All Categories

Synchronous vs asynchronous learning

3/19/2021

Synchronous and asynchronous are basic terms when it comes to online or distance learning. When the pandemic struck, teaching and learning activities were shifted online. Whether you like it or not, that is the only option left.

But after almost a year of being under this new norm, we should have mastered the arts and science of planning, selecting, conducting, and assessing our online and distance classes. When is it suitable to conduct a synchronous session? What are learning activities and techniques should we use when you have a large group of students in your Google Meet class? How to ensure students' engagement throughout the session? How can you guarantee collaborative learning to take place when students are learning from a distance? These are among the examples of questions that need to be deliberately answered by all of us, educators.

My heartfelt thanks to SieQa committee for this invitation. I had fun sharing my little insights on this topic :)

A week before the seminar, we had a quick catch up with the organising committee. Dr Ooi briefed us the tentative and how the sessions would be organised.

And these are among the participants who attended the session. Thanks for joining!

Join us!

2/20/2021

Changing the 'exam' narrative and how to rethink the assessment methods? Join me to explore more about assessments particularly in the HEIs context!

Interactive learning with AR

2/20/2021

This year will probably be the most hectic year throughout my life. I am not kidding, just sharing my strong gut. It is not merely due to training, workshops or consultancy with my fellow friends out there but I strongly believe that my current task will be haunting me - I am ready for sleepless nights! Ok will talk about ODL later in the next entry (when I really have a courage to do so!)

Alhamdulillah, managed to 'escape' from my routine works to be with fellow friends from the Resource and Educational Technology Department, MOE. Mrs Phua was the one who approached me I think last December 2020. She expressed the needs of the department to explore more about the potential of Augmented Reality (AR) and possible benefits when it is integrated to text books.

I couldn't say no to this proposal as AR is always my passion. So I designed the 2-day training into two segments. Thanks Hazrati for willing to be my partner in crime hehehe. We presented two tools for AR - Blippar and Metaverse. Each of the tool serves different purposes. Blippar can be used for more informative kind if materials whereby you can produce a more interactive learning material using Metaverse as it allows you to arrange the cards just like developing an authorware.

We had more or less 80-90 participants attended the 2-day training. I think I had a blast during the Q&A session. Thanks for all the questions, suggestions and insights. I wish we could have more time for that but of course the time wouldn't permit. InshaAllah there will always be next time kan!

Wishing the BSTP a good way ahead and all the best with the AR-integrated text book project!

EduTech Malaysia 2021

12/6/2020

This is not my first time involvement with EduTech conference series, as I was invited to talk at EduTech conferences for three times already since last year. Next year, there will be another Edutech (Malaysia) conference that will be happening on 24 to 25 February 2021. I had a Zoom meeting with Qian Xin, who wanted me to share contemporary issues on online teaching & learning, especially from the perspective of the Malaysian context. One of the my main points was - to what extend do we (educators) know what lingers in our students' minds when all learning activities and assessments are brought online? All this while, we tend to talk and focus more on what educators should and shouldn't do when they conduct online learning experiences. But do we realize that very little of us dare to dive into our students' ocean of thought and understand their struggle? So, let's hope that Malaysia EduTech will present something from students' very own perspectives this time, and we should learn then on how to modify our current approach! An emic perspective insight will definitely be interesting to help us learn and explore more :)

Thanks Germaine and Qian Xin for inviting me to Malaysia Edutech! Let's hope everything that we plan will be a success. See you in Feb 2021!

Redesigning a Meaningful Online Learning for Learners

12/6/2020

I was invited to present a keynote speech for 2020 IEEE Conference on e-Learning, e-Management and e-Services (IC3e2020) that took place on 17th November 2020. Redesigning a Meaningful Online Learning for Learners: Where Do We Start and Where Do We Go? - that was the title of my presentation. Everybody is talking about shifting teaching to online mode but little that we know that the shift needs a planned modification, not only related to the content delivery alone. Rather, it involves more aspects - students' actual needs and capacity (cognitive as well as their technology affordances), learning experiences to suit the objectives, a choreography of activities so as to ensure active learning to take place and not forgotten, the aspect of assessment.

I also highlighted the importance of identifying the root of the problem that is to be addressed by using a performance discrepancy analysis. This is a core approach taken by all instructional designers. Without understanding the actual cause of students' performance, we will never be able to provide them a remedy. Being an educator is not easy huh, but if you love your profession, I bet this process will give you abundance of blissful satisfaction as you know what you are doing, and why you choose to do it :)

My heartfelt thanks to Assoc Prof Dr Sian Lun Lau for the invitation!

Smart Learning Discourse

11/8/2020

Another sharing session with other great speakers on smart learning & teaching plan for students and faculty! Unfortunately, due to a specific, personal reason I couldn't make it that day :(
Anyways, I had several participants connected to me via Swapcard as well as LinkedIn. I hope you enjoyed the session and I am sure there are a lot of key things for you to take away!

Active Learning in Online Teacing & Learning Workshop

8/20/2020

Alhamdulillah, another sharing session took place via Microsoft Teams. Thanks to my fellow colleagues from the Faculty of Information Science & Technology for joining me in this session!

Edutech Phillipines

8/18/2020

I am so glad to be part of this great event - Edutech Phillipines - a virtual conference for educators from K-12 and Higher Education Institutions. Together with me in the Townhall session were fellow experts from Phillipines - Jeffrey and Giged (Floydeth somehow couldn't make it today) and our excellent moderator - Brent Reodica. We talked about the assessment strategies for HEIs in the time of pandemic and related issues.

There are many ways to do assessment and there are many great tools available online for assessments. But the utmost important thing to bear in mind should be - why do we conduct an assessment? This 'why' question is vital for all educators to reflect on as this 'why' will guide us in determining what kind of assessments suitable to be conducted.

I would like to express my thanks to all the panelists for your insightful sharing. What a joyful afternoon it was! :)

More Tips and Tools for Online Assessment

6/19/2020

In this new normal era, educators have a lot to catch up; from creating and curating learning materials, designing learning activities, disseminating or providing sufficient learning material to students, to planning and assessing learning activities.

I was invited to an online sharing session Assessment by HITeL UiTM Perak to talk about Tips and Tools for Online. In this session, I had additional material that focused on more tips on how to plan and design learning assessment effectively.

Apparently, the tips are not something new. However, the stress is on how educators align the learning outcomes with the assessments that they plan. In this era, where everything is conducted via online, we need to consider variation in the level of internet access among our students as well. Therefore, negotiation and flexibility come into place here. Do not be too rigid - make sure that the time given to students to complete the tasks is achievable. Make sure to spare additional time if needed so that all we get from students are something that they produced with a full effort and satisfaction.

I also talked about alternative assessment as an alternative :)
I also shared the actual evidence of how I conducted an alternative assessment with my students. What I like most about this kind of assessment is that is allows me to evaluate my students' capacity more holistically. Through a single project given, the evaluation is not focused on what they had learned alone, rather, more importantly, what they can do, team work and collaborative skills, leadership, management, diligence as well as resilience ( just to name a few).

Friends, please also remember to provide a scaffolding support to your students. If you expect them to produce an assignment / task, give them the rubrics that you would use to score their work. Students will appreciate the rubrics as it will help them to focus on the elements in the rubrics and in other words, it will help them to be more focused and how to fulfil the expectation. Every assignment has to come with a clear instruction and details about what will be assessed.

Last but not least, my heartfelt thanks to UiTM Perak for this invitation :)

Virtual Background in Zoom

6/6/2020

I know, it can be a frustrating experience when you realised that your computer didn't support a virtual background feature in Zoom! And what is more intimidating is when the virtual background appeared on your face instead! Who has this similar problem (raise your hand hahaha!) Well, there is a simple solution. All you need is just a green cloth or green screen on your back. Watch the tutorial below. I hope you will find this one to be helpful!
#greenscreen #zoom #hack #unsupportedcomputer