TEACHING AND LEARNING STATEMENT
ACTIVE LEARNING | COOPERATIVE LEARNING | PROBLEM-BASED LEARNING
I do believe that the success of an academician is assessed based on his/her capability in delivering effective teaching and learning, guiding and supervising research students successfully, persevering in conducting impactful research, as well as able to disseminate the knowledge to society within and outside the university. Based on this statement, I combined my interests and soul to engage students inside classroom through effective teaching activities as well as emphasizing team working skills to achieve success in learning in order to obtain 21st century skills such as effective communication, critical thinking, creativity and collaboration.
Therefore, the main objective in my teaching efforts is to develop as well as to improve the existing 21st century skills in every student such that they able to solve real world complex problem within their learning scope and also able to understand and analyse that problem in much details. By realizing the engineering fundamental and applications involved several fields and disciplines, I provided enough space as well as opportunities to students for practicing and inculcating their 21st century skills in both inside and outside classroom as well as during their research activities.
The capability in trying to solve problem in an effective manner either individually or in a team was always encouraged in my classroom by involving real industrial design problems as well as real industrial process simulation with the aim that students able to get familiar and get the real world experience in the classroom first such that they are not surprised when facing the same problem in the future. In addition, the use of real examples from industry able to prepare students with the high professional standard and quality as well as helping them as motivations to get success in learning.
Teaching and Learning Philosophy
In general, my teaching and learning (T&L) philosophy is always dynamics starting with the T&L based on behaviourism at the early stage of my career (2003 – 2005), followed by the T&L based on cognitivism before my PhD study (2005 – 2007) where at that time the concept of outcome-based education (OBE) has been introduced and implemented in Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM). When I further my PhD study in chemical engineering at Technical University of Denmark (DTU) (2007 – 2011), I was exposed with the concepts of learning by doing, learning by mistakes, higher level thinking, team-based learning and active learning that caused my T&L philosophy changed drastically from teacher centred learning to student centred learning after I successfully defended by PhD (2011 – 2014). At that time, my T&L philosophy was based on constructivism. At the mid of 2014, my T&L philosophy was changed again to social constructivism (2014 – 2018) after I took into consideration the effectiveness of the learning based on cooperation, teamwork and peer. Starting in 2018 until now, I have embedded the use of technology in my T&L activities.
Teaching and Learning Based on Behaviourism (2003 – 2005)
At the early stage of my career as an academician, I started as a behaviourist who believed with the behavioural learning where the learning happened when there were changes occurred in terms of students’ behaviour that can be assessed. At that time, I did believe that learning happened when there was response from teacher and knowledge developed from the students’ responses. As a result, students’ behaviour changed towards what have been intended such as able to answer exams questions and getting the good grades. This behavioural pattern can be repeated until it became a habit. For example, students were asked to do revisions and do exercises on a certain topic as much as possible as well as try to answer past exam questions. If there were changes in students’ behaviour means they understood that topic thus learning happened. Another examples are repeated exercises, bonus marks (for those who did lots of exercises), participation marks (for those who participated more in class) and created rules and regulation in learning. Unfortunately, this behavioural learning was unable to prepare our students become neither problem solvers nor critical thinkers. Students only accomplished what have been instructed to them without having any initiative to change or improve their skills since they only able to remember all the basic facts, responded automatically when asked and only capable of doing routine tasks. At that time, T&L method that I used was one-way traditional chalk and talk lectures.
Teaching and Learning Based on Cognitivism (2005 – 2007)
Starting from the year of 2005, my T&L philosophy was based on cognitivism where during that time the concept of OBE has been introduced and implemented in UTM. Cognitivism is a learning theory that involving how students see and remember the information, try to solve simple exercises and then at the end students learnt. Compared to behaviourist, cognitivist is a student who actively involved and participated in the learning process. They used several strategies to process and develop their own understanding towards the learning contents that introduced to them. Here, students were no longer called passive students where the knowledge only delivered by teacher, whereas they were called active students in learning process. At that time, the T&L method that I used was active learning.
Teaching and Learning Based on Constructivism (2011 – 2014)
During further my PhD study in Chemical Engineering at Technical University of Denmark (DTU) (2007 – 2011), I was exposed to many concepts such as learning by doing, learning by mistakes, higher level thinking, team-based learning and active learning that caused my T&L philosophy drastically changed from teacher centred learning to student centred learning after I successfully finished my PhD study (2011 – 2014). At that time, my T&L philosophy was based on constructivism. According to constructivism philosophy, learning happened based on students’ experience themselves. In the classroom, lecturer tried their best to create a learning space that able to give opportunities to students to think, discuss, challenge the idea, and defend the idea. The tasks of the lecturer according to constructivism are as a facilitator, supervisor, tutor, as well as coach. At that time, my T&L method was problem-based learning (PBL).
Teaching and Learning Based on Social Constructivism (2014 – 2018)
At the mid of 2014, my T&L philosophy once again changed to social constructivism (2014 – 2018) when I took into consideration of the effectiveness of learning based on cooperation, teamwork, and peer. According to social constructivism philosophy, a process where the sharing of opinion from individual, sharing idea as well as critics able to develop effective learning process. In summary, the philosophy of social constructivism is a learning process where students learnt together with others, and team members. The task as a lecturer based on social constructivism is as a facilitator who helps to guide students in understanding the content of the learning individually and as a team. At that time, my T&L method that I used were cooperative learning and cooperative PBL.
Teaching and Learning Based on Technology (2018 – now)
Starting in the year of 2018 until now, I applied the use of technology in my T&L activities. It should be noted that the use of technology was not fully utilized as a full online T&L at the beginning of this period, rather than just to help to increase the effectiveness of the T&L philosophy or pedagogy. In my opinion, every lecturer has to understand in more details about their own T&L philosophy or pedagogy before decided to use any technology in their T&L activities. One needs to decide what type of tools that he/she wants to use during what kind of activities in his/her T&L. This is to make sure that the effectiveness of T&L activities can be improved and achieved. At this time, my T&L method that I used was and still a combination of blended learning with cooperative learning/cooperative PBL. This T&L method has been awarded with the UTM New Academia Learning Innovation (NALI) 2019 Award in Recognition of Excellence in Teaching and Learning.