Inovasi PdP dan Penilaian
Innovation in Teaching & Learning
The process of teaching and learning will be boring and monotonous if no innovation is incorporated, either by the teacher or the students. At least this is what I believe since I was a students at school and during my university years. Innovations by a teacher will help in his/her delivery of a certain topic or task, while innovations by a student will aid his/her understanding and mastery of a lesson. Besides attending seminars or courses on creative and innovative teaching, I always ask for feedbacks from my students on how to improve my lectures, and luckily I got some ideas to innovate my teaching from them!
The following examples are innovations related to my teaching delivery:
1. Debate on a topic
I usually gave my students a homework with the topic to debate in their next class. Everyone would come in without knowing which team they would be in, so they had to prepare for every angle of the given topic. In the class, they were divided into two groups; one would take a side of the topic, while the other would take the other. They were given time to organize their contents and appoint the representatives for their group. Each representative would only be the "starter" for each session of the debate, while other members of the group had to standby and be ready to chip in with additional points before the time was up. Each group would have a member whose job was to write down important points coming out from their group during the debate, on the whiteboard. Every member of each group was encouraged to speak and actively participate in the debate, under the supervision of myself as the chair of the debate. The debate would be wrapped up with reflections on the points written on the whiteboard in front of the class, with additional comments from me.
A debate session between two groups on the pros and cons of cow and goat milk.
2. Visit to production sites
My courses mostly involve laboratory sessions. Besides designing relevant laboratory experiments involving the use of laboratory equipment and chemicals, I believe that incorporating real-life experience through site visits and asking the students to write a report or a bulletin on them will make my course easily relatable to the outside world where they will apply what they have learnt in the class. I've brought my students to visit Ladang Pasir Akar for experiencing goat husbandry and milking, and also to the Drinking Water Plant for helping in drinking water production. The hands-on session with the staff on site made the students excited and more active. The report or bulletin that they prepared after the visit summarized their valuable experience, with additional comments and feedbacks from them on how to improve the process on site for better production and higher efficiency.
Students visiting UniSZA's Pasir Akar to experience goat husbandry and milking, and Drinking Water Line to observe drinking water production.
3. Sharing by experienced speakers
Since I realize my limited experience and knowledge even in the subject I teach, I have taken initiatives and (sometimes) opportunities to invite experienced professors and lecturers to give a sharing session with my students on topics related to my course. The insights from the invited speakers have not only benefited the students, but they have opened a wider horizon of perspective and idea to me especially in enriching the content of my lecture in the future. Their stories of valuable experience in the industry and in dealing with various people along the way are truly exemplary and eye-opening. I am forever indebted to these individuals and really hope to become like them one day.
Dr. Somchai Jomduang from Chiang Mai University was invited to discuss the final year projects by the students, and Prof. Dr. Che Abdullah was invited to give tips and tricks for a smooth and enjoyable internship experience in the food industry.
4. Online updates on internship application
This is specifically for industrial training course for the third-year students of Bachelor Degree of Food Technology. After two years of coordinating this course, I came up with a handier way to cater the students in Semester 1 before they start their internship in Semester 2. Previously, the process of application and confirmation of companies was handled through hard-copy forms, involving many parties such as the course coordinator, the faculty coordinator, the administrative office and of course, the students. As a results, the applications by the students were sometimes delayed and eventually rejected by the companies. To make it worse, the competition to do internship at food companies today is VERY stiff and fierce. A company can reply that they accept you today, and suddenly reject you the next week just because of late confirmation or incomplete application. Thanks to Google forms and sheets, I think I have accelerated the process especially in this pandemic season.
The flowchart is a guidance for students to follow in their internship application to companies, through completion of the correct forms and by updating the checklist for coordinators to follow up.
Innovation in Assessment
Apart from teaching and learning, I also ventured into innovation in assessment of my students. I believe that this initiative is crucial in effectively evaluate my students' potentials, progress and development.
The following examples are innovations related to the assessments of my students:
1. Interactive online quizzes
As mentioned in the Assessment Methods section, I enjoy using online quizzes especially for formative assessments. If using Kelip, I will either use the conventional Quiz function, or the Realtime Quiz function. The other option for the realtime quiz in Kelip is of course Kahoot! Today everyone use this interactive online tool for surveys, games and quizzes. For me, using the conventional quiz function is fair, where students can answer each question in the quiz at their own pace, as long as within the set timeframe of the quiz. However using the interactive function, students have to answer quickly and correctly, since I am the one control the transition of the questions, and each one has its own set timeframe. The "winner" or the one with the most quick and correct answers was usually given a special gift from me for their effort.
Online quizzes were done through various platforms as alternative assessments.
2. Flipped assessment
I first time heard about this interesting assessment method during a seminar organized by CENTMM, conducted by Dr. Tazli Azizan, a lecturer from UTP (at that time). Many new things on alternative assessment that I have learnt from the lecture, and the flipped assessment really caught my attention. I even emailed Dr. Tazli personally to ask further about the assessment, because I planned to apply it in the final assessment for my Dairy Technology course. I managed to conduct the assessment successfully I would say, and hence I applied it again in a formative task for my students, and once more as a laboratory assignment. I am really impressed with the submissions by the students, and will definitely apply this assessment tool again next time!
Examples of flipped assessment done at different levels and objectives.
3. Online peer assessment
I usually get negative feedbacks from my fellow lecturers when it comes to peer assessment for students. They do not trust that the students will give fair marks for their friends. Plus the process to collect the feedbacks from the students is quite tedious (conventionally using hard-copy form), and the time taken to sum up the marks and average them is depressing (these may be the actual reasons for lecturers not to conduct peer assessment!). Again, thanks to Google forms and sheets, I managed to conduct this student-centred assessment and surprisingly received quite a fair results.
With clear instructions for students, they just needed to fill in the simple peer assessment Google form, and the data gathered were re-arranged in the auto-generated Google sheet for summation and averaging individual mark.
4. Poster and video assessmentThis interesting type of assessment was applied in one of my laboratory sessions. Instead of submitting laboratory reports as always, I asked my students in groups to submit either a poster or a video on related to their laboratory session. From their submissions, I could see their creativity and technological ability in preparing the poster and video, besides being able to evaluate their practical skills portrayed in the photos and short video recordings that they embedded in their submissions.
An example of the rubric used for poster submission.
One of the best posters submitted by the students. I even used this poster in the manual of the same laboratory session in the following year.
One of the best videos submitted by the students. This video can also be used to promote the drinking water line at UniSZA!