Reflections on QKS 520 Project Work

QKS 520 Individual Assignment

I recently interviewed my student who has finished her H1 Project Work just last year in order to gain some of the insights that the current students have towards this module. Most of the time, when asked about their initial thoughts towards Project Work, students invariably profess negative sentiments such as “such a waste of time”, “useless” and “no idea what it is for” just to name a few. My student was no exception and vehemently opposed to Project Work being part of the curriculum.

When asked to highlight some of the perceived flaws in the current Project Work syllabus, the largest complaint she had was with her group. The teacher had assigned the various group members through a balloting process. This made the initial survey on the students’ respective characteristics seem redundant since the results of the survey was not even used as part of the grouping criteria. As the name Project Work suggests, a great deal of “Project” entails a great amount of collaboration between team members. Being grouped with random classmates through a balloting process was a sure recipe for disagreements and altercations. Within a JC classroom, there was a variety of cliques. Some lucky students got to be in the same group as their friends while the unfortunate ones like my student ended up with group members that she did not particularly like. This resulted in a feeling of unfairness that some classmates got a better deal than others.

Being unable to work with her friends meant that the group had divided opinions regarding the direction of the project. Everyone had a different interest, which meant that whoever’s idea was used alienated the other 4 group members. This resulted in a general loss of enthusiasm within the group. Furthermore, the teacher played a big part in crafting the direction of the project. This led to the group losing the sense of ownership over the project as it felt more like they were doing what the teacher wanted. Having group members who were lazy led to unequal work distribution, further exacerbating the sense of exasperation that she felt. These members also failed to turn up for the majority of group meetings citing pending examinations and tests as an excuse. This was an appalling lack of respect since the other group members who turned up for the meetings had the same tests and examinations as well. It translated as meaning that the absent members felt that they were more important than the rest and hence had more right to skip such “trivial” meetings.

As a result of all these disagreements, my student felt that such a scenario could have been best avoided if the students had been allowed to form their own groups in the first place. She felt that she would have had a much happier experience working with her own clique of friends. However, since the Project Work module was crafted to allow students to handle real life problems and prepare them for possible issues in their future workplace, I reminded my student that this was a realistic scenario. Many times in life, we often have no say as to whom we are working with. Instead, we have to learn to deal with changing circumstances.

In addition, whether or not the group members turned up for actual meetings or did any work would not be reflected on the overall grades. As such, there was no real incentive for the lazy group members to put in all their effort as compared to being able to spend more time on their personal tests. This results in a culture of selfishness where everyone wanted to take care of their personal interests first. Furthermore, the written report carried 40% of the marks and this is the group mark since the individual components was not really reflected here. The oral presentation took up another 40% and this was the individual component. As a result, this meant that students who put in minimal effort throughout the project could possibly get higher marks than those who put in the most effort as long as they eloquent during the oral component. This was seen as being highly unfair to those who put in most of the effort into the group project but not having the grades reflecting it.

One way to solve this poor allocation of group effort was to minimize the marks in the individual component, while increasing that of the group component.  Similarly, there must be a good measure of how much effort each team member contributes. For example, there could be a peer evaluation after the end of the project where every group member will get a percentage of the marks as determined by the average from the peer evaluation. For example, if all the other group members assigned 0% to a particular member, he will get 0% of the group marks.

Another key point brought up was the role of the teacher in Project Work. My student felt that her teacher was restricting their creativity by forcing them to carry out the project according to her guidelines. This resulted in a feeling that the students were merely doing the project just to meet the criteria and the rigid structure led to a loss in personal creativity. Furthermore, the teacher “forced” them to make cupcakes instead of doing a collage. Merely carrying out orders resulted in a loss in sense of ownership of the project and were doing it simply for the grades.

When asked if there were any positive takeaways from Project Work, my student said that she learnt to be more patient and tactful when dealing with people, especially with her group mates that did not carry out their responsibilities. At the end of the project, the group on the whole also became more united through the many obstacles they faced, and they learnt to deal with each other’s flaws and accept the different characteristics within the group as complements rather than failings.

On further reflection, when asked if she was willing to go through the entire Project Work process again, my student said on hindsight that she actually learnt a lot about how to perform research as well as coordinating events. On the whole, despite the earlier protestations, she felt that the journey through the Project Work enabled her to grow and learn a lot.

As a facilitator of Project Work, I would ensure that there is a greater emphasis on research methods rather than focusing on the end result. I would also guide students to come up with their own ideas and scaffold them for higher order thinking skills in order to meet the mark for the Project Work requirements as well. Furthermore, I will have to ensure that students are able to settle their differences amicably and learn how to work together as a team despite their different personalities because the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Reflections on QED 528 Problem Based Learning

The key take-away for this Problem-based learning experience for me is that it helped me make sense of many of these educational psychology concepts. Often times, when I first read these theories, I found them to be very logical, almost to the point of being common sense. For example, peers are greatly influential on the behaviour of learners and mixing around with peers who value learning  will have a positive effect on learning and vice versa. This seems to be common sense logic that we encounter in our daily lives. However, these are not things that we consciously think about daily. For example, normally we are not too bothered about how the gender or race of our peers affect our learning. It was interesting to read about the research done on the effects of each of these factors on a learner. From this, it struck me that even in such seemingly simple logic, there was a great deal to be learnt. If I had not gone through this Problem-based learning experience, I would have taken most of these things at face value instead of wondering about the confounding variables involved. This taught me that in every problem, there is a myriad of perspectives to look at, and I must consider each one in order to obtain a clearer idea. Through this experience, I made use of self-directed learning in order to research on the topics, as well as prior knowledge based on everyday encounters. Furthermore, since I can easily relate to these everyday encounters, it provided a real world context element. After all the research, I met up with the group to discuss our findings which incorporated elements of collaborative learning.

Since my part for this Problem-based learning experience was to deal with peer effects on the behaviour of the learner, I have done most of my research on this area. One of the most remarkable things I discovered was that the practice of tracking, which means to stream students into different classes based on their abilities, which is widely implemented in schools in Singapore, completely goes against results from research. By understanding more of these educational psychology theories, it will help me as a beginning teacher to understand some of the learning impediments plaguing my students. I can then resolve these issues using the solutions I have learnt.

In conclusion, I believe that students learn best from their peers because for adolescence, the importance of their peers cannot be underestimated. Many students view their peers as being the same as them, which causes them to be highly effective models. Modelling is a very potent tool to influence learning.

Reflections for QCY 540 tasks

Reflections for Task 1

There were two components to our first task, the first being to complete a diagnostic instrument test on ionization energy after revising through the relevant concepts while the second was to read a journal regarding common students’ difficulties on ionization energy.

Initially, I thought that the task shouldn’t pose much of a problem given my understanding of ionization energy. However, I soon found that the diagnostic instrument test was a lot harder than I had thought and it really stretched and tested the limits of my understanding regarding this concept. This diagnostic instrument consisted of two parts; the first was a multiple choice where an answer had to be selected, and the other part would be a selection of reason for that answer chosen.

Such a diagnostic tool challenged me to rethink some of the concepts I have taken for granted. For example, one question asks if an electron is removed from the atom, would the attraction for the lost electron be redistributed among the remaining electrons. At this point, it struck me that one very intuitive answer was that the attraction would be redistributed, because this is how things functioned in the macro world; take one person out and the bill will have to be redistributed among the remaining people. However, the quantum world functions differently, and the attraction that electrons feel for the nucleus is dependent on its distance and not how many electrons there are. There is an analogy that describes this situation very well and it can be compared to people around a bonfire. The heat that one feels from the fire is dependent on how far away you are. If other people move away, the amount of heat felt does not change. If the person in front of you moves away, u will feel more heat, as you are no longer “shielded”. Making the fire bigger (increasing nuclear charge) will result in more heat felt.

It was humbling to realize that despite 4 long years of university education, such a simple conceptual question could prove to be so thought provoking.

On a side note, since the remaining electrons still feel the same attraction, why is the 2^nd IE larger than the first?

Reflections for Task 2

This time we were supposed to come up with answers to the 2011 A level paper and some ionic equilibrium questions supplied by CJC teachers.

One immediate thing I noted while attempting the paper was that the A level standard had gone up pretty much since the last time I saw it. Most of the things taught now was pretty close to university stuff. However, I felt that students were not given the appropriate coverage to fully appreciate what was going on. For example, the transition metal question regarding high spin and low spin, students had not previously been taught what was HSLS. Even though the question did give some details regarding the concept, I felt that it was a bit pointless teaching transition metal without going into some of these d orbital concepts in the curriculum. Everything was pretty much touch and go. I would rather students learn a smaller variety of topics, but learn them more in depth in order for them to gain a deeper appreciation of what was going on.

I did not face any major problems with the ionic equilibrium questions as I had previously been teaching this topic in Innova during my ESE. There was a wide variety of questions, 100++ to be exact which was good practice for me and allowed me to sample a wide variety of questions.

Reflections for Task 3

For this task, we were supposed to read pedagogical research papers regarding students’ misconceptions of chemical concepts, write a summary of the research paper and do a brief presentation. The research paper I chose was titled “Conceptualizing quanta: illuminating the ground state of student understanding of atomic orbitals”, and it highlighted several major problems that students faced when first introduced to the atomic orbital concept. The issues highlighted were very pertinent as these were the self-same problems that I faced during my college years.

One major problem that students had was transitioning from the concept of the Bohr hydrogen model taught during their secondary school years to the new concept of shells, subshells and orbitals taught at the college level. There was insufficient focus paid to this transition which caused students to feel the disconnect between these 2 models when actually the more complicated orbital concept was simply an extension of the simpler Bohr model. From my personal experience, teachers tend to tell students that whatever they learnt in secondary school was “wrong”. I felt that was a grave injustice. What they were taught was not “wrong” but rather “incomplete”. It was still correct provided that the model was being applied in an appropriate scenario.

As teachers, it was all too easy for us to forget how we used to have all these wrong misconceptions too. Even though we were students once before, now to me, it somehow seemed unfathomable how students could have come up with such incredibly wrong theories. However, as I read the paper, all these recollections came rushing back to me. The confused college years when I was simply grasping around with all these vague theories. Therefore, I felt that such papers were quite useful as it allowed us to delve once again into the minds of a student learning these concepts for the first time. In order to be an effective teacher, we must first go down to the students’ level and see the world through their eyes.

Reflections for CJC teaching

The 4 sessions at CJC gave me valuable teaching experiences. Overall, I enjoyed the interaction with the students there. However, I felt that the sessions were a little too short for my liking. It was akin to 4 speed dating sessions. The students there were quite vocal and keen to learn and teaching them was a pleasurable experience. It was a different type of teaching experience as compared to classroom teaching since this was more like a mass tuition session.

Through this teaching experience, I learnt how to meet students at their level, catering to their different needs, balancing between the high ability students and those who needed more help. With the higher ability students, I could explain concepts faster and they would grasp it immediately, whereas the weaker students required more probing and guidance.

One incident that struck a chord with me was when a student said that their school was a stupid school so they can’t win the better schools. I gently let the student know that no one was stupid and all they had to do was to believe in themselves. That was my own personal philosophy in life: I believe therefore I am. I used to be one of these terrible students too, failing almost everything. But in university, I picked myself up, worked hard, and saw the results. As I started having more confidence, my results peaked too. Thus, I came to the realization that having the confidence to achieve was crucial to any results. The confidence determines our potential whereas our talent and abilities only help us fulfill our potential. If we have no confidence in ourselves, we stymie our potential and even though we could have the ability for so much more, the level that we see our potential at restricts our ability to perform. This realization became a very important aspect of my teaching philosophy and was also the chief reason for me becoming a teacher. As a lousy student myself, I can relate to their difficulties. And I want them to know, we are capable of so much more because I have walked the same road myself.

Reflections for QCY 522 microteachings

Reflections for QCY522 microteaching

Things I did well

I anticipated possible misconceptions that the students might have including Jimmy’s representation of the repeat unit of the polyethene molecule. As such, I was well prepared to answer such questions since I had given much thought to explaining it earlier. I felt that I managed to give a reasonable explanation that could be rationalized by students even though no such explanation has ever been given to us when we were students, nor could it be found online.

The analogy of the train carriages helped students to visualize the repeating units joining up. Furthermore, the visual representation of the passengers alighting from the train served as a useful reminder of the difference between the addition polymer and condensation polymer.

The animations used depicting how the ester linkages formed was another powerful imagery for students to visualize. Instead of merely seeing the final product on the screen, students get to see how the atoms join and where the oxygen in the respective atoms go.

The use of the Bakelite example allowed students to appreciate that knowledge goes beyond just the curriculum. It was also an example of a condensation polymer so that students can appreciate that such polymers were not restricted to just polyesters and polyamides. Furthermore, as chemistry students, it is important to have an appreciation of some synthetically or historically important developments.

Things I can improve on

Firstly, my time management was bad as I exceeded the allotted time by 6 minutes. This was due to the slow polymerization reaction which was unplanned. In my initial trials, the reaction took only 1 minute, but during the demonstration, it took 5 minutes for the reaction to occur. I had prepared a video initially so I should actually have showed the video while waiting for the reaction.

Secondly, when I asked for students to write their answers on the board, one student drew the Lewis structure for the monomer. I should have spent a few minutes to explain why there was such a geometry instead of skipping over it and marking it correct.

Lastly, the unreactive groups in the dicarboxylic acid and diol is commonly represented by a box to represent that it is unimportant. Perhaps I should have spent some time to show the full molecular formula of one such compound and show that it can all be collapsed into the box to indicate why it is not involved in the reaction at all.

Things I should not have done

The Bakelite polymerization actually used toxic chemicals such as formalin and phenol. Glacial acetic acid is quite pungent as well. In a normal classroom, this reaction should not be carried out due to safety reasons. In a laboratory, this reaction should have been carried out in a fumehood. However, I was worried that students might not be able to get a good view of the reaction if it was carried out in the fumehood.

Reflections on QCY 520 instructional package

Reflections on QCY520 instructional package

Instructional approach chosen: Problem-solving approach

In this instructional package, the problem-solving approach is chosen in order to allow students to appreciate how their knowledge of qualitative analysis can have real-world implications. Instead of merely attending a lesson where the main mode of teaching is very didactic and detached, such a problem-solving approach allows students greater autonomy over their own learning. Students are able to be actively involved in the lesson as they have a hands-on experience. Instead of simply learning how a white precipitate looks like either through images or videos, they can actually this white precipitate by adding the appropriate reagents. This incorporation of the learning by doing dimension helps students to retain knowledge better. According to the learning pyramid, on average, students only retain 20% of what they see but 75% when they practice doing. Furthermore, by helping them link it to a real-world context by giving realistic scenarios, students are able to recognize the importance of learning qualitative analysis.

Ideally, students should be allowed to craft their own solutions to the problem since designing solutions is a higher-order skill in Bloom’s Taxonomy. Unfortunately, since it was only their second lecture, students might not have a good grasp on the topic yet and might not know how to approach the problem. Hence, sufficient scaffolding must be provided in the form of the practical guide as well as the worksheet to guide students along. Originally, the plan was to include 7 unknowns. However, due to time constraints, only 4 could be used. This seems to be short-changing the students as they are unable to experience the coloured precipitates which are more distinctive.  Unfortunately, due to the nature of this problem-solving approach using laboratory work, it is more time consuming than simply using a computer simulation. Nevertheless, it is more realistic and also serves to help students improve their laboratory techniques.

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Reflections on GESL

My End-of-Project Reflections

Project Title: ___________Party with Pangolins

Name of student teacher: ____Lau Seng Loong Russell___________________

 

Group:  26       Programme:  PGDE (JC)

Guidance questions for end-of-project reflections

What tasks did I do during GESL? 2.      What did I do well? 3.      What do I see as my 2 most important contributions to the project? 4.      What were some difficulties I faced? How did I overcome these? 5.      How well did my group work? 6.      In working on this project, what prior knowledge had I made use of? As part of my group’s logistics team, my job was to secure any necessary equipment and other paraphernalia required by my group. Furthermore, on the day of the main event, I had to arrive much earlier in order to prepare the venue for the event. Due to the funding problem our group had initially, we were unable to confirm the list of equipment needed as the budget was not finalized. It was only until the week of the event itself that we received confirmation of our funding and our team had to source out a list of over 20 items within 2 days. One of the more difficult items I had to find was paper bags for the goodie bags. Besides being affordable, these bags had to be environmentally friendly as well, which was not an easy task. As such, I had to scour a few places in the West before I finally found a suitable type of bag. Our logistics team was only able to acquire all the items due to excellent teamwork and great camaderie we shared, allowing us to split up the work efficiently to ensure success. We encountered another setback in the form of our logistics team leader being injured in a car accident and thus had limited capabilities. During the main event, I was in charge of a group of children. Other groups had 2 leaders each but my partner was down with stomach flu. As such, I stepped up to take on the mantle of a solo group leader. I led the children successfully through all the events we planned and they had a wonderful time while also learning a lot from the meaningful activity. As I used to help out at my church’s camp for Primary School children, guiding my group did not pose any problem for me. There were definitely some children in my group who were more mischievous and had to be constantly reminded to remain with the group.

7.      What have I gained from working on this GESL project? 8.      What new skills and knowledge have I learnt from working on this project? How can I apply these in my work or personal life? 9.      GESL was intended to develop social & emotional competencies & skills necessary for you to recognize and manage your emotions, develop care and concern for others, make responsible decisions, establish positive relationships, as well as to handle challenging situations effectively. To what extent did you develop the skills of self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship management, and responsible decision-making? Through this GESL project, I learnt how to work with many different people. Initially I knew none of my group members as they were not from my CS. This meant that I had to improve my relationship management skills in order to work amiably with such a variety of different backgrounds. Initially, our group had disagreements regarding what type of project to embark on, but we all had to compromise in order to make responsible decisions for the group’s benefit. Furthermore, due to our varied time-tables, it meant that it was very hard for us to meet up as a large group. Thus, we divided ourselves into smaller groups which made it much easier to facilitate meetings. In this case, cooperation by dividing and conquer trumped collaboration. This taught me that there are times when collaboration is better and others when cooperation would be far more efficient.

10.  What would I do differently the next time I embark on such a project? I would take on a more leadership role to experience what it would be like to lead such a large group with varying interests and priorities.

11.  The NE initiative was introduced by the MOE to schools to develop    national cohesion, cultivate instincts for survival and instil confidence in Singapore’s future.  The objectives of NE were crystallised into six NE messages                                 i.            Singapore is our homeland; this is where we belong.                               ii.            We must preserve racial and religious harmony.                             iii.            We must uphold meritocracy and incorruptibility.                             iv.            No one owes Singapore a living.                               v.            We must ourselves defend Singapore.                             vi.            We have confidence in our future. Bearing in mind the NE initiative in Singapore, please comment on how your GESL project experience was relevant to National Education. With reference to the NE messages, 2 messages stands out clear: we must ourselves defend Singapore and we have confidence in our future. In this case, I am not referring to the physical defending of Singapore’s shores. Rather I am referring to the defending of our biodiversity like our pangolins for our future generation. By cultivating socially aware and responsible youth, we have confidence that our rare biodiversity will be able to survive for our future  generation.