Teaching

Teaching duties:

1. Clinical biochemistry ( 4^th year students chemistry department)

2. Scientific debate (1^st year students)

Teaching philosophy

21 century skills for 21 century students

In today's fast paced society, students are continuously bombarded with information from various sources. Lecturers need to adapt their teaching with the complexity of 21st century demands. According to statistics, the top ten jobs in demand in 2010, did not exist in 2004!

Technology and science are advancing so fast hence the materials students learn today might be outdated by tomorrow. I think it is necessary to equip students with “real life”skills and adaptability to new information and techniques.

It is crucial to help students to be self directed learners, i.e it is important for educators to guide students to the path of self teaching outside the class, learn how to communicate their ideas effectively, seek out information themselves and be able to judge reliability of contents they get from various resources. Students need to be able to critically evaluate the sources they use and not to rely solely on lectures and on the first article Google suggests. In order to achieve such advanced level of competency,I believe alternative lecturing methods is the best strategy to incorporate to “ traditional” lectures. For example, the 2 most common alternatives for traditional lecturing are:

1. problem based Learning (PBL): PBL is a student-focused pedagogy in which students learn about a subject through the experience of solving an open-ended problem. PBL is an active learning style and rather than sitting passively in the class, the student will be exposed to real life work related issues and seek various techniques to solve the assignment.

PBL helps students to explore various resources and information by asking experts in the field in addition to the main lecturer.The student find information in libraries, online and uses many tools to comprehend the subject. Most importantly, students participate in the final construction of the course material. PBL equip students with effective problem solving skills, self-directed learning and collaboration skills.

2. “Socratic method” of teaching: in which the instructor guide the students to contribute to discussions in the class by making thoughtful questions which helps the students to think logically and critically.The lecturer will pretend to be ignorant of the subject and helps the students to participate in the teaching process.This methods helps the students to get feedback and improve the students’ communication skills and lead to reliable knowledge instruction.