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My Success Story Leading to Anugerah Akademik Negara 2010 Kategori Pengajaran Sains Tulen (2010 Malaysia’s Higher Education Academic Science Teaching Excellence Award)

Authored by Associate Professor Dr. Jaafar Jantan aka Dr JJ, FSG, Universiti Teknologi MARA.

October 2011

http://drjj.uitm.edu.my email: jjnita@salam.uitm.edu.my

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Oct 10th, 2011, is a landmark victory for me, UiTM and my beloved family members. All my (and theirs) pains,

sorrow, frustration, contributions, commitment, dedication and passion in educating, facilitating and coaching

young and adult learners at UiTM since 1997, has landed me an honorable recognition by the Malaysian

Ministry of Higher Education. My passion is in aligning teaching and learning activities with the learning targets

and I do it by incorporating research-validated instructional methodologies in my teaching practices. Through

my Journey towards Enhancement & Balance by utilizing Arts & Science in Teaching & Learning (JEBAT)

philosophy, I developed the Peer Facilitating Learning Cycle (PeFaLeC) and Assisted Peer-Provocation

Interactive Engagment (APPIE). I aslo adopted the Predict-Observe-Discuss-Synthesize (PODS) learning cycle

approaches to my classroom practices. My approach is strongly reflected in the following quote:

“Learning is not a spectator sports. You do not learn much just sitting in classes listening to teachers,

memorizing prepackaged assignments, and spitting out answers. You must talk about what you are

learning, write reflectively about it, relate it to past experiences, and apply it to your daily lives. You

must make what you learn part of yourselves.” Arthur W. Chickering

As I ponder over this inspiring quote, I wonder how much longer it will take for UiTM and the rest of the higher

education providers to transform their faculty staffs. 21st Century teaching should invite learners to respectfully

question, engage, argue, debate, experience, search and pursue resiliently and diligently. Despite the

abundance of scientific evidences that traditional, passive, teacher-centered-instruction is the LEAST

meaningful instructional method to promote deep learning, buying-in faculty staffs to transform remains a

highly challenging task.

Eleven years into the 21st Century, yet transformation of academic staff to match the needs of a high-income

country remains far-fetched. Accountability of higher education providers has been under intense

stakeholders’ scrutiny. The need to define significant learning essentials when proposing programs forces

higher education providers to align the teaching and learning activities and program and course assessment

practices towards supporting and validating learners attainment of those said learning essentials. This means,

at the very least, recognize and utilize research-validated evidences in psychology, epistemology and science

education.

These evidences inform us that classroom practices should focus on engaging learners with the content during

the learning process rather than lecturing on the content that the learners must master to pass a course.

Learners prefer information to be presented visually and they prefer to actively engage with themselves and

their peers during the learning events. As a matter of fact, research into physics education, engineering

education, chemistry education and now math and biology education conducted by discipline experts, found

that active engagement learning environment provide significantly higher learning outcomes gain. Yet, the

predominantly learning method is the teacher “lecturing” to the students, exactly the opposite of how students

learn best. So who is supposed to be “learning” and “engaging” anyway, the teacher or the learners??

As a university teacher, facilitator and coach since January 1987, I strived to make active learning and the

culture of evidence as the guiding principles of my classroom practices. I envisioned having highly

knowledgeable, critical, respectful and responsible Malaysian bumiputra at every corner of the globe. My vision

is supported by my passion to develop, share, assess and improve curricular materials that engage learners

with the content rather than just “sitting there” in a lecture hall or classroom. In the words of the wise scholar

and Chairman of UiTM Board of Directors,

“I believe he is preparing his students to secure higher order positions, become the best in any class

and to be first among equals. I strongly believe that Dr JJ’s initiative should not only be replicated by

other faculties at UiTM but also by other institutions of higher learning. Lest we forget, the quest for

competitive advantage of nations is fought and won or lost in the classroom and no-where else.” (Tan

Sri Wan Dr. Zahid Wan Noordin, 2011)

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My effort to support learners in their low and high order thinking and practical skills is relentless. Classroom

activities are always noisy, engaging and fun. At times, learners would stumble on constructive and practical

solutions to an unanticipated problems faced by the learning community. Learners cooperate and collaborate

through various forms of cognitive, practical and social tasks. The electronic media, ICT and social networking

media become invaluable learning tools in facilitating their growth. I become their friend as I coached them

towards learning how to learn and as I assist them to construct new knowledge. I challenged their belief system

and threw existing mental models into conflict. I want them to learn, unlearn and relearn through the process

of uncovering and discovering. Despite the teaching load equal to other faculty staff, I continue to develop

active learning materials and maintain my own website to enrich learners with electronic resources which are

available to them anytime anywhere. My effort is strongly supported in the number of hits and page views

registered on my website. In the words of Tan Sri Dr. Wan Zahid,

“Dr JJ has, through his painstaking effort, build a treasure trove of valuable documents on teaching

and learning. I have personally surf his website and was amazed at his collection of state of the art

knowledge on teaching and learning, among other related matters. Dr JJ is generous too. He makes

available his website materials to academicians who may freely download the materials without

having to secure prior authorization from him. I must state that I find it amazing that Dr JJ, despite the

demands made on him as a teacher, could find the time and the space to create and maintain such a

rich and resourceful website. Such devotion to such demanding functions can only come about from a

person with a heightened sense of passion and dedication for the things that he loves doing. Dr JJ has

those qualities. He is very passionate about his job as a scholar and a teacher and he executes them

admirably.”

I am humbly sharing my story to inculcate awareness for the need to transform. Change is like a shark in the

ocean, never stops and never sleeps. Change continuously happens to the things that we love and those that

we don’t and he who rejects change is an architect of decay. As we cruise through 2011 and peep into 2012,

there is much for us to change in order for us to transform the incoming novices into competent, proficient,

skillful, ethical and responsible human capitals. Our role is to propel the country into a high-income economy.

Our machineries are the students we nurture till graduation. Our pillars shall be the constructively aligned

teaching and learning activities and the constructively aligned program and course assessment strategies. We

ought to do what we should be doing to support attainment of learning, outcomes, educational objectives,

learning goals and vision of our university and our beloved country. To this end, I came up with an Outcomes-

Based Curriculum Design spreadsheet innovation that are currently used by UiTM program designers and also

program designers from a number of public and private universities.

I am truthfully honored and thankful to be bestowed by UiTM and by Malaysia as the 2010 Academic

Excellence Recipient in University Teaching (Pure Science). I could not have done it without nomination from

UiTM, without full support from the Dean and staff of Faculty of Applied Sciences, without encouragement

from UiTM faculty members and supporting staff, without continuous commitment from my students, without

continual debate and challenges from my peers, without the love and spiritual inspiration from the late Prof

Khalijah Salleh, without the strong belief and testimonial from Tan Sri Dr Wan Zahid Wan Noordin, my family

members, and my beloved children and wives. I punctuate this story with words of wisdom from Tan Sri Dr

Wan Zahid:

“Dr JJ’s innovations in using ICT, his boldness in embedding debate as part of the learning and

assessment task for the Philosophy of Science course, his use of simulations for his physics class so

that students can visualize simple and abstract physics concepts, his strong communication skills and

his dedication and commitment to create and maintain are indeed the hallmark of a great scholar,

researcher and teacher. This is one gem that should not be missed by anyone who believes in the

classroom as the central battleground for winning the war of producing the human capital to attain

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competitive advantage for the country. Dr JJ truly deserves to be awarded MOHE’s Academic Award

for Teaching & Learning.” (Tan Sri Wan Zahids’ testimonials in support of my 2010 AAN nomination)

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