Tag: learning

Teaching online — a piece of cake? 教网课 —易如反掌？

Someone who obviously never taught a single class commented that “teaching online is easy”. How wrong this person is? Check out my sharing!

It is definitely not a piece of cake to teach online! I know. This is because I had taught for over thirty months online.

网上教学绝对不是一件轻而易举的事！ 为何我有此见解？这是因为我在网上教了三十多个月。

I was (until the end of July 2022) engaged as a full time teaching staff of Zhaoqing University, Guangdong Province, China (ZQU). I came home for a short winter break in January 2020, well “Mr. COVID-19” messed up a lot of lives and things, including my return from Malaysia to teach in China! In this rather long post I try to share my own experiences and learning in conducting delivery of classes online (and supervision of students’ graduation thesis work remotely in Part 2). 

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。
Dingtalk 钉钉 - one of the most versatile online broadcast/teaching platforms
QQ Chat app, one of the most popular chatting app for youngsters in China
Tsinghua University's Rain Classroom
WeChat for Web

  

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。

Leaderboard of Rain Classroom
At the end of each class, the leaderboard would be posted in the group chat showing the top 3 scorers of the in-class quiz along with a link to the lecture slides. 在每节课结束时，我会将领导板贴在小组聊天中，显示课堂测验的前3名得分者，以及与讲课幻灯片的链接

I therefore set out to add at least four but mostly 5 – 6 in-class quiz questions in every lecture. I made all these quiz questions carry marks towards the “class participation and usual grade” (班上互动和平时成绩）segment of the final result. To excite the students a bit more I even, for some of my classes, put up “hong bao – 红包” – a small red-packet of e-money for the top scorers for every session. Rain Classroom would generate these data at the end of each class with a chart showing who were the top three scorers of a session. I would post this data to our DingTalk chat group at the end of each lecture.

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）。
Dingtalk-mobile view of online class
Mobile Phone view of my online class: I had to constantly monitor the interaction section in order to respond to students’ in-class communication.从手机上检查我的在线课堂：为了回应学生的课堂交流，我不得不不断地以手机监控钉钉互动部分。

So there you are, I had to monitor at least six different screens for sound and video! Most were things that a person delivering face-to-face lectures would not have to worry about! All these constant (and at times simultaneous) monitoring and keeping alert were very taxing on my energy to say the least.

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。

Broken wrist
April 25, 2019 was a bleak day, Dr. Chow YN broke his right wrist in a fall. That prompted him to think of ways to minimize handling of physical papers – so online assignment submission was adopted! 2019年4月25日是一个倒霉的日子，周永能博士在一次摔倒中摔断了右手腕。这促使他想办法尽量减少对实物论文的处理——所以采用了在线作业提交！

At that time my application of online submission initially was a bit crude (students emailed their lab reports shot on mobile cameras to me for grading). But I soon learned, to my great advantage later on, to use wen-juan-wang问卷网 （an online survey platform that could handle marking/collecting/compilation of data/upload of documents etc.) coupled with QQ documents to lay out readings and other assignment content/questions to run my online assessment system rather efficiently and effectively. 

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。

Assignment link
QQ docs sharing feature was often used to share assignment content/reading. In this case, after reading the content, students were to proceed to Wen-Juan-Wang to answer the assignment questions. A link was provided for checking the submission status too. QQ文档共享功能经常用于共享作业内容/阅读。在这种情况下，在阅读完内容后，学生将继续到问卷网回答指定的问题。我还提供了一个链接，让学生用于检查提交状态。

Students could attempt quizzes online that would often be graded by the system immediately so that they could re-attempt (I usually set a maximum of 3 attempts) to improve their grades. For some assignments, students would upload their papers onto the platform where I would download these papers, grade them (with comments) and return these papers to students (via a selection of online storage platforms in China such as Tencent Drive, Baidu Cloud, Aliyun Drive) with my feedback, comments and manual grading. For group assignments, I would just post the graded papers on DingTalk chat group for students to download.

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]
Teaching evaluation Jul2022
“The proof the pudding is in the eating”. Feedback from students in Jul 2022 largely showed that most didn’t feel disadvantaged by taking my online classes. 有句英语术语：“布丁的好坏在于吃的过程”。2022年7月学生的反馈主要表明，大多数学生认为他们并没有因为上了我的在线课程而感到处于劣势。

The teaching evaluation exercises towards the end of each semester was taken very seriously at ZQU. While I was never the “top teacher”, nevertheless I was never in “danger” of being the lowest scorer. If you could read Chinese, you would notice that the bulk of my students in the July 2022 session who responded were giving my online teaching positive reviews. That was the most satisfying outcome for an academic, I could not have asked for more! I guess those students who like to learn would have found my online classes beneficial while those on the “muddle along” (得过且过）mode would have been very intimidated by my online delivery style. 

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！

Every mug tells a story, especially after 25 years of use!

[caption id="attachment_4136" align="aligncenter" width="1017"] “The Boss” mug that served 25 years[/caption]

A simple mug that had seen usage for 25 years helps to tell a story about time management and prioritizing.

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!

Hacking the learning of English – my story

When I was fourteen, Mr John Lee, my tuition teacher told me that my command of English was that of a five-year old! Apart from a dented ego, I had to come to terms that either I learn to improve my command of English or sink!

Commentary (Mar 14, 2017)

I wrote and published this article in November 2015 in Han Chiang News. I think the inspiration for this article came from a conversation I had with my wife a few weeks earlier. We were reminiscing our time at our tuition teacher, Mr. John Lee’s class and how bad my command of English was back in 1975 and we also wondered if we would be husband and wife if not for Mr. Lee’s tuition class!

My wife and I first got to know each other (she was aged thirteen, I was fourteen) at Mr. John Lee’s tuition class. Mr. Lee is a family friend as well as my father’s neighbour. I did not feel comfortable speaking to my future wife back in 1975, not because I was shy, but because I was not confident of my command of spoken English.

There are many ways that one can improve on one’s command of English. Different people will have different level of success using one method of learning English or another. For me, reading English novels was the main component of my success formula. But there is another crucial success factor which I had omitted in the original article!

Along with the reading that I had to carry out, Mr. Lee also compelled me to speak English in his class. And for many, including this author in 1975, the biggest impedance to learning English is the feeling of embarrassment and inadequacy when one has to converse in English. By being “forced” to speak to my fellow tuition class mates and answer questions in English in Mr. Lee’s class, I had inadvertently (but intentionally on Mr. Lee’s part!) overcome my lack of confidence in speaking English. My feeling of inadequacy vanished after a couple of weeks too. Perhaps some of my former colleagues and former students who have been “forced” to speak English with me now know the reason for my demand. I was just taking a leaf from Mr. John Lee’s tried and tested method!

My late mother told me that I was a talkative toddler. My mother-tongue was Cantonese which I picked up from my paternal grandfather. I soon learned to understand a bit of Hakka due mainly to my late mother being a Hakka herself (she would at times speak Hakka to my siblings and I). My parents would also speak in English when we were young every time they had things to discuss that they did not want us to know. Thus I took it upon myself (I think I was about four) to learn the keywords, “going out”, “cinema”, “the kids” etc. for obvious reasons.

Until I went to kindergarten at the age of four, my playmates were mainly Indian kids who came from the then Lembaga Letrik Negara (now TNB) staff quarters just a street away from my father’s house. I remember having a rudimentary vocabulary of Tamil back then, of course now all I remember are the profanities! Learning languages was not so difficult, so I thought!

I went to SRJK Sam Tet (a Chinese mission school in Ipoh) for my primary years and I did pretty well and did not shame my late father who was a Chinese primary school’s deputy headmaster, staying in the “A” (top) class all the way. But as I entered “Remove Class” in SMJK Sam Tet (back then all SRJK students had to spend one extra year before we were allowed into Form 1 of secondary schools) I realised that I could not understand my teachers that well. Although my cohort was the pioneer in having all subjects (except for English and Chinese) taught in Bahasa Malaysia (BM), most of our teachers were in fact not comfortable in delivering their lessons in BM and resorted to using English to explain complicated concepts to us, especially in integrated science.

As my lack of proficiency in English was shared by most of my classmates, it did not ring an alarm bell about my poor command of English at all. Anyway, my classmates and I were learning to improve on our English proficiency collectively and hence I did not have anyone besides my peers at school to benchmark against. It was not till I completed Form 1 that I was told by my childhood friend and neighbour, Sek Fatt who was studying in an “English” secondary school that my command of English was really below par. Sek Fatt referred me to Mr John Lee, a secondary school teacher who used to live on the same street as us. Luckily for me Mr Lee took me into his small tuition class at his home a few kilometers away.

Mr Lee made me read an English novel and a BM novel every month. As my command of BM was average, I did not have much of an issue reading BM novels. Trying to read an English novel a month was a different matter.

Mr Lee loaned me a few of his son’s collection of Enid Blyton books. But what he said to me was devastating; I was to start with reading Enid Blyton books for 5-year olds! At that time (aged 14), I was already reading adult novels in Chinese and BM!

“This is your current level of English, but you will soon move on to something more reflective of your age,” said Mr Lee. Apart from a dented ego, I had to come to accept that my command of English was that of a 5-year-old!

Mr Lee made us write a review of every book we had read, giving us a format that he expected us to adhere to so that he could gauge our progress.

“Don’t even think of cheating by not reading the entire book,” said Mr Lee while pointing at his son who was about 3 years my junior. He added: “Mr Bookworm there has read and remembers the story of every book, he will tell me if you have cheated!”

Under Mr Lee’s guidance, I soon, as he promised, “graduated” from Enid Blyton’s novels for 5-year-olds to those for early teens. By the time I completed Form 2, I was reading Agatha Christie’s novels. By Form 3, I moved on to a wider range of novels, including the adult oriented Harold Robbins!

At secondary school, we were taught very well by Mr Wong Ming Fah (who was the receipiant of 2016 Sim Mow Yu’s Teacher Award) to memorise the 12 tenses in English. Mr Wong was very brutal in the way he marked our homework, giving us F9 (failed) grade for the slightest of grammatical error.  Mr. Wong did not have much time to teach us how to write stories but only to make sure that we “watch our grammar.” By not reading novels, one will not be able to learn the different styles of writing and have a chance to improve on one’s vocabulary.

I tried very hard to make use of the new vocabulary and writing styles that I had learned and of course at times I “forgot” my grammar, often scoring F9 grades from Mr Wong. Nevertheless, the F9 grades did not put out my desire to improve, rather they made me more resolute to prove to myself that I could make it by reading even more ferociously. In the 1978 Sijil Rendah Pelajaran examination (a public examination taken by those in Form 3), I was one of only three candidates in my school who scored an “A1” (equivalent to A+ of today) in English.

I knew back in 1978 that I had “hacked” the learning of English and carried on reading English novels whenever I can ever since. The Chinese saying, “Xue Wu Zhi Jing” （学无止境）(one’s quest for knowledge is boundaryless) is something I have adopted when it comes to the learning of English and I am still learning!

How much do you know about “Back to the future”?

Are you into sci-fi? Have you watched “Back to the future”? How much do you remember about the plot? Take the challenge, complete this quiz! Watch this space for the answer in the next posting. Enjoy!

I had to take a day trip to Penang by semi-luxury express bus recently from my home in Subang Jaya near Kuala Lumpur which was five hours each way. The bus was installed with media entertainment akin to what your can find on airliners. After exhausting the current/latest hits of movies on offer, I decided to rewatch the classic 1985 sci-fi, “Back to the future” (BTTF).

The first time I partially watched BTTF was in 1986 when I worked in a summer camp tucked in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania, USA as the baker’s assistant. But, as the film was shown to the campers, naturally workers like me who had to bake some cookies for the campers did not get to watch the entire film.

It was sometimes in the late 1980s when I was working on my doctoral studies in Belfast that I had the chance to fully watch this action-packed, cleverly-plotted sci-fi aired on one of the TV channels. This film was the first of a series of 3 that was produced and I watched them all. The best, as far as I am concern is still the first BTTF.

I found this sci-fi one of the best scripted shows I have ever watched. If you watch all 3 films in the BTTF series, you will be impressed by the way all the plots seem to be seamlessly weaved and intertwined together.

In this festive season, I think I should put up a small quiz for my readers on BTTF. I promise to publish the answers in my next posting! Enjoy the challenge!

(NO CHEATING, Go watch the movie, do not Google these questions!)

Quiz

  1. What is the name of the band engaged to play in the Enchantment Under The Sea dance in Marty’s school in 1955? _________________.
  2. Doc Emmet Brown of the 1950s did not believe that Ronald Regan was the President in 1985. Who did he mention as (a)  the Vice President?  __________________  ? (b) The Secretary of the Treasury _____________?
  3. When Marty bumped into his dad, George McFly of the 1955 at Lou’s Cafe for the first time, what did George order?   _____________________________.
  4. Why band members could not get Marty out of their car boot/trunk after Biff Tannen pushed Marty inside it? _________________________________________.
  5. What did Lorraine Baines (Marty’s “future” mother) say when she kissed Marty for the first time? ___________________________________.
  6. What was written on Marty’s sister T-shirt in the photograph of the three McFly siblings?  ______________________________.
  7. The band leader of called someone after hearing Marty McFly play “”Johnny B. Goode”. Who did he call? What was his relationship to this person? (a) ____________;  (b) ___________.
  8. What mischief did Marty get into when he was eight years old? _____________________.
  9. From 1955, what date and time that Marty originally set in the DeLorean car to travelled back to the future?  ____________________________________________.
  10. What are the names of Marty’s elder siblings?  (a) ______________ &   (b)  ____________.
  11. What are the names of Marty’s uncles and aunts?  (a)_____________; (b) ______________;  (c)___________________;  (d) _____________________________.
  12. What colour was Marty’s underpant when he time travelled back to 1955?  ______________.
  13. What were the parameters that the DeLorean car must meet before Marty could get back to 1985? (a) ____________;  (b) ______________; (c) ____________________.
  14. What was the name of the shop that Marty parked Doc Brown’s car just before he was supposed travel back to the future in the DeLorean car?  __________________________.
  15. When Marty finally managed to travel back to 1985, he found that things had changed. What was the name of the book that his father just published? _________________________.
  16. What was the name of the motel in the main street of Hill Valley?  ____________________.
  17. What was the actual date and time that Marty finally managed to return to the future?
    __________________________.

[The feature image is a combo sourced from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_to_the_Future#mediaviewer/File:Back_to_the_Future.jpg
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/91mRbaBaGML._SL1500_.jpg
https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcS1xcMwC7aO66BbFbqi7iNZDqIWnUDsAMN22E5tQbnZ1oc5OIoT]

Low completion: a killer of MOOCs?

The New York Times reported recently that the University of Texas System may be having second thoughts about its foray into the realm of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC).

There are three major concerns that were raised:

  1. The completion rate of MOOCs offered has been languishing between one to 13 %;
  2. Majority of the learners were not from the home state;
  3. Of those few learners who have completed, the bulk of them were people who have already college education.

I think the decision makers need to think strategically about the objectives for their institutions being involved in MOOC.

Low completion rate: look at the total number of learners that passed

The nature of MOOC needs to be understood and we need to avoid comparing apples with oranges. MOOCs, unlike regular on-campus or traditional online courses are “Opened” in its enrollment. This means that anyone with the basic internet access will be able to enroll and un-enroll as they please. Many who enrolled may also choose (for whatever reason(s)) not to be active in the MOOC they have signed up for. Thus if we measure the completion rate of MOOCs based on the number of people signing up we will get a very low figure. If the completion rate is computed from the number of people who have “attended” at least 50% of the online courseware, I think this will be a better and fairer measurement of the completion rate. After all in traditional bricks and mortar setting, you do not count the number of students based on the number who applied to take the course but the number who have paid. Thus a even closer analogy for MOOC should be the number of learners who intended to complete the MOOC versus the actual number who passed. Professor Owen Youngman of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism provided a great insight into this issue in following the completion of the first run of his highly successful MOOC, “Understanding media by understanding Google“.

Analysis of passing rates of Owen Youngman’s maiden MOOC, “Understanding media by understanding Google” in Nov 2013. (Image source: http://qz.com/149406/how-two-thirds-of-my-students-never-showed-up-but-half-of-them-passed/)

In Youngman’s maiden foray into MOOC, which incidentally I was one of the 1,196 successful learners, if we measure the passing rate as the number of learner that pass versus the number who complete their homework (qualifying them to take the final examination), the passing rate was actually 50.1% instead of the 2.2% that the conventional calculation would provide. The fact that should be remembered is not the passing rate but the number of people who have successfully passing the MOOC, which in this case, at 1,196 is a great achievement by Youngman’s team in whichever way you measure it.

 Majority of learners are not from the home state: does this matter?

People who evaluate MOOCs must bear in mind that MOOCs are, as the word “Massive” indicates, huge in number. While those who have approved the investments would want to see benefits shown for the institutions’ home state, these cannot be measured just on the number of “home” state learners who have enrolled or passed. MOOCs are meant for institutions to showcase their academic delivery expertise to not only those learners who come on campus but to the world at large. It should be catching learners in the “long tail” of the global learning community. It is meant to reach out to those who, under normal circumstances, never have the chance to attend on-campus courses due to many circumstances (financial, time or career constraints). If a course is meant to benefit only home state’s learners, then MOOC may be a wrong platform for it. Conventional e-learning delivery via learning management systems such as Moodle or BlackBoard would have been better. Thus the expectations of the decision makers and funding authorities must be realistic. MOOCs can be used to as a very effective means to project the brand of an institution, especially to the “long tail” end of the learner’s domain. Those who may not have heard of or know about your institution will, after taking a good MOOC from your institution, be impressed by the brand and which will have a positive effect when these people (or their offspring) are looking for a good college education. Thus I think many of the institutions on the MOOC trails are thinking along the same line.

In the time of great competition for the overseas students’ attention, the colleges with a good spread of MOOCs will gain reputationally in leaps and bounce to put them in a better position in the mind of these overseas students. The proof of the pudding is in its eating, so if a college’s MOOC is well delivered and the learners gain great knowledge, it gives those wishing (and thus may have the means) to study on campus a greater confidence to apply. The benefits to the home state will be in attracting good overseas students to their on-campus or traditionally delivered online courses. This is the under-valued payoff for MOOCs. So does it still matter if the bulk of an MOOC’s learners are not from the home state? I do not think so.

The bulk of the learners scoring a pass have college education: why?

If the bulk of an MOOC’s successful learners are those with some college education or higher, it could mean that the level of this particular MOOC is pitched at senior undergraduate or even graduate levels. It is not the fault of the concept of MOOC. In fact it is an issue of academic standard not the delivery system of concept. Thus if the MOOC is intended to attract mainly high school graduates or freshmen level students, it should have been designed as such. Sometimes the delivery of a course and its learning materials may both appear to be at undergraduate level, but when the assessment system is converted to MOOC level, it may appear too difficult (with lots of discussions, short essays type of questions and complex multiple choice questions) for freshmen but it would have been fine for those who have had degree level education.

To take MOOC successfully requires one to be very disciplined. This may also be one of the reasons that some of these MOOCs show a low number of freshmen learners who passed. Adult learners are much more motivated and are usually more focused. Full-time students may also have a full load of classes already and thus may be spreading themselves too thinly.

One other aspect of MOOCs that those funding authorities and decision makers must take into consideration is the “flipped classroom” concept that MOOC confers. In this context, on-campus students are directed to view the MOOC lectures prior to coming to class. In every class, instead of the instructor repeating the content covered in the MOOC’s video lectures, will use the contact hours to discuss, to further explain and to engage the students accordingly. I have attended one such MOOC by Stanford University (“Technology Entrepreneurship 1) where “flipped classroom” was reported by Assistant Professor Chuck Eesley to have benefited his on-campus students. In this case the class was run about the same time for both the MOOC and on-campus learners. So any decision on the effectiveness and benefits of MOOCs should not be evaluated in isolation. The number of people benefiting from an MOOC could be substantially more than the first run of an MOOC.

I think the disruptive effects of MOOCs to academic institutions have surely been over-exaggerated.  This could be due to the lack of an holistic understanding of what MOOC can do and ignorant of the interaction between MOOCs and conventional delivery of learning.

___________________________________________

Dr. Chow YN is a “veteran” MOOC learner. He has already completed over 20 MOOCs and is currently pursuing two more. Dr. Chow provides consultancy in education management and technology commercialization. He also provides regular advising to parents and students seeking an unbiased advice on tertiary education.

[polldaddy poll=8391706]

The trouble with input-centric education system

Input-centric education decisions have been hampering the advance of Malaysian learners.

The move in September 2014 by the Malaysian Ministry of Education to disallow private higher education institutions (PHEI) to use forecast results for the national high school examination, Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM) as a provisional entrance qualification for high school graduates to enter college caused a big row.

The key justification cited by the power that be was that there were abuses by PHEIs and students who did not score the required SPM grades (5 credits for Foundation Studies and 3 credits for diploma, along with specific requirements such as credit in Mathematics etc.) were found to be allowed to continue their studies by some institutions. What was never mentioned in fact was the statistics of such non compliance and what was done to these affected students and PHEIs.

In my column in the first edition of Focusweek (October 17, 2014) I highlighted the issue of Malaysia’s obsession with inputs in all education policies and neglected to evaluate learners’ output, that is, what they have learned and can applied in policy decisions.

Using input-centric policy to be the sole deciding factor on learners’ suitability to be admitted to college is just but one of the idiosyncrasies of Malaysia’s education system. In this system, there is no provision for learners who marginally missed a cutting point for admission into college to have the opportunity for a “second” chance in proving their academic ability. While I was working for Pearson plc as its Regional Quality Manager, I was exposed to the concept of the “Challenge Route” practised by UK’s university for its very popular MBA programme. Anyone, regardless of their academic credentials, if he or she wishes, is given the chance to study for the MBA. Those who did not have the prescribed academic credentials would be given the opportunity to pass three of the 9 required modules as a condition for acceptance. The “Challenge Route” measures the output of these learners. The idea is, if anyone could pass these three MBA modules demonstrate that they have acquired the core knowledge to undertake the remainder of their studies. I think this is a better way to foster a learning culture and pulling down barriers to academic attainment for many people.

Another area I covered in my column is the other grouses of the PHIEs: the insistence of the approving and accreditation authorities on strictly prescribing the input-centric policy of the teaching staff must have a qualification higher than the level of the class that they are teaching. This doctrine of education policy shows that those policy designers really could not tell the difference between academic qualifications, teaching abilities and the value of industrial experience. The policy, at one stroke disallows the great contributions of master craftsmen, artists and designers from imparting their great skills, experiences and insights to younger generations of learners.

Having a PhD does not make one a great teacher. In fact when I started my career in Malaysia’s academia after my postdoctoral stint in Singapore, I did not have any training to be a lecturer. The only teaching I had done was when I served as a demonstrator in laboratory classes and later tutor for undergraduate students. I think the same goes for many PhD holders. People like me, learned quickly on the job and observed how experienced lecturers teach and emulated them.

In 1979 when I was studying for my G.C.E “O” levels at South Shields Marine and Technical College, UK, we had a very good pure mathematics lecturer by the name of Morris Gowland. Gowland did not have a degree. He went to a teacher training school. Yet, compared to other pure mathematics lecturers with Master’s and PhDs, Gowland was far superior in his teaching skills. One look at a struggling student’s work on a pure mathematics question, Gowland would say, “There, you have miscalculated this step,”  As a results, most of us, 4 Malaysians and 5 Hong Kongers passed our mathematics with flying colours. On the other hand, when we were working on our G.C. E. “A” levels, our head of Department Dr. Croucher who holds a PhD in nuclear physics was struggling to teach us nuclear physics in our Physics class. Thus measuring a person’s teaching ability by solely judging if his/her has a degree, Master’s or PhDs is like measuring the size of one’s waist when buying shoes. Thus solely measuring the input (in this case the kind of qualification a teaching staff has) to determine a person’s suitability to teach is a very inaccurate way to reach a crucial decision. It is much better to have an evaluation of a teaching stuff “live” teaching ability rather than his/her having an academic qualification a level higher than the class he/she is teaching as the only gauge. Sadly this is what happens in practice in Malaysian PHEIs.

So why should we be alarmed every year when world university ranking by various systems are published with Malaysian institutions either languishing at the rear end or being “no shows” on the list.

We are not tapping into the vast expertise of our own people. Who would be best to teach business subjects especially entrepreneurships (even as guest lecturers for a few sessions each) than the captains of the respective industries? Yet unless these high flyers have the requisite academic credentials (at Master’s level at least!), the PHEIs would not be allowed to engage them. What a waste of talents! What a loss to the younger learners in Malaysia!

As I  said in my column, unless we as Malaysians break free from our shackles of input-centric mentality, we will always be chasing the tail wind of our competitors.

[polldaddy poll=8380792]

Knowledge: use it or risk losing it

No matter how much of an expert you are in an area, if you do not make use of the knowledge and skills acquired for a prolong period of time, sooner or later, as I had discovered about my knowledge of interpreting statistical analysis, you will find that you have lost these skills.

The best way to re-gain your knowledge is in re-learning and using this knowledge. You may, as I did, not only regain your old skills but pick up new skills (in using PSPP) as well!

[show_post_categories show=”category” hyperlink=”yes”]

[show_post_categories show=”tag” hyperlink=”yes”]

In late September 2014 I was chatting with a former colleague, WC who is a young chap working on his MBA project. Our Facebook conversation revolved around WC’s studies which led to his asking me to help him with the statistical analysis of his MBA project which I consented.

One thing I knew I would not be any better than WC. That is the use of the statistical package SPSS to do the number crunching. I have never used SPSS in my life. When I was a doctoral student back in the late 1980s, we had a rudimentary statistical analysis software that ran from the PC but for “serious” number crunching, we would need to key in the raw data into the minicomputer, the VAX.

In the world of the blind, the guy with one-eye is the king!

It was the early days of the PC era and we just saw these funny looking “typewriters” in the university library. It was the IBM XT personal computer, with 5 and a quarter inch magnetic disk drive. Ever the inquisitive soul that I was, through trials and many errors (including many attempts to learn how to save my work!) I managed to learn enough to use the PC for word processing and later data capturing using Lotus 1-2-3. By then more PC would be made available including one in my department. With some reading from a guidebook (that was the period before the era of Internet) I managed to learn how to export data from Lotus 1-2-3 delimited by commas which the VAX could understand. I no longer had to spend hours at the VAX terminal (and having to queue for it) but to do my raw data transcribing using the PC’s spreadsheet programme. When it came to analyzing these data, it would be just a matter of minutes for me to load in the pre-crunched raw data and obtain my statistical analysis within a few minutes. In the world of the “PC semi-literates” I was the “king” of the faculty. Even the computer technicians did not know how to export Lotus 1-2-3 data in comma-delimited text file and they referred many fellow researchers to me.

I was a sought after person for a while! Analysis of variance, T-test, Chi-square etc which I learned as an undergraduate in 1982 was something I understood well throughout my Master’s and doctoral studies. I even helped many fellow postgraduate students in analysing their research data. I also shared my knowledge with some of these guys who in turn were able to pass this skill along to others.

Learning to use PSPP, SPSS’s Open Source equivalent

Fast forward 25 years, when I thought of helping WC, I realised that learning to use PC-based statistical analytical software like SPSS would not be difficult. In fact I found an Open Source version called PSPP that works very well under my Linux-Ubuntu operated 7-years-old hand-me-down laptop from my son.

I used about 2 days to learn how to use PSPP and by the third day, I had familiarized myself enough of the basics to be able to import raw data from WC. I was also able to carry out most of the required statistical analysis using PSPP.

Losing knowledge that’s not used for a long time

However when I tried to make sense of the analysis churned out by PSPP, I suddenly realised that, after over 20 years of not using my core statistical analysis knowledge, I had to relearn how to interpret these results. My previous career as a commercial research scientist in Singapore in the early to mid 1990s did not necessitate the use of much in terms of statistical analysis. We were interested in finding out if a particular treatment work in multiplying good quality plants inside our test-tubes. We would have to move on without much resources to carry out statistically verifiable experiments on these studies. We were worried about the bottom-line. I was not allowed to publish any proprietary research work which had commercial implications. Thus for 20 odd years, I did not have the chance to use my knowledge of statistical analysis, hence my “losing” much of my former flair in this area!

Luckily, together with WC (plus the help of Google Search), I was able to regain the bulk of my knowledge in this area.  WC was happy with the discussion we had which I hope will lead to his getting a good grade for his MBA project. [footnote: WC passed his MBA shortly after this article was written]

Key lessons learned

There are two key take home lessons from this story:

  1. No matter how much of an expert you are in an area, if you do not make use of the knowledge and skills acquired for a prolong period of time, sooner or later, as I had discovered about my knowledge of interpreting statistical analysis, you will find that you have lost these skills.
  2. “Old dog” (a.k.a. yours truly) can still learn new tricks. In my case, I learned as much from WC as he did from me during our long discussion on how he should be analyzing his MBA project data and how he could interpret the statistical analysis.

The best way to re-gain your knowledge is in re-learning and using this knowledge. You may, as I did, not only regain your old skills but pick up new skills (in using PSPP) as well!

How to pass every exam that you take

In the previous article, I covered the importance for learners to know the syllabus of each subject that they are taking in what I termed “knowing your enemy” to achieve “smart learning”. This article digs deeper into knowing your other enemy, the dreaded examination. I have passed every single academic examination in my long study career at university of eight and a half year and hence have the “formula” to share.

In the academic settings, even if you know your “enemy” well and have all the facts and figures of the subject, you are still not there yet – the “last mile” is how you translate this knowledge into marks. Examination is perhaps better associated as the “enemy” by most learners. The key to conquering your examination blues lies in how you can maximise your mark scoring potential with the knowledge that you have attained.

There is not much in terms of examination taking technique to multiple choice questions. You have to be sure of the marking format, whether marks are taken off for wrong answers. Aside from this, you just have to be careful that you shade the correct answers for each question and put a mark on the question paper to tell you that you have answered the question. All multiple choice paper will be very time constrained, so your “thinking time” per question is very limited. You just have to answer as many questions as possible. Move on to the next question if you are stuck (making a notation on the question paper so that you can come back to this later if time permits). If there is “no penalty” for wrong answers, then if you are unsure of the correct answer, just “guess” and move on. If there is a “penalty” for wrong answers, you will be best to leave any questions that you have doubt unanswered and concentrate on those that you are confident of answering correctly. You need to read and understand all the choices offered in each question and do your best to spot any “trick” questions. I must admit, multiple choice question is not my favourite form of assessment whether as a student or an examiner. For Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC), multiple choice question is the format used extensively. In the case of MOOC, a great many variations of the classic “one correct answer” multiple choice question have evolved. These include having learners choose more than one answers (and scoring both the chosen and unchosen answers), thus making the choice by learners a lot more complicated.

For essay type of questions, you will likely be given ample time to write your answers. There will usually be some choices, such as you need to answer 4 out of 6 questions etc. You should act like an investor of stock and shares: evaluate each and every question and figure out how many marks you will likely to score for each question before making your choice. But before that, try to read and understand in detail what each of the questions are asking. Jot down in point form the relevant answers. If you have done your studying well, you probably would have constructed some mind maps or concept maps while revising. Try to draw these for your answers. Label each concept map with the question number. Always ask for an extra examination answer booklet and use this to jot down the answers in point form together with your mind maps and concept maps, this will be your answer plan. Do not forget to fill in the candidate details as required on this answer booklet. When you have completed the answer plan for all the questions that you can answer, you should then proceed to evaluate how well you are likely to score mark for each question and decide on your choices. Only then should you begin to write according to the answer plan. If you are running out of time and you have one or two questions to complete, you can make use of the relevant section of your answer plan and submit these as your answers (crossing out those that you have already completed). This way you are extending your chances to score marks. Examiners are trained to look out for ways to understand if a candidate has provided relevant answers to a question. Even if your answer is in point form and with a mind map, it will still be acceptable and you can salvage a good portion of the marks. You are in fact “maximising” your marks by doing so rather than having no answers for these questions.

The choice of questions is also a key consideration. Given equal potential to score, I always choose questions that are long and avoid one-liner questions if possible. The logic is simple. If a question is a one-liner, it will usually be very broad-based. There is little in the form of clues for you to pinpoint what the examiner needs to see for you to score. For multi-paragraph questions, you will have a clear indication of what the question entails and it is very unlikely that your answer will go off in a tangent. I will also choose to answer questions on topics that I know are not so popular (a knowledge of this gained during lectures and during discussions with fellow coursemates). This is a strategy that will work if you can answer questions in the “unpopular” topics well. The rationale is simple, the examiner will be reading a great many answers on “popular” topics and thus has a lot more cases to compare. If you are offering answers to “unpopular” questions, it will be something different, a “breath of fresh air” and you stand a better chance of impressing the examiner.

Another examination technique that has been used but with varying results is the spotting of questions. This involves studying the trend in the topics examined in past year questions and using the statistics along with the syllabus to home in on topics that are likely to be featured in the examination. This is a very dangerous strategy. Unless you are like my applied mathematics lecturer in GCE “A” levels who has years of experience teaching and “spotting” questions, your payoff may not be good. I faced the exact dilemma during my first year at university. In the early 1980s, my university did not practice the provision of a syllabus for each subject. A topic might warrant only a two minutes mention in class and yet when it came to the examination, we would be expected to write a long essay on the very topic. Hence we have one crucial “enemy” that we would have trouble defeating. Animal physiology was a subject taught by a team of 8 veterinary researchers who were very generous in giving us printed notes. The trouble was, every one of these lecturers gave us copious amount of notes and extra reading with the effect that students did not know what was crucial. I teamed up with my college mate and analysed 5 years’ worth of past year questions to limit the notes that we had to study (about 2 rims of paper in thickness) to something more manageable. On the day of the examination both of us were stunned – of the eight essay questions (in which we were to choose five), we spotted only two and a half questions. We did not take into consideration that my university’s system dictated that every three years there should be a change of external examiner for every subject. We had a new external examiner that year who changed the way examination questions were to be composed and the topics that were to be examined. I scraped through but sadly my study buddy did not.

Open book examination seems to be an “easy” option at first glance but in fact is the most difficult for learners to score well. The questions that come with open book examination sometimes give you no clue as to what are the appropriate points to be included in your answer. These questions also tend to be more complicated and include a lot of application of the knowledge of the examinees. The hardest part for some learner in this type of assessment is knowing what to include and what to exclude from the answer. The chances of mis-reading the questions are very high. Even the best student could be floored by an open book examination as it did one of my top performing engineering students in a project management subject some years back.

I hope the sharing of my “formula” for “smart examination taking” would help adult learners in conquering their examination blues and help to ease the burden for those who are resuming their studies. The same “formula” will also work for young learners. So far I have not covered any tips on doing desk research and writing good assignments, this is a topic for another article.

This is a revision of the original article submitted to Focus Malaysia that was published in August 2013 under Dr. Chow’s moniker of “Plantcloner”. Dr. Chow provides education management consultancy and technology commercialization advisory as a principal consultant of MyGreenCircle.

Smart learning to conquer exam blues

I studied over eight years at university which is much longer  than most people. As a result I am often being introduced by former schoolmates and college mates as “he who likes to study” to their friends, offsprings and spouses.  Naturally, I do get lots of requests from every corner for advice on “how to study”.   Aside from having the credential of having been a “veteran university student”, I asked myself what do I have to offer about learning and conquering examination blues. It then dawn on to me that I had passed every major academic examinations so far at first sittings. I even passed my motorcycle riding test and my driving test at first attempts. There  must be some sort of a “formula” that I can share. And there is.

For working adults who have already hung up their schoolbags yonks ago, taking on any academic learning is a daunting task that can cause a great deal of anxiety and stress. Work demand and family commitments are just two of the more obvious hurdles. Balancing these and finding the time and a quiet place to study can be quite a chore.

Let us start with Steven Covey’s famous quote, “Begin with the end in mind”. In an academic setting, examinations of one form or another are inevitable. “The end” in your mind will depend on your aspiration, to pass or to ace the final examination. However the “formula” for both are the same, the difference is in the amount of effort that you would need to commit.

Sun Tzu said, “If you know yourself and know your enemy, in a hundred battles, you will never fear the result.”, so your first task is to know yourself, then your “enemy” –  the examination.

“Knowing yourself” means you must be truthful to yourself and devise a good time management habit to juggle work, family and learning. Talk to your family and agree on some form of “me time” during your rest days (Saturday and Sunday) or during the evening after work. You must have a good idea how you spend your non-working hours and “steal” some of the leisure or idle time for studying. You also need to find a place to have the peace and quiet for you to concentrate on your learning. Personally, I find early in the morning at the office a good time to learn. Although the duration is rather  short  (45 minutes or less), it is the distraction free and unwinding after a stressful rush hour traffic to the office that make this a quality learning slot for me. You will need to find your own slots and set aside sufficient time to take on your learning effectively. You need to plan your learning schedule so that you have sufficient time to complete the requirements of the learning programme that you have signed up. Do not be over ambitious and sign up more subjects that you can handle. As a rule of thumb, full-time, 18 -23 year-old undergraduates can cope with 4 or 5 subjects during a full semester. Working adults probably can cope with 2 or at most 3 subjects concurrently. In fact most part-time postgraduate programmes rarely push learners to take more than 2 subjects per semester.

The other aspect of “knowing yourself” is the learning technique that you can adopt. For many working adults resuming learning after years of working, adopting a good learning technique is important for them to regain the learning prowess of their school days. One of the first re-learning that needs to be tackled is in note taking. The Cornell Note Taking System (http://coe.jmu.edu/learningtoolbox/cornellnotes.html) is a good system to adopt . Briefly, a page for notes is divided into three sections; two columns and one row (about 5 cm) below the columns. The right column which is 75% of the page is used to record notes. The left column is for key points for the topic covered by the notes to be extracted. The bottom row is to be used to summarise the topic. Thus when revising, the learner will concentrate on the key points and the summary.

Another learning technique is to construct mind maps and concept maps to assist learners to “picturise” a topic and how key points are linked. The act of constructing these maps will itself cause the learners to ponder and think about the facts and figures of a topic and how these can be linked. The key difference between concept maps and mind maps is in the fact that mind maps have one central theme or topic while concept maps caters to the linkages of several concepts, showing the relationships between them. It was too bad for me to discover the magic of concept map a bit late in life. The technique would have helped me a great deal since I am a “pictorial” type of learner. No matter what type of learners you are, the very act of constructing a concept or mind map will involve your thinking through the topic and making sense of the facts and figures while summarising them in a map. All these count towards strengthening your knowledge and factual recall ability on that topic.

The “enemy” in the context of “knowing your enemy”refers not only to the final examination but the entire inputs that you must make and the learning outcomes that you should attain in your academic quest. Many people make the big mistake of not associating the biggest “enemy” as the syllabus of the subject that you are studying and paid dearly for it. I studied for my GCE “A” levels in the early 1980s in a technical college in England. The college was catering to vocational and technical students and academic programmes were offered as “resit” options for those who did not do well in their first attempts. The teaching staff was accustomed to preparing their “A” level students to pass their examinations but the few foreign students like my peers from Malaysia and Hong Kong wanted (and needed) to score our grades in  A or B to read engineering, medicine etc. at universities. I learnt two things very fast. Firstly the lecturers were only doing enough to ensure that we could pass the examinations, and they were not going to cover the full syllabus. Secondly, to score grade B or better, I needed to get hold of the syllabus of each subject to know the content inside-out.  I managed to beg and persuade most of my lecturers to help me to cover topics that were not included in their lectures. Due to the clash of time-table those of us who took three sciences (biology, chemistry and physics) were only allowed to take pure and applied mathematics if we were to attend the applied mathematics classes held in the evening which was a revision class and was therefore shorter in duration for each session and the number of sessions. Our lecturer was brilliant. He studied the syllabus well. He only had time to cover about 60% of the syllabus but he focussed on essential topics that would be sufficient to secure a pass for his students. With this focussed approach, we were able to not only pass but score very well in the final examination.

One of my colleagues during my GCE “A” level days was considerably more  hardworking than me. He read broadly and deeply into biology, physics and chemistry, devouring lots of magazines and books covering these subjects. He knew these subjects a lot better than me. But when the results of the final examination were announced, he was stunned that he only passed 2 of the three subjects while I did a lot better than expected. He did not know his “enemy” like I did because he ignored studying the requirements of the syllabus for each subject.

Nowadays providing detailed syllabus is the obligation of all colleges. The document spells out clearly what the students need to study and how the knowledge gained is to be applied. Teaching plans and learning outcomes  should be provided. You should, like I did, know your syllabus inside-out. Knowing what is required and what is not is key to your success in examinations. This is what I call, “smart learning”.

In the next article, I shall cover “smart examination taking”.

This article first appeared in August 31, 2013 edition of Focus Malaysia, under Dr. YN Chow’s moniker as Plantcloner.

A great way to learn about genetics & how it affects you

I was one of the “guinea pigs” of Queen’s University of Belfast in 1985 when along with 5 others from the Class of 1985, I was awarded a scholarship to be the pioneer batch of Master of Science students in the newly minted Biotechnology programme.

A lot the then state-of-the-art knowledge that I was imparted with have indeed been superseded over the last 20 odd years of intense research in this domain. However, the basics in genetics, I hope do not change much.

When I first review this course, Genes and the Human Condition from The University of Maryland under Coursera, I thought to myself, since this course does not have any requirements in advanced biology, it may be too easy for me. I guess I did not know how much I have forgotten about genetics that I picked up about 30 years ago. After taking Week 1 classes, I have decided to stick to this course till its completion. I guess I have a lot of unlearning and re-learning to do. 

Although the course information states that there is no requirement for advanced biology. I think one will have to have at least some knowledge of high school level biology to appreciate the course fully. Professor Tammantha O’Brien (who gives Week 1 classes) is very animated in the way she teaches and the lectures can be a bit too fast at times, her enthusiasm to teach is infectious on the learners’ mood to learn. In short, you will learn a lot if you make the effort to keep up with her. Professor. O’Brien’s co-instructor, Professor Raymond J. St. Legar’s classes has yet to start.

There is still a couple of days to the end of Week 1 and I urge those who want to know about how genes work and how genetics affects you should give this MOOC a go.

Already this “revision” course for me has kept me updated on the subject of genetics. I will be a better teacher if I get to teach my plant tissue culture class again! It took me less than 3 hours to complete Week 1, but I expect that I will need to put in more in later weeks because Week 1 is a sort of revision for me!

(This article is contributed by Dr. Chow Yong Neng)