Dr Yun Wah Lam (right), Associate Professor, and Dr Sze Wing Tang (left), Postdoctoral Fellow, from the Department of Chemistry, demonstrated their insights in the online teaching project.
Dr Yun Wah Lam, Associate Professor of the Department of Chemistry, was recognized by the Innovative CityU-Learning Awards 2020, for his proposal “ZOOMing into a scientific discussion: learning to ask, not to answer.”
The 2020 global coronavirus pandemic has unwittingly opened up unprecedented opportunities to test novel e-learning pedagogies. For instance, virtual ZOOM meetings have eliminated all logistic restrictions in organising guest lectures and site visits. Dr Lam and his team proposed to utilise this unique feature to enrich learning experiences in the course BCH4064 (Biological Techniques and Instrumentation). It was also a part of the effort to utilise the students’ concern and fascination over the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic to increase their motivation of learning biological techniques.
Students will be taken to a drug screening facility at PolyU on a “virtual” site visit, followed by a lecture on a 2004 paper on screening anti-SARS molecules. Each student will submit five questions on drug discovery technologies, which will be posted, anonymously, on CityU’s Canvas, and students will vote for their favourite questions. The authors of the 2004 SARS paper will also be invited to participate in a ZOOM meeting with the students, in which the voted questions are asked. Students will then extract the knowledge and ideas from this learning activity, and come up with proposals for discovering anti-COVID-19 compounds.
“This pedagogy emphasises the importance of ‘asking the right question’ over ‘finding the right answer’ as the tool for thinking and acquiring knowledge in the 21st century”, said Dr Lam, “I hope the students will be encouraged to replicate the positive experience of this exercise in future when they attend a formal research seminar."
The Innovative CityU-Learning Awards was newly introduced in the academic year 2019/20, aiming to recognise innovative approaches implemented in Semesters A and B 2019/20 towards enhancing the quality of online teaching and assessment at CityU. There are four awardees this year.