This is an animated version of a talk given at the RSA by Sir Ken Robinson, world-renowned education and creativity expert and recipient of the RSA's Benjamin Franklin award.
Prologue For those who have been following trends in higher education, the term MOOCs (pronunciation: muk) is not foreign anymore but for some people it is still kind of clouded in mystery. A simple google search using ‘MOOC’ as a keyword turned up 2.4 million hits and when searched using the full acronym ‘Massive Open Online Courses’ it gave a massive 24 million hits! Mind-boggling indeed! If the number of hits can be used as a simple measure of popularity then perhaps we can surmise that MOOCs is a phenomenon that have a potential to disrupt the education world and will bring about significant impact on achieving “ Education for All ” movement of the United Nation. This article is my attempt to deciphering and demystifying MOOCs. Note that this is my personal view on MOOCs (not that of USM or CDAE) and I must say that I’m inclined towards supporting it because I liked its underlying philosophy. That said, I'm not a MOOCs cheerleader or its fan boy — I keep an open mind on this ev...
“ When it comes to teaching, most of us are still learning. Teaching is a complex activity, and yet most of us have not received formal training in pedagogy. Furthermore, teaching is a highly contextualized activity because it is shaped by the students we have, advancements in our respective fields, changes in technology, and so on. Therefore, our teaching must constantly adapt to changing parameters ” -- Ambrose et al., 2010, How Learning Works . Constructivism, behaviorism, pedagody, andragogy, Bloom Taxonomy, student-centered learning...?? I must humbly admit that, after more than 16 years teaching, I didn’t know much about the various learning theories and pedagogical aspects of teaching-learning. I’m not trained as a teacher – I’m a food technologist. My only experience in teaching was teaching my friends and a short stint teaching in a private school (secondary level). Soon after I completed my Ph.D. in Food Technology, I came back and joined the university as a lecturer – and I ...
" Teachers should not be predictable in their teaching practices or approaches – in fact, in my view all great teachers are not predictable because they always surprise and excite their students with different “tricks of the trade” up their sleeve " - A. A. Karim . In this posting I will share some of the 'open secrets' of being great teachers and their attributes that provide the environment for teaching excellence. In fact, I put the original title as "Open secret recipes of great teachers" but I changed my mind and instead use the current title. The main points actually are based on the article “ The Quest for Excellence in University Teaching ” written by Sherman and others [1]. It was published more than 20 years ago but I think the idea is still very much applicable and relevant when we talk about the characteristics of teaching excellence, be it in school or in higher education. Some might argue whether it is still relevant to talk about teaching exc...
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