21 May 2022

Medical Physics Lecturer (Post 5 Years)

 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, its been 5 years at least since I started my career as lecturer at School of Physics, Universiti Sains Malaysia in Medical Physics. Within this 5 years, I definitely have gone through a lot, learnt a lot, cried a lot, laugh a lot and faced a lot. Albeit, all that somehow shapen how I am today. Nothing comes easy, right. You have to work your butt off to be where you want to be. My perception, aim and target have changed as well. Anyhow, I am thankful to Allah with the path He has destined for me. 

This is going to be short post as I should be reviewing abstract for conference but suddenly start typing this dusty and rusty blog. I had scary dream last night which left me alone feeling lost, running endlessly and trembled without direction. Let this remind me, that's just a dream and in reality, I have those besides me and Him guiding me through this uncertain path in the future. And I should be proud of myself and thankful with what I have achieved today. 

Did I ever regret my decision to further PhD and working as a lecturer? As its never in my dream. Especially teaching. Career which I tried my best to avoid in the past. My dream job still in hospital as Medical Physicist. The answer is: NEVER!

This is definitely challenging career. I guess because of the challenges, I never feel boring with this job. Instead, exciting! If we put aside all the so called bad and toxic things, I am sooo in love with this career. Balancing both teaching and research at same time weren't easy. However, doing something you love would never dissappoint nor burden you. So much that I am picturing myself still in the lab even after I have retired. We will see after 26 years if I will change my mind. 😁

May Allah guide me through this path and keep me with the mind that, all of what I am doing and trying to achieve is for His Deen. And I want this count as I'badah which can bring me and family who has sacrificed and supported me in this journey. Please make your D'oa for me. Ameen.



Get my CV here: CV_DRNURSAKINAH2022


Love, 💕

NUR





29 June 2018

Benefit Doing House Chores

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.

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I have come across a video on the benefits of doing house chores to the children. One of them if your child become smarter if they know how to do their house chores. As I read the comments, some of the parents disagree with the idea by saying that they want their child to focus on study instead of doing house chores. And the child is doing fine with the study and good job without even have to do the house chores to help them become smarter.

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It reminds me of a movie I watch during my childhood. Its a kungfu movie if I’m not mistaken. There is one man who used to get bullied apply to learn martial arts. He was rejected many times by the Master. After a lot of begging, the Master now accept him to be his student. However, when he get there, the Master only ask him to do the house chores for the place. He just do it without questioning and happy to do what the Master asked him to do. Other students keep on asking him why he did only house chores and wasn’t allow to join the training session. He keep on positive attitude and saying that maybe when the times come, the Master will start teaching him martial arts and he get to train with other students as well. After a months of doing only house chores, he request the Master to teach him martial arts but the Master said its not the time yet. Just keep on doing what you were told. But then, something happen to the martial arts center. Its like a temple maybe. I didn’t quite remember the place. So this man want to help in keeping the place save but he didn’t know martial art. He go and request again from the Master. Giving no choice, the Master now teach him martial arts. He explained what he asked the student to do house chores before train him. House chores help in strength, patience, focus and creative. Like sweeping, mopping, laundry will make you stay fit with your body and also train you to be focus and patience. In cooking, it helps you to be creative and well planned. Because you have to plan ahead what you need to cook together with the ingredients. You have to know what is the suitable temperature and the method of cooking. If the ingredients are not available what are the suitable substitutions. When he start to learn martial arts, he now know how to analyse his enemy character, what plan he should take to encounter them and be patience while fighting them. You have to be composed not to get angry or let emotions takes over yourself. Or else you will be lost. This scene stay in my mind for so long. I used to complain when I was asked to do house chores from my mom.huhu… But as I grown up and now being a wife and a mother myself, I can relate again what the Master said with what my mother asked me to do.

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I grown up in a family where my parents never discriminate between boys or girls in doing house chores. All of us will have to take part in cleaning out the house, dishes, laundry and etc. My dad also help in doing house chores. He did not let my mom do all the things on her own. My mom always tell how grateful she is to have a husband that help in doing house chores.

Recently, a lot of articles circulating complaining how tired the wife especially housewife in taking care of her children, doing house chores, cooking but the husband did not even help and said that its not their job and they are tired. This is what happen when boys are not been taught how to do house chores and used to see his mother do all the thing on her own. When they get married, they will have the perspective that house chores is belong to women. Not man.

It is time for us to start teaching our kids to do house chores when they are ready. Without discrimination of gender. All has to take part in making this happen.

Love,

NURRed heart

28 July 2017

Blended Learning: Radiobiology and Radiation Chemistry Class 2016/17 Session

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 Rolling on the floor laughing.

pre-task

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. Smile

ZCE538 - Class Member Introduction

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:

ZCE 538 - LECTURE 1 - COURSE OUTLINE

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.

socrative

padlet result

        

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.

            

image

     

3. Todaysmeet

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.

          

todaysmeet slide

todaysmeet

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.

padlet discussion

            

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.

             

storify

               

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.

Teded video

teded

             

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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.

            

tutorial case study

                

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

              

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MSc 20162017 session

           

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.

               

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Love, Red heart

NUR

06 July 2017

Be A Growth Mindset Person

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.

I first came across about ‘Growth Mindset’ when I attended Parenting Seminar by Dr Siti at USM. She introduced us to Dr Carol Dweck’s ideas on Growth Mindset, the power of ‘yet’. Then I start searching for this idea and watched her short lecture in Tedex.

Basically, this idea is about you believes that when you actually came across anything that is hard for you or any challenges that you faced, it is either you just give up or you take this difficulties and challenges to improve yourself and try harder. If you are a type of person who just give up and believes that you cannot do it, you are actually a ‘fixed’ mindset person. However, if you believes that, you are not ‘yet’ successful in overcoming the difficulties, and you are not going to give up, you are a ‘growth’ mindset person.

  

    Growth_Mindset_Poster

 

She also has few books about this idea. Currently I only own one in Kindle but haven’t finish it yet. Laughing out loud You can understand the idea by watching her videos or interviews in youtube.

dr carol

 

These are the differences between having fixed or growth mindset:

“People with the fixed mindset tend to think that their intelligence or capability is fixed. For example, some ‘smart’ people think they are smart because that is the way they are born. They think they need to look smart in every situation and are very averse to taking on challenges because they do not want to fail or look foolish. They have the tendency to attach their self-worth and identity to their work or the end result and have the need to prove themselves. They do not move forward unless they are certain that they can succeed. They tend to approach everything with the attitude of ‘all or nothing’ and give up easily in the face of setbacks.

On the other hand, people with the growth mindset know that everything can be changed and different intelligence and skills can be developed. They like stretching themselves to take on new challenges and view every misstep or mistake as something that is helping them grow and becoming who they need to be to go to the next level. The have no attachment to the results that they get and focus mainly on their effort. They are grateful for the ’gradual improvements’ on the journey of learning and mastering different skills.

So, people who are successful in life tend to have the growth mindset. That is what allows them to persist and have patience while working hard to achieve their goals.”

-Productive Muslim

 

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How can you change yourself from having a fixed mindset to become a person with growth mindset.

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Having a growth mindset will help you to have a better life. Rather than having an inferior and inner battle with yourself, why dont you just move forward and give yourself a chance to improve? In this increasingly unpredictable and ambiguous world, we need to remain open-minded to new ways of thinking. Successful person is the one who accepts these challenges and changed with a ‘growth mindset’. Whether you are a student, worker, leader, parent or anyone, always appreciate the process than the outcome. It will helps you to view a world from different insight.

So, be a person with a growth mindset person!

Love, Red heart

NUR

10 December 2016

Being a Young Lecturer

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.

     

frederickdouglassifthereisnostruggle 

"Struggle for life. Because struggle is something you doing for something you value. In our culture, it usually consider to be a bad word. But, I wanna make it to be the norm. That is, if you are not struggling for something, you are not growing, you are not living." -Carol Dweck-

    

Alhamdulillah, sudah 3 semester saya mula mengajar di Pusat Pengajian Sains Fizik, USM. Bermula 3/9/15 sebagai Pensyarah sandaran sementara menyiapkan pembetulan untuk tesis selepas viva dengan menyelia Makmal 200, praktikal makmal bagi pelajar tahun 2. 25/2/16 saya mula diamanahkan untuk mengajar dua kursus iaitu Anatomy and Physiology (Undergraduate) dan Radiation Biophysics (Master). Semester ini bermula September 2016, saya mengajar kursus Radiation Protection 1 (Master) pula. Bergelar pensyarah baru, pensyarah muda yang tidak mempunyai pengalaman mengajar sebelum ini melainkan berkerja sebagai guru sandaran selama 3 bulan di SMK Sg Nibong memerlukan saya bekerja dengan lebih kuat untuk memenuhi peranan ini.

Memulakan kerjaya ini memang memberikan satu cabaran buat saya. USM merupakan universiti penyelidikan. Ini membuatkan pensyarah di sini bukan hanya perlu mengajar tetapi dalam masa yang sama perlu menjadi seorang penyelidik. Cabaran dalam mengajar apabila saya perlu mengajar pelajar Master sedangkan ini adalah pertama kali saya mula mengajar di universiti. Saya perlu bekerja keras untuk memahami keseluruhan kursus sebelum saya boleh mengajarnya kepada pelajar. Dari sudut penyelidikan pula, saya perlu memikirkan cara untuk memulakan penyelidikan menggunakan alatan yang tersedia di makmal pusat pengajian. Penyelidikan PhD saya menggunakan laser dan sampel darah. Tiada kelengkapan yang tersedia di makmal ini untuk saya menyambung tajuk penyelidikan saya. Saya memerlukan masa untuk mengadaptasi situasi ini.  Sama ada menukar bidang atau memikirkan cara untuk membuat kolaborasi dengan makmal lain. Yang lebih merunsingkan saya, memandangkan makmal di pusat pengajian adalah makmal fizik, tiada bahan kimia tersedia atau kelengkapan yang asas pun untuk saya kendalikan sampel darah. Tanpa geran, ianya sangat sukar buat saya memandangkan banyak perkara asas saya perlu dapatkan untuk permulaan. Buat masa ini pun, banyak yang terpaksa saya dahulukan duit sendiri. Belum mengambil kira kelulusan etika manusia yang masih lagi belum selesai memandangkan saya menggunakan sampel darah untuk penyelidikan.

Walaubagaimanapun, Alhamdulillah, syukur pada Allah atas kurniaanNya dan aturannya saya bergelar pensyarah. Saya sangat menyukai kerjaya ini. Ya, cabaran ada di mana-mana. Yang membezakan adalah bagaimana sikap kita dalam menghadapi dan mengharungi cabaran tersebut. Jika kita memandang sesuatu dari sudut positif, insyaallah perkara-perkara yang positif juga yang kita akan dapat. Pertama kali mengajar memang agak gugup dan pastinya banyak kekurangan. Pada saya, beri peluang kepada diri sendiri untuk menjadi yang lebih baik. Saya pernah bertanya kepada Prof Mushtak Al-Atabi semasa beliau datang memberikan syarahan tentang MOOC bagaimana saya dapat mengenepikan rasa tidak yakin kerana saya masih muda dan tidak berpengalaman. Nasihat beliau, mulakan langkah demi langkah. Tidak perlu terburu-buru tapi bukan maksudnya melengah-lengahkan. Tapi, kita manusia ada keterbatasan. Selesaikan satu kemudian mulakan pula yang seterusnya. Insyaallah lama-lama, kita akan mula mendapat hasilnya.

Bekerja lebih keras berbanding dengan orang lain. Kita perlu bina keyakinan dengan diri sendiri barulah orang lain akan yakin dengan kita. Apa yang saya harapkan pada masa akan datang, saya mampu berikan yang terbaik buat Ummah. Itulah impian saya pada akhirnya walau apa jua kerjaya yang saya miliki. Allah takdirkan saya bergelar pensyarah walaupun ianya tiada dalam perancangan saya sebelum ini. Tidak pernah terdetik di hati saya untuk menjadi pensyarah dan bekerja di USM. Semoga Allah melimpahkan rahmat dan kasihNya yang berterusan buat saya. Menjadikan saya seorang yang tidak sombong dan lupa diri dengan nikmat yang telah Dia berikan kepada saya.

 

msc med phy

Pelajar pertama saya. Terima kasih kerana bersama-sama saya dalam memori pertama saya sebagai pensyarah. Red heart

 

rad sci

Pelajar kedua saya. Saya sangat suka kelas ini. Setiap kelas kami seperti satu diskusi. Terima kasih atas kerjasama dari anda semua. Red heart

 

P/s: Mencuba yang terbaik menulis semuanya di dalam bahasa melayu sebagai praktis memandangkan saya ada peperiksaan bahasa melayu minggu depan. Susahnya mengarang di dalam bahasa melayu berbanding bahasa Inggeris kerana dah lama tinggalkan penulisan dalam bahasa melayu secara penuh. Doakan saya! Smile

 

Looking forward for more enjoyable memories in the future. Red heart

Love,

NUR

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