The Centre for Learning and Teaching (CLT) and the Centre for Curriculum Development and Innovation (CCDI) organised Teaching Forum 4.0 (session one) on 24 June 2022 via Microsoft Teams. The online forum was moderated by Faculty of Creative Industries (FCI) academic Dr Saraswathy Thurairaj.

The virtual forum aimed to provide a platform for academic staff to share their experiences, reflections, teaching practices and innovative pedagogy for May and June 2022 Trimester.

Present to deliver the talks were Centre for Foundation Studies of Kampar Campus academics Lionel Keith Vytialingam and Dr Ong Kiah Ju, and FCI academic Dr Ngeow Yeok Meng.

Lionel’s presentation topic was titled Building Writing Skills via Google Docs. He said, “Before the pandemic, all classes were held physically, but when the pandemic came through, we had to switch our teaching method to virtual and online learning mode. Google Docs was definitely a game-changer for me. It played a large part when I had to prepare for online teaching and learning (OTL). Google Docs acts as a central tool for teaching and learning of writing and a live doc tool where students can type, ask about vocabulary, and grammatical sentence structures and have discussions. Besides OTL, I continued using Google Docs for my administrative duties. Initially, I was deliberating on how to actively interact with my students virtually. However, as I started teaching using the virtual platform, I found that my students were able to engage with me and participate actively in the lesson via Chatbox and Breakout Room; they managed to type out their answers there. It is amazing to see them interact, suggest opinions and improvements.” In addition, Lionel also highlighted the significance of CFS Course Outcomes in English as the course offered a real-time opportunity for students to write, explore vocabulary and observe the word structures while exchanging perspectives.

The forum continued with the second speaker, Dr Ong Kiah Ju who presented her topic titled Miro, a Milo in Our Teaching. She said, “Miro is an interactive board that is simple to use. It offers three free boards with various attractive templates. The Miro board has several advantages; it can share and connect ideas, it is time-saving, assists students to understand better, encourages students to learn together, and enables users to download a copy for their future reference. First-time users will only need to sign up for a free account. It will lead you to the Miro dashboard where you can start creating your board by choosing a template; then you may click start.” Dr Ong also emphasised that the Miro board can be used on numerous occasions, such as during tutorial classes, brainstorming sessions, meetings and workshops; for mapping and diagramming, research and design as well as strategy and planning.

The online forum continued with Dr Ngeow presenting the 2022 UTAR Staff Survey on Hybrid Teaching. She mentioned that the survey was conducted to gather the academics’ feedback on hybrid teaching pertaining to facilities and tools, hybrid teaching practices, hybrid teaching experience, support for teaching staff and their recommendations for improvements. Furthermore, Dr Ngeow also explained how the university values the academics’ efforts and contributions to the implementation of Hybrid Teaching on campus while coping with the uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic, and transition to endemic.

The insightful online forum ended with a Q&A and group photography sessions.