和我的学生的最终成绩非常相似。（我学生的试卷由洪硕庭副教授批改 ) . 这表明，我的学生虽然说是上网课，但他们并没有表现出一点劣势！（“生物统计学”这门课并不是我的强项，在我讲课的过程中不得不依靠苏教授指导，并从他那里学到了很多东西，非常感谢！）

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 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. 

每学期末的教学评估活动在肇庆学院是非常被重视的。虽然我从来不是“最好的老师”，但我从来没有处于“危险区”–成为最低的得分老师。从以上的图，你会注意到，在2022年7月的评教上，我的大部分学生都对我的在线教学给予了积极的评估。这是一个教学者最满意的结果，我不能要求更多！我想那些喜欢学习的学生会发现我的在线课程是有益的，而那些“得过且过”的学生则会被我的网上授课方式所吓倒。

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 mug has a long history! It was a gift from one of my colleagues (Johnson Mathew Joseph) when he was one of my team members when we were academic staff of the now defunct Sepang Institute of Technology (SIT).

It was around 1997. JMJ and I learned a lot from an incident on prioritizing and time management. A director of Lion’s Group (the then owner of SIT) summoned us to see him for a project at his office at the heart of Kuala Lumpur (near Bangkok Bank). We had to travel all the way from Klang town (back then with many construction works going on, Klang-KL would take at least 90 mins to drive). As parking would be expensive and difficult to find, I managed to book a college’s car for JMJ to drive and pick me up in USJ-Subang Jaya on the way (I would drive my old car home first and wait for the pick-up).

Then JMJ arranged to pick up another staff (who hitched a ride with us, she wasn’t connected with our project). That person was late, very late by all account! Unfortunately, JMJ had decided to wait for her and as a consequence we were late in arriving for our meeting by an hour. Naturally I bored the brunt of the wrath of this director as I was the Head of the School of Sciences and JMJ’s manager. That taught us both 3 great lessons:

1. Prioritizing is a core skill…. we should have ditched the hitchhiker!

2. Time management is crucial for survival in the corporate world…. I should have “ditched” JMJ and travelled to KL by taxi! However, IMHO that director could have asked us to meet him at a more mutually convenient location.

3. As a leader, I had to be accountable for my team members’ action, but after learning the lessons we should forgive but NOT forget (in case we commit the same errors again!)

The mug was used for about 25 years and it served its last day yesterday when a bit of the top rim chipped off. JMJ and I both appreciated the joke (“The Boss”) when he gave it to me as a “peace offering”. I am glad to see JMJ doing well in his entrepreneurial endeavours and wish him great successes!

Every year during the celebration for “teachers’ day” many businesses will give special deals and gifts to teachers in China. The feature image in this post is just one of many of such signs of respect to the teaching profession. I must admit, I will miss this free gift of RMB300 worth of spectacle products this year as I am still unable to travel back to my university from Malaysia due to the COVID-19 pandemic. I have started my second semester of online teaching at the beginning of September 2020.
每年在庆祝“教师节”期间，许多企业都会向中国的教师赠送特价商品和礼物。这篇文章中的特写图片只是对教师职业表示尊重的众多标志之一。很可惜，今年我将错过这个价值￥300的免费眼镜礼品，因为COVID-19疫情关系，我仍然无法从马来西亚返校。从2020年9月我已开始第二个线上教学的学期。

It is precisely due to the respect given to teaching staff that there is a higher requirement for university teaching staff to give more attention to students’ academic performance and their well-being on campus. This is unlike the situation in Malaysia and the UK (where this author was a student for 12 years) where university students are considered as adults. Chasing after students to submit assignments and giving offenders second chances are relatively new experience to me, a veteran of the higher education sector of over two decades!
正是由于对教师的尊重，高校教师更加需关注学生的学业成绩和校园生活。这与马来西亚和英国的情况不同（作者在英国读了12年书），那里的大学生被视为成年人。追着学生提交作业，给违规者第二次机会，对我这一个在高等教育界工作了二十多年的老手来说，还是一次相对新鲜的经历！

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They say “change is the norm” and it is true. Apart from death and taxes, nothing in life is certain. It is more so during this pandemic era.
This blog’s main author, Dr. Chow has taken up an appointment as a full time teaching staff at a government university in Guangdong Province, China since late February 2019. Hence the prolonged absence of new articles.  Dr. Chow plans to write about his life as an academic of a public Chinese institution of higher learning, his observations of life in his new home, Zhaoqing, Guangdong Province, teaching and learning and other musings.
As his academic duties take precedence, Dr. Chow’s contributions to this blog will inevitably be more sporadic than before.

The famous 仙女湖 – fairy’s lake at Zhaoqing City

Among the topics that Dr. Chow is preparing to write are:

1. It’s normal living without physical cash in China!
2. The new norm in teaching – online delivery
3. etc.

There are five main junctions along the USJ stretch of Persiaran Kewajipan which at most times are pretty busy. However, only two of these which are cross junctions have complete stop for all lanes when the traffic lights turn red. These are at the Persiaran Kewajipan- Persiaran Subang Permai junction (near Da Men Mall) and Persiaran Kewajipan-Jalan Damai / Jalan USJ 18/8 junctions.

For some reasons that this author could not comprehend, three major T-junctions along the USJ side of Persiaran Kewajipan  do not have complete stops for all lanes on Persiaran Kewajipan when the traffic lights on either direction on this major road turn red.

No total stop at the Persiaran Kewajipan-Persiaran Perpaduan junction (near Taipan LRT station)

Traffic on Persiaran Kewajipan travelling towards USJ 21 direction (blue arrow) need not stop at the Persiaran Perpaduan junction. This makes it very dangerous and difficult for Persiaran Perpaduan traffic (red arrow) turning right at this junction as they have to filter into the main flow on Persiaran Kewajipan, often making it very dangerous for the road users who want to turn into USJ Police station or even further down to filter to the left to get into Persiaran Mulia. This junction is perhaps the second most congested at peak hours in USJ (after the Kewajipan-Subang Permai junction). The present arrangement makes it very taxing on all road users converging at this junction.

No total stop at the Pesiaran Kewajipan-Persiaran Mulia junction (near Al-Falah mosque)

The next T-junction along Persiaran Kewajipan is the Kewajipan-Mulia junction opposite the Al-Falah moque.

At this T-junction, traffic on Persiaran Kewajipan heading towards Summit USJ direction (blue arrow) is not obliged to stop. This makes it very dangerous for traffic on Persiaran Mulia (red arrow) on green from the traffic lights to turn into Persiaran Kewajipan. This is most difficult for traffic intending to filter into the junction near the back entrance of Al-Falah mosque as well as for those wishing to turn into USJ 9 Business centre at Jalan USJ 9/5J further along Persiaran Kewajipan.

No total stop at  the Persiaran Kewajipan-Persiaran Tujuan junction

The last T-junction along Persiaran Kewajipan is when Persiaran Tujuan (the other major road of the township) meets Persiaran Kewajipan (at the intersection of USJ 9,  USJ 13 and USJ 14).

In this case traffic turning right at on green light (red arrow) will have to merge with non-stopping Persiaran Kewajipan traffic (blue arrow) coming from Summit /Da Men direction. Thus the right turning traffic has to squeeze over a relatively short distance from the right hand most lane to the extreme left if they intend to enter the USJ 14 via Jalan Mulia which is pretty busy especially in the evening during durian seasons as there are a few established stalls along this road.

Only Tujuan-Bakti T-junction is a no-total-stop on Persiaran Tujuan

If we take a look at the other major arterial road of USJ, Persiaran Tujuan, we will find that out of the 4 junctions (all being T-junctions), only the Persiaran Tujuan-Persiaran Bakti junction (at the intersection of USJ 9 / USJ 13 and USJ 11) is a not total stop junction.

Again for this Tujuan-Bakti junction, traffic from Persiaran Bakti will have to filter quickly into the extreme left lane if they are to turn left into Jalan Usaha to access USJ 17 & USJ 18 where this is a kind for shortcut for USJ resident to access the Elite highway. A complete stop for traffic on Persiaran Tujuan (heading towards Subang Jaya direction) at this T-junction will make it much safer for everyone crossing the Tujuan-Bakti T-junction.

Much safer if there is no not-stopping traffic at T-junctions

The other three T-junctions along Persiaran Tujuan in USJ, namely the Persiaran Tujuan-Persiaran Murni T-junction; the Persiaran Tujuan-Persiaran Perpaduan T-junction and the Persiaran Tujuan-Persiaran Setia T-junction all have complete stop (red icons) for traffic on Persiaran Tujuan when the traffic light is green for traffic at the respective corresponding T-junctions (blue arrows) . Aside from motocycles running through the red light, the flow of traffic filtering into Persiaran Tujuan at these three T-junctions are much smoother and safer.

Make all T-junctions “complete stops” at the traffic lights

It is the opinion of this author, a twenty three years resident of USJ that Majlis Perbandaran Subang Jaya (MPSJ) should seriously consider making all T-junctions at this township “complete stops” at the traffic lights. This may not solve the traffic congestion issue, especially at key areas of bottlenecks, it will certainly make it safer and perhaps even easier for road users turning into Persiaran Kewajipan in order to reach exits along these T-junctions.

This may sound old or stale, “they don’t make things last anymore” is the key theme of this article. It seems that durability of products is no longer a key consideration. Often an expensive piece of appliance is rendered worthless because of the lack of durability of its control system, often because it is very electronic-based. In some cases, the crucial electronic system though durable but the appliance is not functional because of the poor quality of the interface, i.e. the LED panel!

An airfyer that failed by its LED control

When I was working and living alone in Penang (Jan 2015 to late 2016) I bought a few electrical appliances to make my stay more pleasant. One of these was a Kqueen airfryer that I bought online (shipped from China). The decision to buy this was fully influenced by my wife’s (then) favourite kitchen gadget, a Philips airfryer. After I moved back to Subang Jaya, Selangor upon the completion of my stint helming a university college we decided to make the Kqueen airfryer as the main fryer reserving the Philips airfryer for bigger loads or cooking that required higher power.

Just over 2 years into its service, the LED panel of our KQueen airfyer just suddenly decided to go off completely. Without a control panel, and despite having all moving parts and heating parts fully functional, the KQueen airfyer was rendered utterly useless. Well RM450 (US$107) that this Kqueen airfryer only gave us utility for 2 years for RM225 (US$53.5) per year! The part that failed was the LED control panel. I often wonder why manufacturers often overlook the most important part of the design, if you can’t control the gadget it is as good as scrap. Why simple mechanical/electrical thermostat plus radial timer could not have been used instead. The over reliance on electronic control in household gadgets should be reviewed. This could have given a much longer lifespan to the gadget. This Kqueen airfyer was just sold as scrap, I guess it fetched around RM1.00 (US$0.24) today!

A malfunctioned shaver that came back to life!

I bought a Philips Aquatouch shaver just over three years ago. This was a shaver that can be used for wet shave, which means one can put on shaving foam and shaves with this shaver. But just about 8 months ago, after charging my Philips Aquatouch’s battery (well I charged it overnight and forgot to unplug it from the charger, but I think this shaver came with the ability to avoid overcharging), when I press the “start” button, it only worked for 2 seconds then stopped. I was having the impression that my RM275 (US$65.50) investment was heading to the scrap heap.

A search on the internet yielded a very informative Youtube video which showed two things: firstly, the shaver was indeed malfunctioned and, secondly that the repair process was more for those who are skilled in doing electronic repairs (which excluded my attempt!). Further, Philips authorized service centre has a price tag of RM20 (US$4.76) for inspection and RM60 (US$14.29) for repair workmanship where the cost of replacement parts would be extra. I was resigned to the fact that it would not be worthwhile to repair this shaver as the overall cost of inspection-workmanship-parts could be close to the price of a replacement shaver. I just left the shaver in the bedroom where the air-conditioning would often be switched on at night.

After about three months of lying idle, this shaver was picked up by me recently. The temptation to press the power/start button was too much and I did what I had been doing very often: to try to test if the shaver would run. And surprisingly, it stayed working for longer than 2 seconds. In fact it was working as well as before! The long period of lying in close to the path of the air conditioning’s air flow perhaps helped to dry the interior of the shaver out so that the electronics were no longer malfunctioning! I gained back the utility of my Philips Aquatouch shaver, but I refrained from putting it anyway near  “aqua” , i.e. wet shaving and only used it as a “dry” shaver now. I wonder why the manufacturer did not pay enough attention to ensure that the “aqua” functioning of this gadget could stand the test of times! Perhaps this was a case of the gadget being designed to fail after 3 years of use?

Kanken: A backpack that lasted 31 years!

I bought a Kanken backpack in late 1985 after seeing this brand being so popular when my parents, my younger brother and I was on a holiday tour to the Nordic countries. The only thing that I dislike about this bag was the signature badge. It looked too childish for my taste and I foolishly removed it without knowing that it was a reflective badge that conferred safety. It was not cheap. I recalled paying something like £20 (US$28.8) in 1985 for this bag. Its exterior was splash-proof and this feature lasted for at least 20 years!

Today this bag cost around US$80, if you want a “Real McCoy”.

Of course there are plenty of imitation Kanken backpacks in the market that costs a fraction of this. But the quality differential is very easily detectable.

In late May 2017, after close to 32 years of utility, the straps of my classic Kanken backpack finally started to literally break apart. Reluctantly, I had to say “goodbye” to this trusted old workhouse that had accompanied me to the work in a summer camp in the USA in 1986; daily usage when I was working on my Master’s and PhD;  my tours of the UK and Ireland and countless domestic holiday trips. Unlike my electrical items, at least the Kanken backpack were made (still being made) to last!

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How much (as a percentage of fund) would you guess it cost to transfer RMB 1,406 from Taiwan to Malaysia using the traditional banking services? In this article I share my expensive lesson on international fund transaction using traditional banks. A staggering 27.46% of my fund of RMB 1,406 was “taxed” by the intermediary. Both the sending bank (in Taiwan) & receiving bank (in Malaysia) said that there it was not possible to find out how the intermediary levy the charges!

Used a traditional route for international fund transfer

As my recent trip was sponsored, I was expecting reimbursement from the sponsor for the cost of my trip. To facilitate the process, the sponsoring university in China would pool our group’s reimbursements and let the organizer of the trip, Dr. Yan to do the individual distribution of the fund received.

There was just one issue for me: the organizer and all the rest of the members of our group are based in Taiwan with yours truly being the only one located in Malaysia. Nevertheless my modest claim (after deducting the RMB 500 loaned to me by Dr. Yan to alleviate my having left my wallet at home at the start of the trip!) was RMB 1,406 (about US$202). Dr. Yan’s office was resourceful enough to use one of his bank’s “transaction fee waiver” vouchers  in an attempt to keep the transaction fees down for me.

At Malaysia’s end, previous experience told me that MayBank (Malayan Banking Berhad) would only levy a charge of RM5 (US$1.19)  for the transaction. Of course it would have made from the spread when converting the currency into Malaysian ringgit.

Whopping 27.46% transaction fees!

Based on the exchange rate of RMB 0.59 to RM 1.00, after deducting transaction fees, I was expecting to receive at least RM 750. When the fund finally arrived at my bank, I had a big shock.

From the RMB 1,406 remitted by Dr. Yan’s office, only RM 597.70 equivalent to RMB 1,019.96 arrived at my MayBank account. The meant that a whopping RMB 386.04 or 27.46% of the original RMB 1,406 remitted was deducted as the transaction fees!

Both Taiwanese and Malaysian did not levy any transaction fees

I contacted Dr. Yan’s office and his people double checked with his bank in Taiwan to confirm that the amount transferred from Taiwan was indeed RMB 1,406. This was confirmed via the transaction slip sent to me from Taiwan. There was also no fees levied by the Taiwanese bank on the RMB 1,406.

Next, I went to my bank, MayBank to get the full details of this transfer. I was told that MayBank did not levy any fees on the transaction but the transaction report indicated that only RMB 1,019.96 was received at the Malaysian end. I was told by MayBank that they only processed the amount that was received, that is RMB 1,019.96 and it has no idea on what was the transaction fees levied by the intermediary.

I conveyed MayBank’s findings to Dr. Yan’s office which in turn also confronted their bank in Taiwan. The conclusion given by the Taiwan bank was that they had remitted RMB 1,406 and the differential must be the transaction fees (including the spreads for converting from RMB to various intermediary currencies before the final conversion to RM). To make matters more confusing, the Taiwanese bank said that it had no control over how much its intermediary would charge.

Traditional remitting equals to having no idea of the transaction cost

It then became clear to me that for traditional bank remittance from overseas, the customers really are at the mercy of the intermediaries. The remittance cost is not transparent. It thus makes this a very risky and expensive choice to remit money.  And both the sending and receiving banks will wash their hands off should a customer like me getting fleeced by the intermediary (27.46% is a huge amount to levy as a remittance fee).

Better to use remittance service provider that are transparent in their fees

MoneyGram

I made a check with MoneyGram’s website to see  if we were to transfer an equivalent of RMB 1,406 in US dollars (i.e, US$ 202) from Taiwan to Malaysia, with receiver paying the transaction fees what kind of scenario would happen.

As shown above, if we were to use MoneyGram, I would be getting at least RM 770.49 from the RMB 1,406 or US$ 202 that were to be remitted with a fees of only US$ 15 (or RM63 or RMB105).  Thus with a exchange rate of RMB 1.00 = RM 0.59, this means I would have received RMB 1,305.92. The overall remittance and conversion cost in this case would be around RMB 100.08 or just 7.12% of the amount transacted.

Western Union

A check with Western Union shows that for a similar amount in US$, the cost of transaction would be around US$10. But since Western Union also make from a spread on conversion, for US$192, at US$1 =  RM3.8539, I would only get RM739.95 or equivalent of RMB 1,254.15 Thus the overall remittance and conversion costs would actually be RMB 151.85. The total remittance cost would have been 10.80% of the amount remitted.

In both MoneyGram and Western Union cases, regardless of the total cost of the transfer of fund, the costs were pretty transparent. And even with the higher spread on currency conversion, Western Union would only have an overall cost of around 10.80% of the sum to be transferred. Of course the best choice would have been MoneyGram which has an overall cost of 7.12%.

Lesson Learned

1. Never use traditional banks for international remittance.
2. Zero “transaction fees” for international remittance is a misnomer. There is a spread when currencies are converted at the sending and receiving ends. This is how banks make their money!
3. Intermediaries for traditional bank remittance (aside from MoneyGrams and Western Union) do take big cuts out of your total amount to be transferred overseas!
4. Make sure the remittance service gives you a transparent total fees before committing to any overseas remittance.

In my case, since both Dr. Yan and I have WeChat China Wallet, it would have been better that we had explored this route where virtually there would be no cost of transaction. The only problems are: Dr. Yan needs to load his WeChat China Wallet with sufficient funds and at my end, I could only spend the amount in my WeChat China Wallet in China!