School of Design and Environment
Teaching Activity at the School of Design and Environment for Semester 2, Academic Year 2003/2004

Live until old, learn until old’ is an approximate translation of a Chinese saying on which Associate Professor Seah Kah Heng based his talk on at a teaching seminar organised by the Departments of Building and Real Estate on 21 April 2004. Carrying a backpack which contained literally a bag of tricks, Professor Seah showed the staff an array of the tools he used to interest his students in the courses he taught at the Manufacturing Division of the Department of Mechanical Engineering. To make this courses more

A vibrant and enthusiastic Q & A session

real and relevant for his students, he used ordinary items like clothe hangers, hoses, raincoat, water bottles and even an army helmet, so that students could actually see and feel the connection of what they were learning with the real world and increase their capacity for lifelong learning. Professor Seah found that using such everyday items would enable students to make connections between theory and practice and thereby increase their interest in his modules. When framing tutorial and examination questions, Professor Seah would include ‘real’ constraints such as the cost and weight of materials used to determine the viability of solutions suggested by students. Following his talk, there was a vibrant question and answer session with staff members who described his talk as ‘very relevant’ and ‘informative’.

Faculty of Science
Lecture Game Show

As a form of revision for their mid-term test last February, students of GEK1508/PC1325, “Einstein’s Universe and Quantum Weirdness” were treated to a lecture quiz inspired by the TV game show, ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire?’ The format of this quiz was 15 multiple-choice questions of ascending difficulty, similar in scope to what would appear in the upcoming test. Although only one lucky student was selected to take part in this quiz, it was hoped that everyone in the audience would also attempt the questions at the same time and hence benefit from it. As in the TV game show, there were three lifelines: ‘50/50’, ‘Consult a Friend’, and ‘Ask the Audience’. It was certainly an exciting show, as the contestant methodically cleared the questions one by one.

The contestant of the game show held on 17 February 2004, Tang Anh Quy (left), receiving a letter of participation from the lecturer of GEK1508/PC1325 and game show host, Dr Edward Teo.

Naturally, the suspense in the lecture theatre mounted as the contestant used up his lifelines and the questions got more and more challenging. Unfortunately, the penultimate question proved a little too tricky, and so there was no ‘millionaire’ this time round. Of course, there was never a million dollars at stake, and indeed the real winners of the game were all the students present. It was a fun yet effective way for the class to revise the lecture material.

Faculty of Engineering
Project-based Learning in Process Dynamics and Control

In the recent offering of the module CN3121 “Process Dynamics and Control (PDC)” to second year chemical and biomolecular students (enrolment: 235), several changes were made to the pedagogical style. One key change was the introduction of a project component. The intention was to foster independent learning skills in the students and to reinforce the classroom lectures with ‘simulated’ real world experience. Students were provided an option of modeling and developing control systems for multivariable processes (simulation models of two chemical ‘plants’ and three diabetic ‘patients’ were provided to the students in MATLAB/SIMULINK) or to choose a research paper (a list of 70 research articles was provided) and prepare a critical summary, verify the results provided in the journal article, track the recent progress in that area, current industrial practices etc. This project involved an enormous investment of time and effort on behalf of the students, teacher and the tutors. Students responded admirably to this challenge and (from student-teacher interactions and their project reports) it appears that they have benefited a lot in terms of understanding the concepts, critical analysis of results, technical report writing, working with and learning from peers etc. It has been a very satisfying experience for this teacher despite the huge amount of effort spent on student consultations and the grading of reports.