NUS today invests a lot of time and effort in teaching evaluations through peer and student feedback and teaching portfolios. Excellent teachers are recognised as role models for the rest of the faculty to emulate. The Faculty of Science helps average or under-performing teachers improve through evaluation and training provided by a Department Teaching Evaluation Committee (DTEC).

An annual teaching workshop is also organised at the start of each academic year to promote good teaching and learning practices among teaching staff from different science disciplines. This year’s teaching workshop was held on 27 July 2004 and attended by over 200 faculty members, TAs, graduate tutors and senior graduate students. The workshop comprised invited talks and discipline-specific breakout sessions. The Dean of Science, Associate Professor Tan Eng Chye, kicked off the workshop by sharing his thoughts on curriculum issues, opportunities for effective engagement, assessment culture and the mindset of teachers and students in the learning environment.

Summary of invited talks

In his plenary talk ‘Scientific Knowledge and Scientific Inquiry’, Professor Mohanan conveyed the need to develop not only the capacity to engage in scientific inquiry but also to cultivate attitudes towards knowledge that are characteristic of scientific inquiry. He presented a way of accomplishing this goal and how to re-think the entire spectrum of teaching and learning in science from decisions on the curriculum to classroom instruction and the design of learning and assessment tasks.

Professor Andy Hor inspired the audience with his talk ‘Research Aggressive = Research Active + Teaching Active’ in which he debunked the narrow view based on the principle of ‘zero-sum’ (i.e. efforts put in teaching are at the expense of research). He highlighted the challenge faced by all academics: how to use ideas derived from their teaching to add value to their research, and how to best utilise their research strengths to improve the quality of their teaching. He pointed out that those with the courage and wisdom to manage such a challenge usually emerge as winners, whereas those who subscribe to the zero-sum doctrine usually fall behind. A case study was also presented to showcase the process of developing an idea from classroom to research laboratory to eventually produce a top-class research paper. He also discussed how research ideas can be harnessed to add an important dimension to one’s teaching.

Associate Professor Goh Say Song suggested strategies for teaching mathematics to large classes (e.g. teaching and learning through examples, progressive and multiple-level understanding of concepts, use of analogies and appropriate IT tools). He highlighted the approaches for further learning through additional readings, discussions and extra problem sets as well as the practical aspects such as generating and sustaining students’ interest. The methodical way in which he delivered his talk provided a live and entertaining demonstration of how a large mathematics class should be taught.

Professor Alex Ip expounded on the importance of project learning (e.g. SEP, SROP, UROPS). Through project work, students learn to deal with controversies, identify and solve problems, create new ideas and make decisions. Through encounters with more challenging questions, students develop intelligent behaviour and acquire affective qualities (e.g. curiosity, openness, reality orientation, objectivity, precision, confidence, responsibility, consensus and collaboration). He stressed the importance for students to not only have a positive ‘I can’ attitude, but also the passionate ‘I enjoy’ feeling. From his enthusiastic talk, it was clear that he practised what he preached.

Finally, in his talk ‘Lectures Alive!’, Associate Professor Edward Teo demonstrated how lectures can be made alive by using IT, live demonstrations and quizzes. He also explained how he used his favourite Star Wars model spacecraft to explain Special Relativity to GEM students. Black hole physics never sounded so simple before! Judging from the positive feedback (Figure 1), the audience benefitted from the morning’s invited talks.

Figure 1. Feedback for the Invited Lectures.

Breakout sessions

Participants could choose to attend any of the three discipline-specific breakout sessions in the afternoon (Biological, Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Physical Sciences or Mathematical and Statistical Sciences) during which experienced teachers shared pointers on various topics (e.g. communication and engaging students, use of IVLE, common mistakes in the use of slides and multimedia, conducting tutorials and laboratory demonstrations and setting examination papers). Through panel discussions, some TAs and new teaching staff also discussed the problems and difficulties faced in teaching for the first time. Feedback from participants indicated that the breakout sessions were useful (Figure 2).

Figure 2. Feedback for the Discipline-specific Workshops.

Feedback on the teaching workshop

The detailed feedback received for the teaching workshop indicated that it was generally well received. Some specific comments received were:

• “All talks were very interesting, useful and inspiring. They helped me understand and take note of a lot of interesting points that I have failed to notice.”
  
  
• “Picked up some ideas I can use in future modules and lectures.”
  
  
• “Some of the slides are very useful for us.”
  
  
• “Overall, I think the sessions are well presented and are a great learning experience for participants.”
  
  
• “In my opinion, training teachers is one of the essentials in education.”
  There were also suggestions put forth for the next Teaching Workshop:
  
  
• “More discussions of particular teaching problems and their solutions.”
  
  
• “How to implement a suggestion like ‘pace the course to balance your advanced and worse-prepared student’ in a particular course.”
  
  
• “A dialogue session to address what can be done to improve teaching in the Faculty.”

Conclusion

In organising this workshop, we had little difficulty in finding good teachers who were enthusiastic in sharing their knowledge and experience. The participants showed much interest and excitement, and made an effort to attend and learn from the speakers and fellow participants. The participants’ feedback confirmed our view that such teaching workshops should be conducted annually.