Student Centred and Engaged Learning
Traditional teaching involves the teacher to be the centre of attention and give out information to the students. This may at times lead to the students losing concentration. Thus, to keep the students focused and actively involved in the learning process, it is vital to practice Student Centred and Engaged Learning.
Two factors that could help achieve SCL are:
- Allowing students to take part in decision making.
- Having faith in students’ capacity to lead.
As an engineering academic staff, I do come across certain areas where involving students to participate in the task is really vital.
Since engineering involves lot of mathematical and group tasks such as labs and projects, I highly recommend for SCL as students would be actively involved and help them in decision making and the capacity to lead
Critical and Creative Thinking & Knowledge Building Processes
Creative thinking involves a variety of methods in approaching a problem. A lot of imagination is required in creative thinking.
Few things to note down for creative thinking are:
- Applying various techniques while approaching for the same problem.
- Getting out of comfort zone and practicing wild and crazy methods that might seem sensible at the end.
- Not coming to a decision at an early stage. Instead, keep coming up with solutions and see which one is the most appropriate.
By practicing these, it leads to knowledge building and understanding that it is not necessary to have only a single solution to any particular problem. Every solution can be justified with its own explanation.
In engineering, creative thinking is vital since there can be many solutions to a particular problem. Different techniques are applied every time, but the best option is considered at the end.
A very good example I have always witnessed is when there is an unavailability of a certain component during lab sessions.
Students are told to look for alternate solutions that could substitute that unavailable component by combining other components that are available in lab.
Student Centred and Engaged Learning
Concept Mapping in Higher Education
Assessment is simply the act of evaluating, judging or rating something. In educational system, it the process of measuring and documenting what the students have learned. e-Assessment is the use of technology to manage and deliver assessment. Concept mapping is a general method that can be used to help any individual or group to describe their ideas about some topic in a pictorial form.
I implement e-Assessment in my EE212 (Analog Electronics I) course, where weekly online quizzes are set up for students to attempt. This makes it very reliable as students can attempt the quizzes from anywhere and anytime suitable to them. I personally use concept mapping in my EE222 (Digital Logic Design) lab sessions to demonstrate how a particular logic circuit shall be connected. This gives the students a brief idea as to how the circuit is linked with the notes taught during lecture classes.
Different types of approaches to curriculum planning
According to Prof. Offorma (2014), the term curriculum has been differently defined by different people. These definitions are dependent on their different conceptions of education and the functions of school and the types of products they expect from educational institutions [1].
Proper planning of curriculum leads to a well-structured curriculum for an institution. There are four structural approaches to curriculum development, which are defined as follows:
- Structure based on subject matter:
In this approach, the curriculum is structured according to the learning outcome of the course. The course outline is kept in mind while dealing with this approach. This is the most common type of approach used in educational system where the subject matter is finally taught towards the end of the course.
- Competency based structures:
This type of approach deals with developing the skills of the students to meet the outcome of the course. The ability of the students’ knowledge that lead to superior performance is observed in this type of approach.
- Problem based structures:
The problem based structure focuses on tackling the current problem with innovative ideas. This way, students are able to explore more on the concept rather than relying on traditional method to solve a problem. Students are usually encouraged to do brain storming in groups and come up with possible solutions which may be customized for just that particular problem.
- Structure based on key concepts, themes or intellectual abilities:
This type of approach deals with structuring the curriculum based on a particular concept where many different activities are linked together by their contents or theme based, such as, learning foreign language [2]. By practicing this type of approach, students are focused on a particular concept or theme and does not move out of the content.
Effect of Structure on Student access
Curriculum developers need to consider the following:
- Do the students require any relevant work experience?
- Will the students of different cultural background be able to adjust to the structure?
- Any type of extra support (videos, animations, links etc) shall be provided?
- How to cater for students who may not always be able to avail themselves face-to-face (for working and regional students)?
Are we giving course structure enough technological consideration and using just the appropriate technology?
As an engineering academic staff, I do agree that the engineering courses are giving enough technological consideration. Although we do have relevant technology that helps student to work on during the course, I believe keeping the updated version of equipment and software would be of a greater help.
For example, at times the course is designed with the codes that works perfectly on a particular version of the MATLAB software, thus updating the MATLAB software to the latest version does not allow the old codes to execute properly.
Also, there are many hardware equipment which are just appropriate for the students to use and learn, however, they might be just outdated. For example, the oscilloscope used in EE212 (Analog Electronics I) lab sessions does just what is required according to the lab handout.
However, the latest oscilloscopes in the market are way more advanced and students are tempted to use those after seeing videos of it online (YouTube). To help overcome this issue, I personally believe virtual lab could be taken in recommendation to help in the development of the course.
Introducing latest ICT tools in the curriculum will be an advantage for those who can not avail themselves for the traditional method of learning.
References
[1] Offorma G., (2014). Approaches to curriculum development, Research gate publications.
[2] Cameron L., (2010). Theme based teaching and learning, Cambridge University Press.