In The Name of Allah The Most Gracious The Most Merciful
Assalamualaikum, All praise is due to Allah, the Lord and Cherisher of the Universe. May His peace and blessings be upon our beloved prophet, Muhammad (PBUH), his household, companions and all followers of the right guidance till the Day of Judgment.
Alhamdulillah, this is my second time teaching Radiobiology and Radiation Chemistry for Msc Medical Physics program. After attending Kursus Pengajaran dan Pembelajaran (PnP) and from my previous experienced teaching this course, I decided to change my classroom lecture from doing traditional way of teaching to blended learning/flipped classroom method. I have attended short course on flipped classroom about a year ago. But I’m not sure how can I applied this method to my class. But after kursus PnP, it has motivated me to try this method.
I even came out with my one teaching philosophy and aspirations when listening to Prof Karim Alias talk. I’m inspired to be someone like him.
Applying blended method in classroom actually make teaching easier to the lecturer. Instead of doing all the talking in the front, the student now participate in giving out the lecture content. But, your role now are there to facilitate and guide them. However, the most tedious part is to prepare materials for this method. To apply flipped classroom, one of the method of blended learning, there need to be pre-task before class and post-task after the class. Preparing them is not easy and required a lot of time if this is your first time doing it. But after everything is ready, you can just update and reuse all the materials again.
Since this is my first time, I wont say that it was perfect. I managed to apply it for more than half of the course. And the rest we just have normal discussion but I still provide them with materials to read before the class. And continue with activities inside the class. I am actually very nervous when I first presented this method to my students. What will be their reaction towards this? Seeing new lecturer with not much experience, what kind of changes she is able to do? But ya, I just go with the flow.
During semester break, I collected the emails from student so I can send out pre-task for them to do before they came to my first class. I honestly very nervous to see the student reaction. I sent it 1 weeks before class begin, I think, I kept on looking at padlet and ted ed. Almost every time I open my laptop I keep on peeking on these websites. Are the student doing what I ask them to do? Its so funny as I remembered this again 
This is the content of the first email I sent to the students.
And Alhamdulillah, the students completed their task. I can still remember how excited I am at that moment.
During the first class, I introduced myself and the method I am going to apply in my class. This is the most important part in applying this method. You need to make sure your student understand why you are doing this. I came to realise that, lectures and lecturers are not going to give significant value in your students life unless you really make them appreciate what you taught during the class. Your student still can pass the exam even without attending your class. So, what they are actually looking for is someone who can facilitate and guide them in the journey.
“In this era of internet, content is not a problem. It's accessible everywhere. You don't need skills anymore to get the information. It's what you do with the information that matters. And you can't do much when you are not interested in anything.”
And Alhamdulillah, response from the students are positive and they cooperated very well. I will not able to apply this method if the students are refused to play their part. I also explained to them what are the tools I am going to use throughout this semester.
There will be pre-task activity, in-class activity and post class activity. But I managed to only do pre-task and in-class consistently. For post class since not enough time so I skipped this for now.
These are some of the tools I used during my class:
1. Socrative
I used socrative for pretask quizzes. Its easy and after the quiz is over, I can directly see the marks and which question my student perform poorer. Later in class I can focus more on that part.
2. Kahoot
I used kahoot for in-class activity. We just have some leisure quiz for revision. Student will use their own smartphone to participate in this quiz. I love this tool the most.
Todaysmeet more on like instant conversation you can have in class. Usually I will ask opinion of the students about certain issues and ask them to posted their opinion in todaysmeet. This tool is good if you want to know all the students opinion. I sometimes posted the link for pre-task or any link I want my student to refer. And they can always go to this if they want to review what we have done throughout the semester.
4. Padlet
I used padlet for class introduction and some of activities in class. Its suitable if you want the student to just posted something including image in the padlet. You can also post video.
5. Storify
For pre-task reading materials, I usually select what information I want student to read and curate them in storify. This is the most important part before applying blended learning. I cant proceed with activities or discussions in class if they are not prepared themselves before the class. So, I need to make sure the student has some ideas what are we going to discuss in class today. Following with the pre-reading, I will create a quiz or any task just to make sure they did the pre-reading.
6. TED-Ed
TEDed also used in pre-task materials. Sometimes I didnt give them material to read but video to watch. From the video, I prepared few questions for them to answer. There are space for discussion related to the video if the student want to discuss more.
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Medical Physics Seminar
Apart from this tools, I gave my student a case study related to radiation risk and benefit. They need to hand out questionnaire/survey, analyse them, prepare a pamphlet based on the analysis and the last part is presentation.
To fulfil this task, they were divided into 4 groups and were assigned with different roles. And alhamdulillah they really work hard and completed the case study with open seminar to present their findings from this study. The pamhplet produced were distributed to students and staff in school of physics. I gave one to the dean and informed him that this was produced by my students and he is very happy to hear that. I am so proud with them.
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Our activities throughout the semester
Alhamdulillah. The semester is over and I am very happy to have them as my students. I know I still lack a lot but I do try my best within my capacity to give out the best for the students. My effort alone won’t make this successful without the cooperation and helps from the students. It always takes two to tango. I really hope the students gain good experience and memories from this class. I will always pray may you have the best for your future endeavours.
Love,
NUR
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