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Food, Chemical and Biotechnology ClusterA/PROF JOY PANG
- “The most rewarding part of being an educator at SIT is learning alongside my students through teaching them. Their creative and often unpredictable questions help me think of problems from a different perspective.
Here, we train our students to use theoretical principles in a practical manner. Often, my students’ interest in a topic is piqued when current news articles or real-life industrial examples are used to link back to the concepts they are learning in class.
Hands-on laboratory classes with relevant content have also been used to enhance applied learning in our classes. Students get opportunities to apply the theoretical facts learnt during lectures to interpret data and formulate conclusions generated during laboratory classes. These exercises inadvertently help shape students’ critical thinking and analytical skills, which is one of my motivations for teaching.
My hope is that students’ analytical and problem-solving skills developed while at SIT will be applied to their future jobs in the industry. While I realise that not all students will choose to stay in their field of study, the critical thinking skills developed through their studies will hopefully help them achieve many greater things in life.”
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Business, Communication and Design CLUSTERMS YEAP LAY HUAY
- “I love interacting with the youths! By seeing them as equals, I find myself learning from them too! In this way, I hope to help my students acquire deep knowledge and skills and inspire them to embrace a lifelong learning attitude to be able to contribute positively to society through their work upon graduation.
In line with SIT's applied learning pedagogy, I often use real-world examples (through YouTube videos and newspaper articles) to illustrate my industry experience, which is useful in complementing the theories studied. I am interested in motivating my students to apply the acquired knowledge in real life. It is also important to see the relevance of what is being learnt to the current needs and future trends and be equipped with the skills needed to apply the knowledge.
To make learning more enjoyable, I encourage active learning as it engages students. For example, I require students to come prepared for classes so that we can do flipped classrooms and activities such as role-plays, small group discussions or presentations.
With the increasing use of technology in higher education, I hope to leverage more digital tools to make learning Accounting enjoyable for my students!”
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ENGINEERING CLUSTERA/PROF GAN HIONG YAP
- “Making a mistake and learning from it is most valuable in learning. It’s the best form of education – as long as you’re willing and able to afford it. I also use this outlook in my teaching to influence my students and their learning. I always tell them that a university is a place where mistakes can afford to be made. Mistakes made by my students, as well as by me, are highlighted and we embrace them together and then look for ways to improve. In addition, we challenge each other’s perspectives with the pure objective of attaining desired learning outcomes. From this, my students and I become lifelong learners who are looking at different ways to learn more effectively with open minds.
At SIT, this mindset is further reinforced as my students are exposed to the world of work early and they practise by doing. I expose them to real-world problems and industry practices from the start and they are clearly motivated by these experiences. I often enhance learning through the use of technology. By using different pedagogical methods, I engage my students and transform their learning experiences.
I have treasured all the mistakes I have made in my life and appreciate how these lessons have strengthened my ability to teach and be a better educator. Through this, I continue to try out new and innovative ways to reach out and develop my students.”
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HEALTH AND SOCIAL SCIENCES CLUSTERA/PROF WEE SENG KWEE
- “What truly motivates me to teach so passionately in SIT is the wish to train a new generation of allied health professionals who are caring, empathetic, and compassionate. Such traits are essential to provide holistic care for patients.
My teaching philosophy is the adoption of a nurturing approach to support and inspire students to unleash their fullest potentials. I also specially tailor my lessons to prepare students for clinical work in the future. I always use real patient case studies and patient videos (with their consent for educational purpose) in my teaching sessions. This approach enables students to appreciate patients’ challenging medical conditions, as well as their impairments, activity limitations and participation restrictions (based on the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health, ICF framework for Rehabilitation). Students reported that watching patient videos helped them to analyse patients’ movement patterns better. Hence, it sharpened their observational and analytical skills and improved their knowledge of the topics. This is an example of applied learning we use in SIT.
With my experience of teaching and training healthcare professionals and non-healthcare individuals locally and internationally, I also use different teaching styles to suit different groups of learners. My teaching pedagogy is learner-focused and tailored to their level of knowledge base and skills competencies.”
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INFOCOMM TECHNOLOGY CLUSTERA/PROF RYAN FRASER KIRWAN
- “As a general reflection on my teaching philosophy, I feel my approach is catered towards the disinterested and unmotivated student. I strive to motivate my students, giving justifications for content. It strikes me that the most important premise for good teaching is to simply care about those you’re teaching. If you actually care about them, you will go out of your way to help them, as well as ensure fairness in what you ask of them and how you assess them.
In SIT, we reach out to the industry for potential partnerships and negotiate suitable projects for our students. One of the modules I co-created is a prime example of this applied learning approach, ICT’s Integrative Team Project. This requires a lot of coordination: from the structure of the module, timelines, assessments, rubrics, industry interaction, etc. There is also industry feedback taken into the marking process — to help provide an authentic assessment. Creating and running this module was a big undertaking, but thoroughly worth it. I feel, and hope, that the SIT modules I teach help furnish our students with the essential skill sets to become successful Software Engineers. It is in this community which they will ultimately join and, with some hard work, thrive.
I wish to continue to develop my skills as an educator, not just through augmenting my pedagogies but through more collaboration with relevant industry partners. Keeping teaching and technical skills updated is essential in the dynamic field of Software Engineering, and I hope to continue to do so throughout my career.”