Sunway College Victoria University promotes active teaching and learning

Sunway College Victoria University (VU) recently organised its 1st Teaching & Learning Forum which brought together educators from Sunway College, Sunway University, Sunway International School and other institutions across Malaysia and Australia to share ideas, knowledge and experience for excellence in teaching.

Dr Elizabeth Lee, Senior Executive Director of Sunway University and Sunway Education Group was impressed with the inaugural forum. “Having seen an awesome celebration of 20 years partnership between Sunway College VU and VU Melbourne, I am very pleased and thankful to Sunway College VU for coming up with this forum. Teaching and learning are what students come to us for and Sunway, as a young institution, we have to be good at research, to step up and meet our students’ demands,” said Dr Lee.

Presenters and participants comprising educators of different fields had a day of fruitful learning at the 1st Teaching & Learning Forum

Presenters for the day included Anita Premila Paul Dorairaj, Moy Tow Yoon and Lawrence Tang Eng Loong from Sunway College; Sophia Latt and Lim Woan Ning from Sunway University and Blake Watters from Sunway International School. External presenters were Jerry Chong Chean Fuh from a local private university; Associate Professor Sharmila Sethu, Academic Director with a local institution; Yari Kostecki from Australia; and Joanna Claire Miranda, former lecturer of Sunway College VU who is currently pursuing her doctorate of Business Administration at Victoria University, Melbourne.

Kicking off the forum, Jerry and Anita through “Turning into Gen-Y Learners: An Engagement Catalyst” presented their findings after having tested their teaching methods on sampled students. Through their experiment and literature review, they discovered that practical, personal and pursuit are three keywords of engaging generation Y learners in teaching. These keywords take up three corners of the word “Y”; Practicality refers to students relating what they have learnt with real-world scenarios, examples, current practices or products or past work experiences; Personalisation refers to students connecting their learning to a deeper and more individualised manner; Pursuit is a term they coined, referring to creating competitiveness among students to pursue better understanding and learning.

After the intensive one-day forum, Greeja Hemalata De Silva, Head of Australian University Programme, Sunway College VU concluded “We have all learnt something on how we can get students engaged in their learning. We acknowledge the great importance of education technology with the widespread use of social media addressing various interesting and diverse topics in teaching.”

The successful collaborative and effective forum enabled participants to network and take home new teaching ideas. The positive feedback has motivated Greeja and her organising team to plan for second Teaching & Learning forum which is expected in 2016.