The suspension of tuition centres may have caused anxiety among some parents during the Circuit Breaker period. However, thanks to Facebook and video-making apps, Assistant Professor Chua Boon Liang of the Mathematics and Mathematics Education Academic Group found a way to extend a helping hand to secondary school students who needed extra coaching with mathematics.
The idea started when a few friends approached the mathematics lecturer to help tutor their kids. “I was really busy with my own teaching schedule at that time. Nonetheless, I thought I would try producing some video lessons that could serve either as self-study or revision tools. And so, that was how my four videos on the Expansion and Factorisation of Algebraic Expressions came about, after finding out that some lower secondary students had been asking for help with this topic,” Assistant Professor Chua explained.
The effort did not stop there. After receiving some positive feedback from friends and some mathematics teachers on the videos, Assistant Professor Chua decided to reach out to the teaching community by sharing the videos via the SG Learning Designers Circle group in Facebook. The SG Learning Designers Circle is a community of local learning designers who are keen to share, learn and design learning experiences using infocomm technologies to develop 21st century competencies in classrooms.
“The four videos had been produced over a period of four weeks. My aim was to provide an engaging and joyful e-learning experience for students. I took in various suggestions and comments from my friends, and sought to improve each subsequent video. For example, I was asked to speak slower so that the weaker students could follow my explanation and to provide more pause points to encourage learner participation. Most importantly, I made sure that answers to the “thinking” questions and practice questions were provided in the lessons for learners to do a self-assessment,” Assistant Professor Chua added.
The videos garnered greater support when they were circulated via Facebook. Many commented that the lessons were easy to understand, in particular for the weaker students, and that students found it refreshing to learn from someone other than their usual mathematics teacher.
Well done Assistant Professor Chua!
