IMU-LS-06: From Tinkering to Tottering to Totally Extreme Learning (Curtis Bonk)

  

IMU-LS-02: Web Conferencing for Teaching, Learning and Meetings

IMU Learning Series 01 - Facebook for Learning and Teaching?

 

E-Learning Trends and Challenges in Malaysian Higher Education Institutions

"MEdO will make Malaysia a leading brand in Asia for online higher education services and a one stop centre for learning, education and the administration of international students."
- Datuk Seri Mohd Khaled Nordin (Minister for Higher Education)

Last Saturday (16th April, 2011), I attended the "Majlis Pelancaran Dasar e-Pembelajaran Negara (DePAN), Buku-Buku e-Pembelajaran dan Malaysia Education Online (MEdO)" event launched by Datuk Seri Mohd Khaled Nordin (Minister for Higher Education).

It turned out to be a very exciting and enriching learning experience for me, and here are my discoveries and reflections...



MALAYSIA EDUCATION ONLINE (MEdO)

Malaysia Education Online (MEdO) is part of the Malaysia Government Transformation Plan (GTP) to expand international distance learning. MEdO is an online learning platform delivering education programmes from Malaysian universities, colleges, polytechnics and training institutes. It is the gateway for them to extend their global outreach whilst each participating institution is able to maintain its identity and uniqueness (more).

MEdO is initiated and led by Asia e University (AeU), which is the selected gateway university (by PEMANDU) for international education for distance and online learning. Six other Malaysian universities and institutes have already signed up to offer programmes on MEdO.

The MEdO platform itself is based on a fusion of Joomla and Moodle with some customization to suit its needs and requirements. As many universities are already using Moodle, it could speed up the learning curve (familiar environment) and adoption by educators that will be required to use it.

It will be interesting to see how this project unfolds. Let's be positive about it :)



E-BOOKS
Besides MEdO, the National E-Learning Policy (Dasar e-Pembelajaran Negara) for Higher Education Institutions, and two books (and one translation) about e-Learning in Malaysian Higher Education were launched.

Here we go:

• National E-Learning Policy for Higher Education Institutions
  (will add the link when made available)
  
  
• e-Pembelajaran di IPTA Malaysia (Issuu version)
  This e-book provides great insights into how especially public Universities in Malaysia are using e-learning to facilitate learning and teaching. It includes 20 University papers sharing their e-learning stories.
  
  
• Amalan, Keberkesanan & Cabaran Pelaksanaan e-Pembelajaran di IPT Malaysia (Issuu version)
  The English version is below...
  
  
• e-Learning in Malaysian Higher Education Institutions: Status, Trends & Challenges (Issuu version)
  Will be discussed next...
  
  

Unfortunately the National E-Learning Policy (No link yet) and e-Pembelajaran di IPTA Malaysia are not yet translated (or published) into English. Anyway, you could always use Google Translator Toolkit, and then decipher the parts that are poorly translated into English.




E-LEARNING IN MALAYSIAN HIGHER EDUCATION INSTITUTIONS
I have to admit I was thrilled to discover the e-Learning in Malaysian Higher Education Institutions: Status, Trends & Challenges publication during the event. Actually, I couldn't wait and was reading it furiously during Datuk Seri Mohd Khaled Nordin's speech (please don't tell!), and what struck me most was all the juicy statistics (Yes, I just love that!) about what was going on in Higher Education in Malaysia, and the simple language used to describe the survey results and findings.

Also, the three (3) questionnaires (E-Learning Admin, Lecturer and student) used for this research were comprehensive and easy to understand (Check Appendices/page 123). The findings in the book is based on 7,962 survey respondents (26 e-Learning administrators, 1,635 lecturers and 6,301 students) from a sample of 30 Malaysian Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), comprising of 20 public HEIs, 7 private HEIs, and 3 polytechnics. As four (out of 7) e-Learning Admins from the private Universities did not participate, I suppose we could generalize that the findings mostly represent what is going on in the public HEIs in Malaysia.

Before I dwell more, I would like to introduce you to Prof Dr Mohamed Amin Embi, who was the chief editor for all the three books mentioned above. He was also the first recipient of the prestigious National Academic Award 2006, and the recipient of the distinguished ISESCO Science Laureate 2010. In other words, he is a pretty interesting guy to know. So, next time you want to know more about e-Learning in Malaysian HEIs, who are you going to call? Simple answer: Prof Dr Mohamed Amin Embi

We have met a couple of times, but I suppose I need to bug him more from now on. Actually, I bugged him through e-mail a few days back to publish these 3 books on Issuu or Scribd, and within a couple of days they were published on both. Great guy!

Yes, he has also summarized nicely the key findings of each chapter in the book, and then published them on SlideShare. So, instead of summarizing the book, I can focus next on providing some of my own insights and reflections to what has been published.

Let's rumble...



Chapter 2: e-Learning Policy

e-Learning policy

View more presentations from Mohamed Amin Embi

Here are few questions we should perhaps ask before even thinking about formulating or requiring HEIs to have e-learning policies:

• Do we need to have e-learning policies to make e-learning work for us?
• Who should be involved in formulating e-learning policies (all stakeholders, including students)?
• How detailed should e-learning policies be (any template)?
• Can e-learning policies have a negative impact on implementing e-learning?
• Should the Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE) have a mechanism to enforce all HEIs to have e-learning policies?
  

Dealing with e-learning policies is a very tricky issue, and cannot be taken lightly. Actually, sometimes e-learning policies can be self-destructive and curb innovations in teaching and learning. Imagine if we have an e-learning policy stating that, "All e-learning content must be SCORM-Compliant". A few years back, this might sound totally reasonable, but any enlightened learning professional today would know that a lot of amazing learning resources (and top Universities) don't care much about SCORM, and are shared in the spirit of Open Courseware (OCW) or Open Educational Resources (OER).

So, e-learning policies is something that all HEIs should explore, but we have to be careful, and strive to find the right balance so that they empower people to learn and innovate, instead of becoming an obstacle to moving forward.



Chapter 3: e-Learning Governance

e-learning governance

View more presentations from Mohamed Amin Embi

According to the survey results, the two main challenges related to the e-Learning governance are shortage of staff (84.5%) and lack of incentives provided by the HEIs to those responsible for implementing e-Learning (69.2%).

So, no doubt HEIs need to invest more in quality staff, and be creative about providing incentives (e.g. less administration and more time to think!) that inspire educators to take the effort to transform their own learning and teaching. It is strange that institutions can spend millions and millions on hardware, networks and software, but when it comes to investing in quality people and paying competitive salaries with the industry; It is so difficult!

In short, HEIs need to rethink their hiring and salary policies to capture the great talent that is out there, but are very reluctant to work in HEIs. Also, HEIs need to learn from creative companies like Google, Apple and Zappos on how to build working environments that empowers and inspires people to express their potential. Challenging, but certainly possible :)



Chapter 4: Learning Managements Systems

Learning Management Systems

View more presentations from Mohamed Amin Embi

Interestingly, All (100%) HEIs that participated had their own Learning Management System (LMS), and more than half (57.7%) of the HEIs used Open Source Platforms, while 34.6% used purchased commercial LMS, and the remaining 15.4% were developed on their own. In this survey, Moodle beat Blackboard (12 - 2) impressively, but if we were to include more private HEIs the results would be a bit darker :)

Though, from a learning point-of-view, we need to increasingly look beyond the LMS (they just cannot keep up with disruptive innovations taking place), as increasingly learning will take place outside in the web 2.0 (3.0/x.0) and social media worlds in the form of personal learning environments tailored to what learners and educators really want. Here is a crash course:

Social Media & Web 2.0 for Learning (2nd Edition)

View more presentations from Zaid Alsagoff

Chapter 5: e-Learning Training

e-learning training

View more presentations from Mohamed Amin Embi

Sadly, only one-third (34.6%) of the HEIs provide exposure to Web 2.0 applications. Though, I foresee a huge growth in the coming years of educators using Social media and web 2.0 (3.0 and x.0) beyond the LMS to facilitate more engaging and relevant learning with their students.

It will also be interesting to see how institutions deal with copyright and privacy issues, when educators and students increasingly use tools such as Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, YouTube, Wikis, etc.

Are you prepared for that? Don't wait! It is happening already!



Chapter 6: e-Content Development

e-content development

View more presentations from Mohamed Amin Embi

The main applications used for e-Content development are Flash (92.3%), followed by Articulate (46.3%), Adobe Captivate (38.3%), Camtasia Studio (30.8%), Lecture Maker (15.42%), and Interactive Raptivity Builder ( 15.4%).

One word: Ouch! Hopefully, Apple will come to its senses and allow Flash to run smoothly on an iPad, iPod or iPhone. Unless Steve Jobs retires soon that might take some time. Though, let's hope that browsers will have auto-converters, or that Flash is updated to meet all Steve Jobs requirements, otherwise e-content developed in Flash would be useless on Apple-based mobile devices. Luckily, Flash-based content works on Androids :)


The five major challenges faced by most HEIs are lack of motivation among the academic staff (65.4%), lack of specialists (53.80%), lack of a dedicated team to develop e-Content (53.8%), lack of commitment among academic staff (46.2%), and lack of funding/budget (46.2%).

Why are not academic staff motivated or committed to develop e-content? If you are already overloaded with administration, research, publication and teaching obligations, you are not going to be inspired to develop e-content for your students without some seriously good reasons.

Incentives could help (e.g. one e-content module = 1 publication in a high impact journal), but you still need to find the time. In Chapter 10 (page 119), it is proposed that common university courses could be developed jointly by a centre under the Ministry of Higher Education, as this is a more efficient use of resources, time, money, and manpower, while maintaining an acceptable level of quality.

In a nutshell, we could establish Malaysia's first official ‘Open Courseware’ initiative, which would enable all HEIs to have access and reuse (hopefully remix) freely common University courses. By doing so, then HEIs can streamline their resources to build unique e-content for their unique courses.

Based on the survey, the copyright issue is also a big problem faced by the majority (80.8%) of Malaysian HEIs in the development of e-Content. What to do? Forget Copyright, Practice Copyleft Instead!

Actually, we need to rethink our obsession with e-content development, and be more obsessed with designing relevant and engaging learning environments/spaces, where authentic learning activities play a larger role than (spoon-feeding) e-content and courseware.

Instead, HEIs students should be empowered and nurtured with the necessary learning skills to find their own content based on the learning outcomes set, or we could expose them to a variety learning resources (for each topic) and then require them to analyze, evaluate, synthesize, and then create their own contextualized meaning.

We want to develop independent lifelong learners. The e-content or courseware (spoon-feeding) model is an easy shortcut to enable them to pass the exam, but perhaps not the best way to nurture the necessary skills required for them to thrive in the 21st century.

Finally, educators need to learn the art of aggregating, filtering and remixing content from a variety of resources using a variety of learning tools out there. In a nutshell, think beyond e-content development, and focus more on nurturing educators to build sizzling learning activities and spaces for students.

In short, only develop e-content when it does not exist, or it can be synthesized or presented in a more engaging and meaningful way :)



Chapter 7: Integration of e-Learning in Teaching & Learning

integration of e-learning in teaching & learning

View more presentations from Mohamed Amin Embi

According to the survey findings, lecturers' two major challenges to integrate e-Learning in their teaching and learning, is trying to balance between teaching and research (59.8%) and time constraints (54.9%). Interestingly, technophobia (13%) was the least responsible challenge among the challenges faced by lecturers in order to integrate e-Learning.

For students, the two major challenges is lack of access (53.4%), and feedback from lecturers takes too long (42.8%). By focusing less on developing e-content, lecturers will have more time to interact with their students, and construct more interactive and engaging learning environments. If we can be replaced by a courseware, then we should be replaced.

To no surprise, most lecturers (50.1%) prefer to upload materials on a weekly basis before the classes begin. Noteworthy, most students (84.7%) prefer to read the materials offline rather than online. The challenge comes when students have printed out the uploaded slides before their class (often weeks in advance), and then find out during the lecture that the slides have been updated. What do you do? Establish an e-learning policy forcing them to upload their slides at least one week before...Not a good idea! Call me to elaborate :)

On a positive note, this is a problem of today, and probably won't even exist in 3-5 years' time. Why? By then most students will be reflecting their slides on their mobile devices in the form of iPads, Kindles, Galaxy, etc.



Chapter 8: Quality Assurance

Quality Assurance in e-Learning

View more presentations from Mohamed Amin Embi

How do we ensure that our e-learning implementations are of quality? How do we ensure that our conventional learning approaches are of quality? Do we look at the drop-out rates? Or perhaps the students satisfaction levels? What about using the students' assessment results as a measure of success?

On page 119, the guidelines on e-Content standards that were developed collaboratively by CEMCA (Commonwealth of Educational Media Centre for Asia) and MOHE is recommended to be distributed and followed by all Malaysian HEIs in order to control the quality of e-Learning materials available at the tertiary level.

I disagree in using these guidelines as the standards, but it could be used as a good reference guide, like so many other guidelines out there. Personally, I don't even like the expression 'Best Practices', but instead prefer 'Good Practices'. The reason is that there is simply too much innovation and exploration still needed to be done, before we can settle down with any form of standards in E-Learning. Let's celebrate 'Good Practices' out there, and learn from them to create our own contextualized 'Good Practices'.

We want standards, but standards are often the biggest enemy to creativity and innovation. Let's not forget that!



THE FUTURE?
Not surprisingly implementing mobile learning is a priority (92.3%), according to the survey findings. Interestingly, lecturers (67%) and students (76.8%) believe that HEIs should give priority to Intelligent Tutoring Systems as compared to other applications.

Strangely enough, lecturers (23.4%) and students (19.4%) place podcasting applications as the lowest in terms of priority. Maybe it is just me, but I would prefer listening and reflecting to a great lecture over a courseware anytime of the day, no matter how interactive it may be. I suppose I am a bit weird!

If you don't have time to read the whole book, just read chapter 9 (summary) and 10 (recommendations), which will provide sufficient insights to see the big picture. Though, I would strongly recommend to enjoy all the diagrams, charts and stats spread over 120 pages.

So, what can we expect next?

Based on the suggestions given in the book (page 120), MOHE will probably soon establish 'The National Institute of e-Learning', a centre of excellence for e-Learning, that can conduct and coordinate research on e-Learning, particularly in terms of the impact of e-Learning on student achievement.

Let's hope the National Institute of e-Learning becomes an inspiring light that empowers and sparks sizzling e-learning at all HEIs.

Will I be involved?

Only God knows at this moment :)

ICE Breakers - A Fish That Barks and The Moonwalking Bear!

When the cat reaches the fishbowl, then pause the video and ask your Students/Participants (S/P) to figure out what happens next. Most likely you will get S/P's attention, and stimulate their minds to think creatively about what happens next in a competitive but enjoyable way. If you break S/P up into groups, and then give each group say 2 minutes to come up with their answer, you will get collaborative fun.



WARM UP S/P FIRST, OR THEY WILL ________!
Using short videos found on the Internet as icebreakers to stimulate thinking and help people to get familiar with each other in new situations and environments is today easier than ever, because of the millions (I mean billions!) of videos freely available on sites like YouTube.

More importantly, before you engage your S/P to learn and interact with the subject matter in a face-to-face session (or online session), it is important to warm them up first, or awaken them from their sleep (or whatever they are doing/thinking). It is obvious in sports that we need to warm our relevant muscles before playing a particular activity; otherwise the likelihood of getting injuries increases significantly. Though, strangely enough not all lecturers/educators/facilitators apply this common sense idea to learning. Let's not forget that our Brain is also a muscle that needs to warm up too, or it would probably fall asleep (not literally!), or be in another dimension beyond the subject paradigm.



AWARENESS TEST

Remember to pause after the first scene when the passes have been made, and then ask 'How many passes does the team in white make?' Most S/P will probably answer correctly, and then you ask 'Did you see the Moonwalking bear?' And unless they have already seen this video (12+ million have already on YouTube alone!), they would have ignored that particular incident. Although, this is labelled as an awareness test, it is also a great short video to warm up students' minds before getting them busy with the subject matter.



IMPORTANCE OF LANGUAGE SKILLS

This one is a classic, which I commonly use to emphasize the importance, relationship, and connection of language with understanding and thinking. Instead of being really serious about it, and making people uncomfortable when talking about such matters, you could use videos such as the one above to make a point (that probably sticks better, too).

I have watched this scene (above) from 'The Pink Panther 2' a bazillion times, but I still laugh every time I watch it. I have used this video in several workshops to indirectly encourage S/P to work on their English accents as that might hamper their communication with others (e.g. lectures and discussions), and that new accents can be learned (although it could take time).

These are just four examples of using short videos (less than 5 minutes) found on the Internet to stimulate S/P to think, and break down communication barriers. The best part is that there are thousands, if not millions of freely available videos ready to be plucked from video sharing sites.

If you have any experiences, or discovered some mind stimulating short videos to share, please share it in the comments section (That would be great!).



HOW TO DOWNLOAD VIDEOS FROM YOUTUBE?
I knew that question was coming (obviously!), and here is the answer (link below):

The Real Way to Download-Convert-Insert YouTube Videos into PowerPoint!

What about downloading and copyright? I discuss this issue a bit here.

Don't worry, be happy, and take calculated risks using short videos to stimulate thinking and breaking down communication barriers (though, please consider sensitivities to religion, culture and race).

It is amazing how fun a learning session can become by taking a few risks in the way we facilitate learning :)

The Real Way to Download-Convert-Insert YouTube Videos into PowerPoint!

HOW DO YOU...

1. DOWNLOAD YouTube videos?
2. CONVERT YouTube videos into a format supported by PowerPoint?
3. INSERT YouTube videos into PowerPoint (and run it offline smoothly)?

Since I am always asked those three (3) questions above, why not screencast it once for ALL! This screencast explores these questions:

(Click here to download this screencast)

TOOLS?
Tools recommended:

• RealPlayer - Downloading videos from YouTube and Converting them into other formats (e.g. wmv).
  
• Format Factory - Converting videos to any other video format you can imagine.
  

If you are using PowerPoint 2003 (or 2010) no worries, because inserting videos into PowerPoint is as easy as toasting...Insert > Movies and Sounds > Movie from File (2003)...

You might also want to check out my previous article entitled 2 Juicy Ways to Insert YouTube Videos into PowerPoint, but I believe the tips shared above is even juicier. Trust me!

Finally, if you have a cooler or more efficient way of doing it for free, please share it with us. Now that would be AWESOME :)

IMU Learning Series 05 - Coaching Critical Thinking to Think Creatively!

“We want the development of modal insan, students who can think critically and creatively, who are able to solve problems and have the ability to adapt themselves to an ever-changing global environment.” - Blueprint for Education Development, Malaysia (2006 – 2010)

ONCE UPON A TIME ….
A long time ago (early 2007) in a galaxy far away (Malaysia), there was a little boy (33 years old) who happened to be me. This little boy was suddenly entrusted to transform a dying course at the University entitled ‘Critical Thinking’. Here I was leading a Learning and Teaching Unit (in the Quality Assurance department) facilitating change and improvements to our e-learning approach, and managing a University wide ‘Thinking Skills Infusion Programme’ (TSIP). Although, I had trained many lecturers, senior lecturers and professors in using technology to facilitate learning, I had ironically never had any real experience in managing an actual course at the University.

Now, one of the leaders from our academic world figured rightly out that perhaps I needed some real experience to understand what it is like to be a lecturer, before having the right to lecture to lecturers on how to teach and facilitate effective learning (which makes perfect sense!). Also, since I had been managing the TSIP programme for over six (6) months, the “Critical Thinking’ course would be the perfect challenge and opportunity to test all my untested theories and suggestions on effective learning.

In a nutshell, I was asked to lead and transform the ‘Critical Thinking’ course, which is a requirement for all undergraduate students.

THE UNITAR WAY!
Although, Universiti Tun Abdul Razak (UNITAR) is currently becoming a more conventional University, it used to adopt a blended learning model, which usually included courseware, online forums, online tutorials (OLT), and Face-to-Face (F2F) tutorials. Every course is led by a course leader supported by tutors who facilitate their own sections. The course leader is responsible for guiding the tutors, and preparing the course plan, course materials, assignments, quizzes and exams. In addition, the course leader is responsible for correcting the final exams (40% - 50% of the course assessment evaluation), and giving the students’ final grade for all sections. The tutor’s role is to communicate with the course leader, facilitate the course for their section(s), and grade the coursework (50% - 60%).

COURSE REENGINEERING NEEDED?
Based on my initial unscientific findings, students found the course difficult to understand and the overall students’ satisfaction rates were lower than in other courses for the undergraduate level. In addition, both students and tutors complained that the lecture notes were not sufficient.

Although, the past course leaders seemed to have a done a good job facilitating their own sections, they failed based on my understanding to communicate and facilitate consistent quality to all the sections. Overall, students and tutors seemed frustrated with ‘Critical Thinking’, and some even questioned the relevance of this course. They argued that this course focused too much on theory and memorization, and failed to actually help students develop fundamental thinking, reasoning and language abilities that are needed for academic success.

Although, UNITAR had developed a reasonably good page tuning critical thinking courseware, the existing curriculum of the critical thinking course seemed to be mostly (80-90%) based on John Chaffe’s famous book “Thinking Critically” (6th Edition, 2000). Even the course objectives and topic outline seemed to be paraphrased out of the book. As UNITAR’s self-developed courseware was structured very differently from the course outline, it was hardly reflected or used by either the educators, or the students.

So, I began to read John Chaffe’s famous book “Thinking Critically” to get better feel of what the students were learning. Strangely, I kept on falling asleep while reading this book, and although the content is relevant and useful, the writing style and design of that book (I suppose the later versions are more engaging!) did not appeal or inspire my thinking mind. So, if I am falling asleep reading this book, what about the students?

In addition to this book, the course also recommended students to read another book entitled ‘Critical Thinking: A Student's Introduction’ (G. Bassham & Co., 2007). So, I explored the book, and found it more activity-oriented, engaging, and inspiring. However, I still felt that something was missing to spark the ‘Critical Thinking’ course to life.

So, I explored our ‘Critical Thinking’ courseware again, and was actually positively surprised with the quality of the content. However, since it was structured very differently from the course outline and it did not have a search function, naturally students found it quite frustrating to use.

Based on these surface level reflections, I felt (based on my limited knowledge) that I needed to revamp the whole course to really make any difference. However, I also decided to take advantage and extract the learning juices from the three original main course resources just mentioned. Based on my understanding, the problem with this course was not so much the content, but the process on how it was facilitated. Based on my findings, too little focus was given to engaging the student’s learning mind to question, analyze, synthesize, reason, problem solve, and make better decisions, which I believe is the essence of this course. Finally, and importantly for most of our students, English is their second language, and the student population consists of a colourful inter-religious/cultural/racial blend (Indian, Chinese, Malay, etc.), which especially the two recommended critical thinking books are not really tailored to.

Although, I was no master in ‘Critical Thinking’ (still the case!), I believed that I had enough reasons to take the risk to reengineer the course to make it more relevant and effective.

COURSE PLANNING & PREPARATION
Although, I was planning to reengineer the course, I felt that the original course objectives would remain the same, with just a minor twist. The role of the lecturer coaching ‘Critical Thinking’ is to:

• Teach the fundamental thinking, reasoning and language abilities that a student needs for academic success.
• Engage students in the active thinking process.
• Integrate the development of thinking abilities with the four skills: Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening.

As students seemed to fear the word “Critical’ more than thinking (tough one, too!), I suggested to change the name of the course to just ‘Thinking Skills’, but that was firmly rejected. Then I had this crazy idea to simply develop the course outline (modules and topics) and learning objectives, and let the students discover, explore, organize, adapt and construct the course content based on existing materials available on the web (User-generated content). This idea was totally rejected. Finally, I suggested to include a ‘Creative Thinking’ topic, which I felt was missing from the course, but that was also rejected. Creative thinking is different! So, instead I decided to infuse creative thinking into every single module of the ‘Critical Thinking’ course.

In the end, just before the semester started we managed to agree upon the course outline, which was:

Introduction to Critical Thinking

View more presentations from Zaid Alsagoff.

1. Introduction to Critical Thinking
2. Thinking Tools
3. Arguments = Part I + Part II + Part III
4. Fallacies
5. Language
6. Decision Making
7. Problem Solving

(Click on the course outline links above to view the slides)

Due to limited time, I constructed the content for each module during the 15-week semester, usually a week or two ahead of schedule. As our University was increasingly becoming more conventional, we were required to conduct a 2-hour F2F tutorial every week with our students. Although, we could use OLT, I decided not to, due to the nature of the course (real-time activity-based), number of students (300+), students status (mostly full-time), lack of broadband Internet access (for some), and that the group of tutors facilitating this course were reasonably experienced (more than me, actually!) and were fully capable of managing their own section(s) without my interference. As a course leader, I was also assigned to manage three (3) sections (90+ students).

However, to improve the possibility of consistent quality, I did prepare lesson plans (and student activity sheets) for the tutors, which gave them some idea on how I would conduct my tutorials. The lesson plans also included answers (if any), tips, and resource links to some of the puzzles, questions, and videos (YouTube) discussed in the presentation slides. In short, I provided them with some ideas on how I would facilitate the tutorials, but empowered them the freedom to think and do it their own way, as long as they covered the syllabus.

COURSE CONTENT
The main focus of the revamped course would be on students’ practicing, reflecting and improving their thinking skills, and less emphasize would be given to exploring critical thinking theories, concepts and the endless definitions associated with it. What is critical thinking anyway?

With this in mind, the course content was constructed focused on engaging the students to reflect and improve their ability to question, analyze, synthesize, reason, problem solve, and make constructive decisions.

To deal with the students fear and motivation to think critically, I decided to put Aristotle, Plato and Socrates on the bench, and introduce my new dream thinking support team led by Master Yoda, Mr. Bean and Inspector Gadget. They play a critical role in relaxing the learners’ mind to laugh, think, discuss and reflect their own thinking. If Mr. Bean can think critically, why can’t I?

Finally, to engage students to think, the content or presentation slides included a lot of thought provoking questions, puzzles, cartoons, pictures, quotes, and group activities to continuously spark the desire to explore the content further.

In short, I extracted and mashed up past learning references, added my flavour, and brought in assistance from another galaxy (e.g. Master Yoda) and Earth (e.g. Mr. Bean) to reengineer the content.

F2F TUTORIALS
I made it a point from day one that students will have to think-out-loud in this class, and no one will be able to escape this. Of course to loosen up the overall fear, I would first gently force the most nervous or scared looking student in the class to answer an open-ended question with their own opinion. By giving this person encouragement and support to whatever the answer may be, the other students in the class might feel safer to participate. It actually works, even in Malaysia were students are often scared to talk and share their ideas in class.

Every F2F tutorial is broken down into four (4) sessions:

• Warm Up (5 – 15 minutes) – To awaken the students’ minds and bring the class to life, I would begin each class with a few brain stimulating activities, which could be a/an puzzle, question, picture, issue, or a quote.
• Lecture & Discussion (30– 40 minutes) – This session is very much like an interactive lecture, whereby I would explain, reflect and discuss together with the students the ‘Thinking Menu’ of the day.
• Group Activities (45 - 55 minutes) – In this session students are broken up into small groups (4- 6 participants) to collaborate on some relevant thinking activities. Each group have to choose their leader, and are given specific time frames to complete particular tasks (or using specific thinking tools), and then they need to summarize their answers or findings in writing, and finally one (or more) of the group representatives have to present and discuss the group’s output with the class.
• Sum Up (5-10 minutes) – Summarize the module and synthesize/evaluate/reflect the group activity findings.

Students are also required to share and rotate task duties, which will ensure that all students at least once or twice will have the pleasure to present the output to the class during the semester. By having such group activities in each class, students also get to practice their teamwork, time management, communication, listening, writing, and presentation skills while collectively thinking about important issues.

To make the group activities relevant to their learning, I tried to select interesting and meaningful discussion topics. For example, during the first F2F class group activity, students were asked to reflect what it means to be an excellent student and lecturer. They were asked to discuss, identify and rank the “Top 10” characteristics/traits/behaviours of an excellent lecturer and student. By the end of the class we together had actually negotiated what to expect from one another throughout the semester. I told them that I will try my level best to be an excellent lecturer according to their terms (caring, punctual, open minded, effective teaching, etc.), and that I hoped that they could be an excellent student accordingly (hard working, self-disciplined, active participation, honest, etc.).

By the end of the semester we had managed to discuss and reflect collectively a lot of interesting and relevant topics including global warming, great thinkers and inventions, whether entrepreneurship is genetic or can be learned, the essence of beauty, whether all-star wrestling is real or not, and much more. During the learning process students had also managed to explore several useful thinking tools including mind mapping, six thinking hats, CoRT, and SWOT Analysis.

ONLINE FORUMS
Students were required to participate in two (2) online forums scheduled during the semester. Each forum carried 2.5 percent (total = 5%) of the course assessment evaluation. Assessment scheme for each forum was:

• 1.0 % - For your reflective response to the forum issue.
• 1.0 % - for reflecting, adding value or challenging at least one of your classmates’ responses.
• 0.5 % - for submitting your 1st response within the first week of the forum.

The assessment scheme was set to encourage early participation and threaded discussions (not just a list of short essay answers!).

In the first online forum, students were asked to argue who they thought was the greatest thinker of the 20th century, and in the second forum students were asked to discuss an invention (and the thinking process behind it) that had an influential impact on mankind.

Both forums turned out to be informative and dynamic. Especially, the first forum, where approximately 300 students joined one mega discussion, was a huge challenge beyond the capability of our in-house developed learning management system (LMS), and my browser. After having several mega headaches trying to manage and reflect hundreds of posts, I made sure in the second forum to chunk the discussion into groups based on the course sections, which were facilitated and marked by each individual tutor.

The good thing we can take from the online forums is that most students know about Wikipedia. The not so good thing was that many of the students simply copy/pasted from it without giving much thought, or any reference or credit to the source. Interestingly, a few students managed to copy/paste Aristotle, Plato and Socrates from Wikipedia (No comment!). There was even one case of a student copying another students’ excellent reflective answer from the forum itself, and then pasting it as his own answer with a minor change to the introduction and conclusion. Luckily, the student being plagiarised informed me about it, and I did the necessary to teach the plagiarizer a lesson he probably won’t forget.

Overall, it was a thrill to engage and discuss about great thinkers and inventions (and the struggles they went through) with the students, and many of them took these forums quite seriously, and some of their reflections and arguments were quite impressive. I was also impressed with some of the students’ reflective arguments for why they should get a better grade.

ONLINE QUIZ
Students had to take three small quizzes, each carrying five (5) percent of the course assessment evaluation. One (1) quiz was conducted during a F2F class and two (2) quizzes were conducted online. I gave the students the opportunity to do each online quiz (multiple-choice) from any place within a one week period.

In the first online quiz, I used randomization of questions (from a question pool) and shuffling of questions/answers, and I had deliberately created a tough one to awaken and challenge the students to think early on in the course. Interestingly, only 3 out of 272 who took the first online quiz got 100%.

The second online quiz was based on the module 4 (Fallacies). This time around I did not use randomization of questions, but I did continue with shuffling of questions/answers. 60 out of 285 managed to get 100%, which was an astonishing result (and perhaps a much easier quiz!). Interestingly, I had constructed a ‘Two Wrongs Make a Right’ fallacy in module 4 which says,

“I don’t feel guilty about cheating on Zaid’s online quiz. Half the class cheats on his quiz.”

Strangely enough, in one section a whopping 20 out of 42 got 100% correct. The results were impressive, but something was not right. Then I discovered that 17 out of these 20 with full marks had completed the quiz in less than 3 minutes. Other students who did the quiz took on the average more than 10 minutes to complete. Also, one of the students had come to my office during the quiz period with a friend (in a giggling mood!), claiming that someone else had logged in as her, and done her quiz (and gotten only 90%!). She asked me to reset her quiz. So, to give her a second chance, I reset her quiz. She took less than 2 minutes to get 100%.

I told the students in the next class that some of them had cheated on the online quiz, and asked those who had done it to come forward and admit their wrongdoing. I also told them about the quiz completion time discovery, and that I had a list of all those that are likely to be guilty, and that this was also a test of integrity and character. After the class, the guilty came forward one by one to apologize for their wrongdoing. Although, they did something wrong, they showed great character to come forward and admit their mistake. To my astonishment, one student made it clear to me that they did not cheat, but instead argued that they had collaborated together to succeed. Now, that got me to think that perhaps we could also conduct online group quizzes in the future, which could be useful to facilitate collaborative learning in a quiz competitive mode. I suppose we all learned a few lessons from this incident.

Finally, if you are planning to conduct online quizzes, keep in mind that you will never know who is actually doing the online quiz, unless you have a witness (proctored exam), or it is done in a computer lab with surveillance, so that you can verify who is actually doing it. But then again if students really want to cheat, they will find a way. Besides minimizing the possibility of cheating, it is perhaps more useful to encourage and practice good values and behaviours during the learning process. In short, we need to practice good values and behaviours ourselves first, before we can expect such things from our students. Look who’s talking!

GROUP PROJECT & PRESENTATION
In addition to three (3) quizzes, two (2) online forums, and group activities in each F2F session, students were required to work on a group project, which would be presented to the class some time during the last four (4) weeks of the course. They were required to research a problem or issue of their choice, and then write a recommendation report with constructive suggestions on how to deal with it. Interestingly, I made it compulsory that everyone in the group had to present some portion of their project during the group project presentation. While all shared the same grade for the group project (15%), each student was evaluated individually for the presentation session (10%).

Although, there were many interesting projects and engaging presentations, I suppose the video showed by one of the groups of a person dying from AIDS (last moments!), is something that until today still lingers in my head. Overall, it was good to see that most of the students were confident enough to present and not chicken out. Although, many of the presenters perhaps faced the slides and notes more than the audience, we have to give them credit, because they were also presenting and articulating their findings in English, which is their second language. I suppose with more practice and encouragement, they can master the ability to present confidently with less supporting aids.

FINAL EXAM
The final exams (50% of the total course evaluation) are conducted F2F at the students’ respective study centres. The ‘Critical Thinking’ course exam included a mixture of short essay and discussion type of questions. The final exam was divided into two sections:

• Section A (20%) – They were given five (5) questions (answer all) to check their understanding on the core concepts learned in this course. They were required to (depending upon the question) identify, describe, differentiate, and give examples.
• Section B (30%) - They were asked to identify the purpose (or main-point), analyze, evaluate and/or give their opinions/reasons/suggestions on an article, advertisement and a quote.

Having punished the students mentally to think-out-loud throughout the course, I suppose I made the final exam reasonably easy to pass (including juicy examination tips!), testing all the six (6) levels of Bloom’s taxonomy.

To be honest, I have never been a fan of final exams. If I had the choice I would instead add at least 30% of these marks for class participation (Currently only 5%). If I was to take any of those final exams I took during my undergraduate and graduate studies, I would surely fail this time around (Even if I got ‘A’ previously!). So, what are final exams measuring anyway? Then again, we cannot blame it on the final exam mode, but instead we should question those asking the questions.

RESULTS
Were students satisfied? It was encouraging to know that I averaged approximately 90% (you need at least 85% to me nominated for best lecturer award!) in the teaching/course evaluation survey over three (3) sections. However, it was more encouraging to learn that the total average for this course was around 85% (including the tutors’ results).

However, did learning take place? It is difficult to verify this one, but I know for sure that 92.9% of all the students taking this course (316) managed to pass it. I do have some positive and constructive comments to share here from a few students and tutors.

• “(Student)…Thank you for your guidance and not forgetting your lively classes. It's been a month since the exam and I must say all the fallacies learnt remain and is being applied in everyday reading materials and at workplace with…”
• ”(Student)…Last but not least I would like to thank you for being "the teacher that inspires". I truly enjoyed myself in your class and would really look forward to being your student again (No.no.. I don't want to repeat Critical Thinking ..maybe for other subject)…”
• "(Student)…Thank you very much for your quick reply. You are certainly a very good, efficient and helpful lecturer. From my experience, you are the second lecturer who have answered my questions during the holiday but for this semester the only one. They should be more lecturers like you…”
• ”(Student)… honestly I have learned a lot from this course, not only in thinking, but more than what I could describe here. Really enjoyed your class and the way you teach has definitely changed the way I looked at learning myself...”
• “(Tutor)…Your Forum 2 question is very interesting and the rules and regulations suggested are good. That will make the students send in their answers earlier…It’s nice having you as the course leader. You are so efficient and informative.”
• “(Tutor)…I must let you know that I am very happy with your approach to the critical thinking course. It has such a fresh and imaginative look. The slides are so attractive and I like the F2F Lesson Plan. It keeps us aware on how you (as a course leader) look at things. Please keep that up…”

Now this is pleasing to my ego! As for Kirkpatrick’s levels of evaluation 3 and 4, it is difficult to provide any concrete evidence, except for comments such as the ones above. But let’s hope that students can apply some the thinking skills learned during the course and gain some positive results in their studies, work and life. Actually, I should track these 316 students down and find out!

AREAS TO IMPROVE?
One year has passed since I revamped the ‘Critical Thinking’ course. I only managed to facilitate this course for one semester, and then the top management argued that I could be more effective to the University doing other things than actually teaching students. Luckily, the course is still being taught and that they are still using my little contribution to ‘Critical Thinking’ at the undergraduate level.

However, having become one year wiser (or dumber!) and discovered through reading what is needed to survive in places like Microsoft or Google, I believe this ‘Critical Thinking’ course needs to be constructively destroyed and reengineered.

Here are a few things that I would do, if I had the chance to revamp it again:

• Challenging Puzzles/Exercises – I would add new puzzles and thinking exercises to challenge the students’ analytical, imaginative and problem solving skills to the level they can expect from a Microsoft or Google interview. Give them a taste of it, which might actually accelerate their motivation to learn.
• Leaner Modules - Streamline the modules to consist of fewer topics and concepts, and instead spend more time on each element, enabling students to have more time to learn, practice and reflect before moving on. Especially, the 'Arguments' module would be totally revamped (simplify and focus), which was too much based on the book (Critical Thinking: A Student's Introduction’), due to my lack of knowledge in this area.
• Online Tools - Would use more tools such as online surveys/polls (to gather students' opinions and collectively reflect) and perhaps LAMS (Learning Activity Management System), which could be useful for sequencing and managing thinking activities such as Six Thinking hats. Also, I would request students to use wikis to work on their group projects, enabling me to follow the progress of the project. In addition, it would be interesting to explore 3D virtual worlds like Second Life and examine how it can nurture and motivate students to think-out-loud in such environments. In short, I would use more online learning tools to facilitate thinking beyond the physical classroom.
• More Videos – Although, I did use a few YouTube videos to stimulate thinking during the first round, I would probably embed more short videos this time around to engage the mind and bring the class to life.
• New Dream Thinking Team – Although, I would probably keep Master Yoda and Mr. Bean in my team, I would try to include local cartoons, such as LAT (if possible).

To improve my coaching or facilitation skills I would explore, study and reflect videos of well-known educators in formal and informal education around the world, which can today be easily accessed for free through YouTube channels (Stanford, MIT, Berkeley, etc.) or other video sharing sites (e.g. VIDEOLECTURES.net). In short, the only thing stopping us from becoming a good educator is our reluctance to learn, explore and challenge ourselves continuously (and a good Internet connection!).

In short, the ‘Critical Thinking’ course would be revamped again to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

CONCLUSION
Oh man, you are still reading! Alright, I will have to say a few more things before I take off to my next learning adventure. First, if you ask me, I would not get so obsessed in trying to differentiate critical, creative, innovative or inventive thinking (learning and thinking prefers no human constructed borders!) during class, but instead focus increasingly on finding new ways to nurture and infuse more thinking into the students’ learning process for all courses, so that when they graduate it has become a habit for life.

Also, I would strongly recommend that we continue to have at least one or two courses that explore thinking and thinking tools intensively, enabling us to flex our imaginative, creative and analytical thinking muscles (e.g. using six thinking hats, SWOT, Disney Creativity Strategy, and ‘Five Ws and H’). In addition, we could always use our analytical imagination to create new thinking tools.

If you ask me, I would argue that the essence of all thinking boils down to asking QUESTIONS. And we all can do that, and therefore we all have the ability to think. Which fallacy did I just commit?

If we can encourage students to ask more questions, going beyond the compartments of their disciplines, and increasingly nurture the courage in them to explore new ideas, we are probably on the right track.

I remember way back in 1992, I had just finished my high school certificate (similar to A-Levels) at Ullern Gymnas (Oslo, Norway), and had just managed to scrape through. I was so sick of formal education that I made a promise to myself to never study again.

Here I am in 2008, sharing my experiences on facilitating “Critical Thinking’ to undergraduate students at UNITAR, in Malaysia. You just never know :)

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• Coaching Critical Thinking to Think Creatively! (March 12th, 2008)
  

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IMU Learning Series 04 - The Art of Diagnosis

I teach medical students in the IMU Clinical School at Batu Pahat. These students are in their final semester of the MBBS program. They undergo their senior clerkship training here before appearing for their final examination. The senior clerkship program is designed to train these students make the transition from medical student to doctor.

3 GUIDING PRINCIPLES

My job here is largely to show them how to blend their scientific knowledge with the art needed to practice the discipline of internal medicine. Three principles guide me in this role.

1. The first is not to be a trader. Traders, as you know, sell in retail what they have bought wholesale. If I catch myself merely dishing out information from books and journals, I know I have violated this principle.
   
   
2. The second is to always remember that what the student does for learning is more important than what the teacher does for teaching. This comes in handy whenever I plan my classes.
   
   
3. The third is to be aware that the learning process is akin to the lighting of a candle and not to the filling of an empty vessel.
   

THE ART OF DIAGNOSIS

The art of diagnosis in Internal Medicine is in many ways similar to that of putting together the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. I show students the mental processes involved in fitting together the clues they get from the history, physical examination and investigations of their patients. To put it another way, if the knowledge these students already have from their books can be compared to alphabets, my job is to teach them how to form words and meaningful sentences.

I try to impress on my students that understanding involves more than simply hearing the spoken words of their patients. I emphasize the importance of listening with both ears and eyes, for body language is important too. As Wilfred Trotter, an English neurosurgeon once said – “diseases often reveal their secrets in casual parenthesis”. What patients say, and how they say it, can both provide clues to the diagnosis.

The hospital environment is filled with disease, death and suffering. It is not uncommon for health care workers to be adversely affected emotionally because of it. I make my students aware of this and I encourage them to find ways to develop that protective space within them which Dr. Stephen R. Covey has called ‘the space between stimulus and response’ in one of his books. For it is in that space that we can choose our responses to what we see and find around us.

When I teach these young medical students, I am often reminded of these words from a poem by Khalil Gibran: Your children are not your children for they are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. They come through you but not from you. And though they are with you yet they belong not to you…… You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday……

As a coach, I am therefore always aware that the students under my care have the potential to reach heights that I cannot. That, paradoxically, makes me both humble and proud.

Velayudhan Menon, MD

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IMU Learning Series 03 - My Experiences as a Lecturer

MY FIRST FEW YEARS…

I remember my first few years as a lecturer between 1995 and 1998. I entered the classroom ready to go! I enjoyed lecturing the students and sharing knowledge with them. I saw them struggle and succeed. I loved being in the classroom! I woke up each morning, excited to go to university. The hardest part of my first few years as a lecturer, was not what happened in the lecture hall. The hardest part was what took place after a grueling university day - the preparation. My life consisted of two parts: at university, and preparing for university.

The paperwork was overwhelming for me. Letters from the office room, notes from parents, queries from the students, papers to mark, mail of every sort, articles someone found interesting, fundraisers, permission slips, purchase forms for the lab materials, and my own lists. In addition to the above schedule was my regular pathology hospital work every morning from 8 am to 10 am.

In the evenings, if I were able to go back in time, I would tell myself to relax! While teachers are amazing, and somewhat resemble superheroes, we don't have to do everything! Decide what is important and don't stress over the rest!

LEARNING EXPERIENCES

Coming to think of it, I have had several moments of experiences during these 15 years: the best, the worst, the funniest, and the most embarrassing experiences of my teaching career.

During my first year as a regular medical lecturer, I was teaching in a dental college, in a class that had managed - with their attitudes and behaviors - to drive out their former pathology lecturer. One day, in a burst of rage and frustration, I uttered the words “Jesus Christ!” Soon after, someone left a picture of Jesus Christ himself on my desk. It was a humbling lesson in self-control and in not letting students get the better of me.

What did I learn from the experience? That you're never too old to learn!

One day, I explained a concept to one of my post graduate pathology classes. That afternoon while reviewing what I had done, I realized that I had made a mistake in my explanation. The next day, I started class with the words 'I am sorry,' and then I gave the correct explanation. Instead of being angry, the students clapped and thanked me for acknowledging my mistake!

Lesson learned: Do not be afraid to accept responsibility for your errors.

WORST EXPERIENCE?

One of my worst experiences as a lecturer to post graduate medical students on Pathology was a senior student who just didn't want to learn to use technology – computers, microscopes, histokinete, immunohistochemistry, etc (We had to train these PG students to be future lecturers too, in addition to being specialists). He had made up his mind that technology was something he was not going to get involved with. Moreover, he was rude. He talked when I was talking, did everything except what was asked of him, and basically refused to be part of the class. I tried standing close to his desk, asking if he needed help, ignoring him… It was hopeless. To make matters worse, he was a doctor in his mid-30s whom many others looked up to.

During one histopathology laboratory training session, I reached a point where I couldn't take it anymore. I asked the class to stop and listen. I told them I understood that some people didn't want to be there and if they didn't want to participate, they should leave so others could learn. I didn't have a problem with them leaving, I told them - although I would be required to note down their names - but if they stayed, I said (looking directly at the offender), they had to be quiet and participate. I also pointed out that if their students acted the way some of them were acting, they would be assigned punishment. Then I stood behind the person causing the problems. He quieted down after that; although he didn't always follow the assigned tasks, he did stop complaining. Later, though, I heard him talking in the hall about how I was treating him like a child and had embarrassed him in front of the rest of the class.

About five years later, he went on to lecture in the same University, while practicing in the same hospital. When he met me, he chuckled about the episode. He now is a big user of technology. He never actually apologized to me, but when other lecturers had problems, he helped them and told them they should pay attention to what he was saying.



BEST EXPERIENCES?
The best teaching experiences occur when you see the light bulbs flicking on and know they understand. I have had the pleasure of training many people, some with weak thinking skills and so scared they are going to break something that they are afraid to do anything. When they learn that they can do something they never imagined they could do, or realize that the science and technology will save them time, a wave of enthusiasm washes over them. It is such a nice thing to be a part of.

The very best moments are when someone you've taught tells you that you are extremely patient (I am not normally a very patient person, but add critical sarcasm in my lecturing conversations!) or comes back later to tell you how much they've used the skill you taught them, or how what you taught them has helped them be a better doctor.

Another great moment is when they are so excited about what you are teaching them that they constantly comment about how much it will help them, or how much fun they are having.

Those are the lessons you wish you could repeat over and over. They are what keep us doing what we do!