Tutorial

This blog aims to guide pregnant women through the process of making a positive change in the diet. It discusses and explores nutrition tips, delicious recipes, common myths, pregnancy tips and no-nos, useful links, and a few cool widgets, including the Weekly Pregnancy Calendar. Overall, the blog is well-designed providing the user with a visually soothing and user-friendly navigation experience, which is certainly a requirement for any pregnant woman.

The project team (Amelia, Melisa, Moushini, Natasha, Ray, Shahira, and Sharon) did a great collaborative effort. Congratulations!

"Teenage Life is Never Black & White"

This blog focuses on Aspergers Syndrome, which is often misunderstood among people. Aspergers Syndrome is an autism spectrum disorder that is characterized by significant difficulties in social interaction, along with restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior and interests. The project team has done a good job in designing and structuring the few (identified), but relevant issues regarding this disability, which include helping people to recognize it, statistics and epidemiology, books and resources, and famous people with it. Did you know that Albert Einstein had Aspergers Syndrome? Now you know!

In one word: INTERESTING!

This blog provides some useful tips on how to take care of your health, including brushing your teeth, eating oranges and carrots, and washing your hands. The highlight of this blog has to be the creatively designed video developed by the project team (view contributors), entitled "The story of Bluey and Pinky.

In one word: CREATIVE!

From my experience working with students involved in projects requiring them to develop a website (using web 2.0), often complain that it is time consuming and that it requires a lot of work. But by knowing that their work will continue to live on (more meaning), and that they are publishing it to the world (instead of only to the lecturer), they are willing to take up the challenge and put in a greater effort. In other words, their motivation often goes beyond grades, and that is very exciting and encouraging.

Though, we still have to work on their fair use or reuse of external content and graphics, and teach them proper online referencing procedures, which is something we have to continue to work on. It is alright to quote and reuse (if permission is given), but we must appreciate and recognize other peoples work. As such we have already setup a site for IMU staff and students (only) exploring project based learning (in the e-learning portal), including proper online referencing procedures.

Although, our e-learning portal (using Moodle) is wonderful for uploading and organizing course content, linking online resources, online discussions, assignment submissions, online quizzes, and so on, we should also encourage and empower students to use other web 2.0 and social media tools for creating creative content and informal learning. For example, several lecturers from the School of Pharmacy use Facebook for communicating online with their students, and have experimented with conducting Problem-Based Learning (PBL) sessions using Facebook Groups.

I have noticed that some Universities in Malaysia ban the usage of Facebook and YouTube at their campuses, and use the excuse that they encourage poor learning/working habits and clog up their network (bandwidth) for other usages. That might be true, but if staff and students learn how to discipline themselves using such tools (no choice!), they will actually have access to some of the most amazing learning resources on the planet (for free), and be able to interact with experts and students from all over the world through Facebook groups/pages (e.g. Harvard University - Facebook). I cant think of a better investment for learning than boosting the network (bandwidth) to support online learning in all forms. The Internet is the heart, blood circulation, and oxygen of learning in the 21st century.

More importantly, today more than ever, it is critical to encourage students to nurture their communication, collaboration, creative and analytical skills using the web and multimedia tools. Increasingly in the future, people in organizations will be working and collaborating online using the cloud, so it is important to encourage and necessary to prepare our students for this new world.

Also, it is important to highlight here that the quality of the students output (results) at this stage is not as important as empowering their passionate and inquiring mindset to explore possibilities and ideas, and continuously reflect, learn and improve from these learning experiences. In short, focus more on the learning process than the output (results). Results will come as they learn. Some are early bloomers, others are late bloomers, and that is something we should never forget.

Can you imagine hiring a graduate that cannot communicate and collaborate online? Try asking that same question in four years time :)