My Special Break Activity

It has been a very quiet week when the students are on their special one week break. I could have taken a break too but I have decided not to so that I can look at finalizing the on-going assessment marks for my two classes of 47 students from my BEL499 classes. For the whole week, I've looked at my students work with less distractions as I did not have to go to classes to teach or allow my students to see me for personal or group consultations. I specifically focus on my 2 classes of Degree in Accounting students this week.

The tedious part has been to look at the e-Portfolio as I had to go to the links one by one and go through each one before deciding on the marks. I'd love to give 'excellent' grades to everyone but that won't be fair to those who had gone the extra miles preparing their sites. A lot of information can be discovered from their portfolios. It's not just about the content. The way everything is put together can portray the personality of that person. Besides the language element, I also looked at how my students used images and styles in creating this very important document.

In this situation, the saying "Don't judge a book by it's cover" cannot be applied.
You are going to be judged by what is shown. You will be judged whether you will fit in to be the member of the professional bodies. In this case, will you fit in to hold the image of an accountant?    

One of the criteria that I looked at was how my students organised their certificates. Although certificates might be easily accessible in their physical folders and files, it might be difficult if they had not been consistent in updating the files. Some students just scanned the documents and put them on the websites without proper labeling and order. Some had just selected a few and left the most important ones like the academic transcripts and their diploma certificates. Without proper labeling, you are asking the readers/interviewers to guess.

Okay, I better stop rambling now. What I wanted to share today is that I managed to achieve my goal for this week,that is to complete 'keying in the on-going assessments marks' for BEL499.

So, what's left for the next two weeks is to complete doing the Evaluation 2, the Hiring Interview sessions. At least for this subject!

I have 6 classes of EWC661 to evaluate too.

Besides teaching and evaluating, the setting and vetting of exam questions are also in progress in between and overlapping with other tasks yet to be completed.

So, there goes 'My Special Break Activity'.

P/S: Lecturers don't necessarily go for a break when their students are having theirs.

Student Learning Time

After 2 months of blogging on my teaching activities and reflections,I began to question myself on the purpose and the effectiveness of using my blog to help my students.

The reason I started blogging again after about 5 years of not writing anything is so that my blog can be the platform for me to share additional materials for reference since I only meet each class less than 2 hours per week. It's week 12 this week. 2 more weeks to end the semester.

However,I found that they had not been referring to my blog or the suggested links that can help them to create the questionnaires or interviews for their report writing classes. I found out when they failed to write based on the materials that I have shared. I also shared several You Tube links for them to watch the demonstrations

Initially, I thought that using blog and Facebook,it can attract them to be more involved in their learning process. I also use Instagram to capture their weekly attendance. I discovered later that some students refused to even open a Facebook account. I use Facebook to give quick public announcement to all my classes. I have a total of 8 classes this semester.

Besides that, I also gave them several options to reach me.
1. In class
2. In my room
3. Text message
4. Whatsapp
5. Email
6. Google Drive
7. i-Learn
8. Facebook
9. Instagram
10.Blog

I wanted to provide variety in my teaching techniques and tools to cater for different learning styles.
In my first class, I shared course information,weekly schedule,assessment and assignment.
There's also information about the duration of 'Student Learning Time' and 'Lecture Hour'.

Now,the question is "How many students 'responsibly and diligently' follow the 'student learning time' as specified?"

Yes,there's a voice of disappointment there.

Perhaps my expectations are too high for these students who are taking this course not by choice.
What I want to state here is that it is not enough to learn English  language skills in just about 28 hours minus presentations and tests.

It's less than a day!

"You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink!"

Interview Questions

http://www.slideshare.net/thomasgabriel033/top-10-internship-interview-questions-with-answers?related=3

Free English Online Courses

Here are some suggestions to improve your English proficiency at your own pace and time.

They are free online grammar courses.

http://alison.com/learn/English-Grammar

When I read the questions in your questionnaires, I also realized that most of you need to do revision on your tenses.

You may visit my previous blog post here to do revisions and the tests.

http://learningenglishthroughmyeyes.blogspot.com/2008/01/simple-present-tense-present-continuous.html

There are lots of materials available for you.

Please watch "How to Form Questions in English" below.

Most of you have written sentences and simply put 'question marks' at the end of the sentence to form questions. That's not how it works.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyVw_yNXArg

Holidays and Weekends

In the end,how many hours are left for teaching and learning?

Minus holidays.

Minus public holidays.

Minus 1 week of mid-semester break.

Minus 1 week of special break.

Minus compulsory faculty events.

Minus 3 weeks for presentations and evaluations.

Yes,my dear students! 

Independent learning is necessary. 

Less than 2 hours per week in class is definitely not enough.

Group Consultation Week

I've decided to do group consultation for this week. It will be time consuming and I have to set the timer to 5 minutes for each group so that I can allocate the time to give face-to-face comments for each group. It seems impossible to do the online corrections for each group like I used to do before. Last semester, I had 12 smaller groups of 4 in a class and 6 groups of 4 for another class. So,about 18 groups,which means about 18 reports to supervise.

For this semester, I have 6 classes.

After counting,the total is 50 groups!

Rescheduling and Reallocating

While I was sitting reflecting on this week's classes, I think I might not have done very well this week. I wanted to give too much in such a short time. Less than 2 hours to cover several topics. I realized that within that time,it could be the only time that my students will 'touch' their textbooks.

I started to make some calculations.
I have 6 classes of EWC661.
In each class, I have between 28 to 36 students.
So,I will have 7 to 9 groups of on-going reports to supervise in 1 class.
I have 188 students taking this course which is the same number that I have to evaluate for their final exam paper that is 7 pages long.

Now,I wonder if the process approach to report writing can work well this time.

Okay, I'm taking a deep breath!

Wait a minute!
I have 2 BEL499 classes too.
Their resumes and job application letters have been submitted.
47 resumes and letters to be checked and evaluated.
Assuming that I look at each one of them between 5 to 10 minutes,
I need to allocate at least 470 minutes x 2 = 940 minutes.
(About 16 hours) = (4 hours x 4 days) = (2 hours x 8 days) = (1 hour x 16 days).

I'll go for the 2 hours per day of evaluating in between classes for 2 weeks.
This seems to be the most realistic time frame.

Oh dear! What about the setting of exam questions?
Today, I have been assigned to set another part of test question to be done in a few week's time.

Too much to give,not much time given.

It's time for me to reschedule and reallocate more realistic time frame.

Change of Plan

The initial plan this week was to ask all groups of EWC661 to do a 'pilot test' on the questionnaires that they had prepared. After looking at some questionnaires created, I decided to give more input and lectures on the basic steps that they need to know. I want them to see the link between the topics that they have chosen and the purpose of their studies. I want them to really understand what actually they want to know about. If they could not answer this basic question, they will have a difficult time to proceed.

Of course,I had approved all the titles since week 3 and 4 but I could see that not all groups had done further research or readings on the related topics. So,for my Sunday and Monday classes,which were 4 classes, I did a very quick review on several very important topics that I have covered briefly before.

The topics covered include:

1. Data collection
2. Sampling
3. Data processing
4. Questionnaire(sample)
5. Background of the Study

Open-Ended Question Data Analysis

https://youtu.be/yWBXV651yd4

How to conduct Interviews?

https://youtu.be/A-VhzWKaHB4

Designing a Questionnaire

https://youtu.be/FkX-t0Pgzzs

What is a Questionnaire?

https://youtu.be/CfEga-dr_Ww

The Magic Tricks

For the past 2 weeks, I have taught all my 6 groups of EWC661 - English for Report Writing classes 'The Magic Tricks' to assist them in completing their reports. As expected, nobody knew any of the 'secrets' in Microsoft Word that I've shared with them.

The content of my hands-on lecture includes the usage of these functions:

1. Headings
2. Page Break
3. Page Number 
4. Multi-level Numbering
5. Navigation Pane
6. Review
7. Spelling and Grammar
8. Thesaurus
9. New Comment
10. Table of Contents
11. Table of Figures
12. Table of Illustrations
13. Update Table of Contents

Everything was done in about 15 minutes towards the end of my lecture as a 'reward' to them.

So,my dear students,how have you enjoyed 'The Magic Tricks'?

Spring-cleaning My Office

Last semester ended in a breeze.
It had been my busiest semester with 273 students from 11 different classes and 5 different subjects taught. Imagine the amount of evaluation and marking of tests,assignments,reports and final exam scripts that I had to mark. When all had been uploaded,the setting of examination questions followed. Well actually, even before the final examinations were not yet done,the task of setting exam questions were given. I had to set 2 codes and also had to vet them. Setting exam questions can be challenging as you need to follow the specified test specifications and find suitable articles that match the requirements.

I haven't had any 'real' break since September 2014 as one task leads to another.

March 2015 started and ended in a blink I would say.

My room was in a mess full of students' papers. I usually make preparation for the following week on Thursdays after my last class, but not today!

Today, it was the start of my 'spring-cleaning' session for my room. I must throw away all the unnecessary items in  my room to make room for the next heaps and piles of reports and assignments coming in a few weeks time.

Questionnaires and Interviews

This week I will look at the questionnaires  and interview questions that each group has prepared based on the approved topics. I'm very excited to see the outcome as this semester I have assigned specific themes for them to practice their research skills and later their report writing skills. 

Okay, that's all for today. My class today starts at 10:00am.

Week 5- Semester March-July 2015

It's Week 5 of the semester. I'm teaching 2 codes this time as compared to 5 different codes and 11 different classes for the previous semester. So,I have been preparing lessons for 2 subjects and 8 different classes.

Teaching many classes is not a problem for me as I have always enjoyed teaching. The challenging part is doing the evaluation,especially when the deadline is very tight. For each class, the average number of students is 35. The task is now to divide and allocate ample time to do the evaluation, both for the assignment and later the final examination. 

A Come Back

What a long break!
I miss blogging.
I miss writing my teaching reflections.
I miss sharing my experience.
I miss my teaching 'voice'.

So,here I am after 5 years in hiatus.