-
Teaching a large class effectively is a very challenge task for educator. In 2000, an innovative teaching method was introduced to the students for teaching EE3101 Digital Signal Processing, a large class about 370 students. The method combines conceptual learning, just-in-time teaching, and experiential learning to address the difficulties faced in a large class including the entry barrier, diverse student population, and limited knowledge transfer. The successful implementation of such a method requires a new courseware tool that supports multimedia demonstrations for visualization of difficult concepts, in-class and after-class feedback systems for tracking student performance and providing feedback to student, simulation tools for student to conduct hands-on and apply their knowledge to solve new problems. An Educator-to-Learner Portal, e-Learning Hub,was developed to support this new initiative in the large class. Currently there are two courses supported by the e-Learning Hub, an undergraduate course on DSP and a postgraduate course on IC Design. More than 2000 students have experienced power of e-Learning Hub since 2000. Under the new method, the students' academic performance are greatly improved, their interests in learning are preserved, and their learning skills are enhanced. The responses from student are very positive. This innovative teaching method was received the Faculty of Engineering Innovative Teaching Award 2001/2002 and was reported by the newspaper, 联合早报(Lian He Zao Bao), on 3 Oct. 2002.
-
One of the challenges in teaching a large class is to deliver well-balanced course materials to keep students' interest on subject. To do so, an Educator must know what are the difficulties faced by students during and after each lecture. In a small class, this is easy to achieve. However, knowing every student is almost an impossible mission in a large class with more than 200 students. In order to solve this problem, we developed an adaptive teaching method. The adaptive teaching pedagogy exploits interactions between learners and educator. Under proposed adaptive teaching method, an educator prepares two sets of carefully constructed assignments, one for in-class test and another for after-class activities. The in-class quizzes aim to test students' understanding during a lecture and the after-class activities are to engage the students with other learning activities. During a lecture, an educator will give students a quiz whenever there is a need to check students' understand on a given topic. Students will answer the quiz questions by sending a SMS message to an instant feedback system. The instant feedback system will automatically grade students' answers and display a statistic bar chart for viewing by the educator. From the instant feedback, the educator can address student's difficulties immediately and adjust the course contents accordingly to suit students' needs. After the lecture, students will log on to an adaptive teaching web site to complete the assignments at their own pace that are due a few hours before next lecture. The educator reads the student online submissions to adjust the content and activities for next lecture to maximize the gain for students. It is obvious that adaptive teaching will bring the benefits to both learner and educator. To the students, they come to class prepared and already engaged with the material as the after-class feedback loop helps them to identify their weakness. To the educator, he always knows exactly where the students are and what problems they have, so that he can be more focused during a lecture. This innovative teaching method was received the Faculty of Engineering Innovative Teaching Award 2003/2004.
|
