When I leave
I told myself that I can’t wait to leave
But it seems
My heart is saying I will be missing it.
Composer: CHIFFON, Lyricist: Stephanie

Are these the lyrics of a new pop song? No, it’s actually a song composed by our very own 3rd year Accountancy students, creatively showcasing their Accountancy Practical Training experience using multimedia presentations.

The students had to present what they learned during their 6 months’ internship through innovative use of multimedia. They also had to learn by themselves how to create and edit their production using multimedia tools. Through the Multimedia Presentation Project, students realized what they did not know and were motivated to work together as a team drawing strengths from each member. They collaborated and brain-stormed to develop interesting and relevant themes for their presentations.

Students were excited and inspired to form an e-portfolio of themselves as well as to demonstrate how they have grown and benefited through the internship experience.

A group of our students attached to PwC, one of the Big Four public accounting firms.

Overview

The Accountancy Practical Training Program is a six months internship program pioneered by the Accountancy Department of Ngee Ann Polytechnic. The module is an integral part of the Diploma in Accountancy curriculum, providing students with opportunities to experience the real working world before graduation.

This module calls upon students to learn and use various knowledge and skills in a practical way. The latest innovation in the module was the introduction of the Multimedia Presentation Project. This project gives students the opportunity to reflect on their learning experiences as well as develop their information technology skills. Considering the proliferation of IT in business, we believe that the IT communication skills that students learn as part of this project will stand them in good stead in the future.

This multimedia presentation mode of assessment improves the range of assessments for which students are evaluated for Accountancy Practical Training Program. It also gives students the opportunity to showcase their abilities in an electronic form and this can be added to their e-portfolio to benefit them in future job seeking.

Our students work hard and play hard. The picture above shows our students taking part in their company’s Christmas Dinner party.

Description of the Multimedia Presentation Project

Group Project

The Multimedia Presentation Project is a group project. Students collectively develop the theme of their project and plan how they want to present it using a suitable mode of presentation.

Themes

Students are encouraged to imagine themselves as the director of a short film/video and they develop their own theme and story. They are encouraged to think out of the box. Anything goes as long as the final multimedia presentation has relevance to the Accountancy Practical Training Program.

Modes of Presentation

The students were allowed to choose whatever mode of presentation they wished. Following are some of the types of presentation submitted:

1. Slideshow/ Montage of Photos
2. Podcast
3. Short Video made using Movie Maker etc.
4. Song composed by student
5. Skit
6. Flash animation
7. Quotations weaved into the videos
8. Cartoons / animation to depict APT Learning.

Some students created their own props and acted out a skit to illustrate the dilemmas they faced during their internship.

Learning outcomes

The Multimedia Presentation Project serves as an overall consolidation of what students have learnt in the Accountancy Practical Training Program and as a grand finale to mark the end of their attachment. Students are empowered to choose their own theme and mode of delivery through innovative use of IT.

Students also reflected that the project work has fostered learner interaction and collaborative learning as they picked up new skills on multimedia tools and they have learnt to resolve conflicts amongst themselves.

Example Student Video

This video illustrates one of the final submitted projects. It demonstrates how the students have matured and grown through their internship experience. They have learned many life skills, including how to resolve problems faced at work.

Learner-centred Learning

The students have gained a great deal from the learner-centred approach taken in the design of the Multimedia Presentation Project.

Learning by doing: The students learned many skills by being actively involved in this project. They have learned to plan and execute their project and they have learned multimedia skills like video making and editing. By taking on the role of a director, they learn teamwork and leadership skills.

Learning by collaborating: Being a group project, students needed to collaborate on the theme, story line, scripting, creating and editing their project.

Learning by researching: The multimedia skills were not taught by the tutors and so the students needed to pick up the skills through their own research. As such, they became aware of what they already knew and what they needed to find out.

They also needed to research further on the companies that they were attached to as part of the story-telling process. Another area of research that students completed was on accountancy as a profession.

Learning by reflecting: The students needed to reflect on what they had learned during their 6-month working attachment. This was a valuable activity and it helped to consolidate the experience.

Student Reactions

Based on a student survey, 81% of those who responded strongly agree or agree that the multimedia presentation project has enabled them to consolidate and express what they have learnt in Accountancy Practical Training Program in a creative and interesting manner.

One of the students wrote:

“[This was] a new refreshing experience I had never tried in school. We see and experience the changes in us, before and after this APT. This is just a wrap up of our 6 months life story.”
Venus Chua, previously attached to Baker Tilly TFWLCL.

Another student wrote:

I’ve grown and matured with [the team], and I have rediscovered the joy of doing something well.
Lim Jian Ming, previously attached to Baker Tilly TFWLCL.

FAQs

Here are some of the concerns raised by colleagues about this project.

1. Won’t the students be distracted from the main purpose of Accountancy Practical Training Program by movie making?
The Accountancy Practical Training Program provides the opportunity for students to put into practice what they have studied in school. It is a learning journey for students to see and experience how knowledge comes to life in the industry. The multimedia is just a tool for students to document what they have learnt.

We do not restrict the project to just movie making, though many students chose this mode as it is more interesting. Students nowadays are already quite IT savvy and they are very comfortable with blogs, etc. Hence movie making is just simply another form for them to reflect on their learning journey. Indirectly, because they need to produce a multimedia product, they have to set certain goals and targets that they want to learn and achieve out of Accountancy Practical Training Program, and this spurs them to achieve these objectives, so that there is something of substance they can put in their multimedia.

2. What if the students don’t know the movie-making tools?
The students are directed to online resources that demonstrate how to use Windows Movie Maker. In fact, many of the students already know how to use the tool. For those who have problems, they are very resourceful and this project encourages them to collaborate and learn from friends who know how to use the tool. It also encourages students to do further research on their own on how to use these editing tools.

3. How much does creativity, sound quality and lighting quality of the movie affect the grade for Accountancy Practical Training Program?
Quality accounts for 20% of the project marks. Hence we want students to pay attention to content as well as the quality of the final product. The project should be something that they can be proud of and something that the school can showcase.

4. Accountants don’t need movie-making skills. How is this project valid?
Through the movie-making process, students learn to collaborate, learn to research, learn how to tap on each other’s strengths. This is a fun way for students to work in teams, resolve conflicts and learn how to manage teams. The content of the project is related to Accounting, hence students need to have a good understanding of Accounting related job scope before they are able to produce a short video.

Conclusion

As a result of their involvement in the Multimedia Presentation Project, students were enthusiastic in their learning process and they took the initiative to learn new tools and discover new information about accounting as a profession.

It is also a process of self-discovery for students where they learn to work independently, work as a team, and learn to interact with individuals from different walks of life.

At the end of the project, students gained greater confidence in themselves. They felt they can better confront the challenges in the next phase of their life after graduation. They have developed self-learning skills (vital for lifelong learning) and they are more competent in using IT tools for communication.

And in the process, they have proved that accountants are not boring!

Authors

Anna Yap

Simon Tan

From School of Business and Accountancy, Ngee Ann Polytechnic.

I would like to share some learner-centered learning approaches that were adopted in an overseas vacation module that I led in September 2007. This module involved taking a group of 12 second-year students to Vietnam for 10 days during their holiday period. The students can use this vacation module to fulfill one of the requirements for the School of Interdisciplinary Studies.

The overall aim of this vacation module was to study the phenomenon of street children in Hanoi using concepts and theories from social psychology. Street children are often subject to abuse, neglect and exploitation.

Street children in Hanoi

The vacation module consisted of 3 parts:

1. Pre-departure workshops (in Singapore) where students conducted initial research on social psychology and presented their results to the class;
2. The 10-day trip to Hanoi where they got a glimpse into the lives of street children first hand; and
3. Post-trip debrief sessions (in Singapore) where they organized their notes and conducted their final presentations.

What is Learner-Centred Learning?

These are comments that you hear from fellow lecturers during training sessions on learner-centered learning. But it is natural for most of us to regard learner-centered learning with suspicion because lectures and examinations remain the most widely used techniques in schools all around the world. In fact, this combination is so ingrained that it is synonymous with education and learning.

However, I felt it was important that the vacation module in Vietnam was conducted using learner-centred approaches. Essentially, I was following Rallis’ definition when he says that…

… learner-centred learning takes place when students participate and contribute actively to their learning, making discoveries instead of following directions or memorizing facts. Importantly, students direct their own learning and are guided by their own questioning (Rallis, 1995).

Shifting the Responsibility of Learning from Teacher to Student

The first step in enabling students to direct their own learning is to interest them in the topic of study, which in this case is the phenomenon of street children and general theories from social psychology. This is important because once students are interested it is much easier to put the student in the driver’s seat to take charge of their own learning.

The students who enroll in vacation modules are often a self-selected group, so it is possibly easier to adopt learner-centred learning approaches with them. Other than a little soft-selling on the part of the teacher, applicants are generally motivated as they would be sacrificing their vacation time and by signing up for this module, it would indicate that they like this topic of study.

For this vacation module, I allowed students autonomy to decide their assignments within certain parameters. By giving them a certain degree of choice, the students will have greater ownership of their assignments as they are guided by their interests. This also builds on their earlier motivation when signing up for the module.

However, I found that I needed to continually guide and mentor the students with regards to their assignments. This was to ensure that their self-directed learning efforts did not degenerate into frivolity.

Students recording notes in Vietnam

Structuring Module Assignments

Assignments in this module were also deliberately structured such that they build on each other. For instance, in the first assignment students researched any topic within the phenomenon of street children while the next required that they select theories from a social psychology text to lecture in class. A third assignment then required that they attempt to marry the two.

As you may have guessed, another approach I employed was to make students part of my lecture team. I assigned them manageable amounts of reading material to lead in class presentations. This allows the students to assume more responsibility by taking a share in the teaching of the class. As such, I am also able to concentrate more on posing questions on the assigned reading material as well as to ascertain their understanding.

Challenges of Learner-centered Learning Approaches

If students are doing the lecturing, then the quality of lecturing may suffer and at times less ground may be covered. Also, there may not be guarantees that the best and most appropriate questions are raised or that the most fruitful lines of inquiry will be followed. However, it puts the onus directly on students to understand enough of the material so that they can lead class discussions.

In fact, many false starts occur when students lead class discussion and I have to admit that there are many times when I needed to intervene to keep the discussion running smoothly.

Class debrief at the end of the day in Hanoi

Ba Dinh Square in Hanoi

Through gradual prodding and demonstrating good questions, slowly the students learned to undertake more of the responsibility for carrying on class discussions. Admittedly, this approach works best in small groups and hence will not totally replace traditional classroom teaching. But what is powerful is that in this manner, the students construct their own learning with access to conventional concepts and modeling via questions and probing rather than pure direction (Driver et. al 1994).

One challenge I encountered when implementing learner-centred learning approaches is that the teacher must constantly act as a mentor and guide to ensure that the learning is meaningful. Yes, it is definitely more effort on the part of the teacher to constantly check that the student’s assignments were headed in the right direction. But the good part is that because students had ownership of their learning, they were more motivated and they were more inclined to pose questions that were pointed and better thought out. In fact, many of the evenings in Vietnam were spent discussing what could be better done in terms of approaching their assignments and all these were initiated at the request of the students.

Students at the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology

One final point of note though, that not all students may like learner-centred learning approaches because some students may have mastered the traditional rules well and would not want to risk getting a lower grade by playing the learning game in a new way. However, with adequate persuasion and encouragement, I believe students can be convinced to be more involved in the learning process as most of them do not like to passively listen to lectures.

In essence, what I did was to conduct introductory lectures on what exactly is social psychology during the pre-departure workshops in Singapore. This is important as it provides an appropriate perspective with which students can frame their assignment questions. The students also conducted research on their topic of choice and discussed how they would approach this topic during these sessions.

Once in Hanoi, the students would embark on their interviews and participant observations with the street children. My role then was that of a mentor, checking periodically to see if the student projects were on track.

Back in Singapore, post-trip debriefing sessions were held more like consultation sessions where students not only organized their field notes but importantly asked questions to make sense of their observations. This is important as it ensures that their concepts are correctly applied and their learning is meaningful.

In Conclusion

By using a learner-centred learning approach, I feel that the students learned more because they were motivated by their own curiosity and interests. By carefully influencing and controlling these inquisitions, students definitely learn more than simply listening to me lecture on concepts in social psychology. And all these happened because the students were involved in their own learning.

Author

Leslie Tey is a lecturer in the School of Interdisciplinary Studies, at Ngee Ann Polytechnic, Singapore.

References

Driver, R., Asoko, H., Leach, J., Mortimer, E. and Scott, P. (1994). Constructing Scientific Knowledge in the Classroom. Educational Researcher, 32 (7).

Rallis, Sharon F. (1995). Creating Learner Centered Schools: Dreams and Practices. Theory into Practice, Volume 34, Number 4, Autumn. College of Education, The Ohio State University.

In this article we find out what wikis are and how they are being used to build knowledge in:

• business and
• education,
• with an example from Ngee Ann Polytechnic.

What is a Wiki?

A Wiki is like an online whiteboard - a Web-based platform where authorised users can create new pages or update existing pages. Wikis are used in projects where there is a need to collaboratively collect and update information.

One of the best explanations of the concept of a wiki is provided in the following video made by the folks at CommonCraft.

Who started Wikis?

Howard G. “Ward” Cunningham (left) developed the first wiki in 1994.

Wikipedia: The most popular and best known wiki

The best example of a wiki-based project is Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is a huge online encyclopedia built by thousands of users all over the world. Members are constantly updating existing articles and creating new ones. There are currently more than 9 million articles in over 200 languages.

Here is a screen shot from the Wikipedia page on Angkor:

Jimmy Wales (right) and Larry Sanger co-founded Wikipedia.


The Wikipedia participants who help maintain and expand the online encyclopedia live all over the world. The group pictured below came from many countries to attend the 2007 Wikimania conference in Taipei.

Other Examples of Wikis

Wikinomics: A community-built economics book

According to their home page, Wikinomics gives everyone the opportunity to…

be a part of the first peer-produced guide to business in the twenty-first century.

The overall aim of the Wikinomics project is:

The primary objective of the Wikinomics Wiki is to deliberate on topics considered in the book and co-create an extended body of knowledge through community contributions.

Wikitravel: Another community site built using a wiki

Inspired by the Wikipedia project, Evan Prodromou and Michele Ann Jenkins started the Wikitravel project. Travel enthusiasts compile and maintain information for thousands of destinations using a wiki platform.

Wikitravel is fast becoming a competitor to print travel guides and in some cases provides more up to date information.

Wikis as a brainstorming/collaboration platform

The Firefox browser is an open source collaborative development by programmers from all over the world. To keep track of the complexities involved, they use a wiki.

You can see current developments in the wiki for Firefox 3.

Below is a screen shot of a wiki used by some bloggers in Singapore to plan an event. If you are an attendee or you want to speak on some topic, all you need to do is click on the “Edit This Page” button and add your content. Using a wiki means that there is one version of the event organisation. If such an event was to be organised by email, there would be several versions and it is easy to lose track of the most recent.

Wikis in Business

Talking about the importance of wikis for business, BusinessWeek wrote in 2005:

Internet research firm Gartner Group predicts that wikis will become mainstream collaboration tools in at least 50% of companies by 2009.

At Ann Arbor (Mich.)-based Soar Technology Inc., an artificial-intelligence company that works on projects for the Office of Naval Research, wikis enable the company to slash in half the time it takes to complete projects. Soar engineer Jacob Crossman says that’s because the wikis eliminate the usual flurry of back-and-forth attachments and resulting document-version confusion that’s rife in e-mail. At Dresdner, Rangaswami says that among the earliest and most aggressive adopters, e-mail volume on related projects is down 75%; meeting times have been whacked in half.

Google Documents

Google has a wiki-like online tool called Google Documents. This utility helps users to collaborate with friends and co-workers to create documents. Here I’m working with a Japanese friend to translate an article. The traditional way of doing something like this would involve sending an email for each revision. With Google Documents, both of us work on just one workspace and we can keep track of all the revisions.

Wikis in Education

Getting students to work on a wiki is a neat way of introducing them to the way in which information-based projects are handled and executed in the globalised workplace today.

There is a more detailed analysis of using wikis in education at wikiineducation.com.

Welker’s Wikinomics: Shanghai American School

Here’s an example where students collaboratively built a rich repository of economics information. The students used it to help them study for an exam.

This project was awarded the best educational wiki award by Edublog Awards 2007. The wiki was created to help the students learn Advanced Placement Economics. Jason Wlker, the teacher in charge of the wiki posted his experience online along with the feedback from the students.

The teacher in charge writes:

I think it’s safe to say the Wiki was a success. Interestingly, although the students seem to think that I put a lot of work into the Wiki; in reality it was THEM who did most of the work. I would say I spent about two hours per unit (that’s every two to three weeks) setting up the pages for the unit, and maybe another 30 minutes per unit tracking who had contributed and reviewing the unit pages for accuracy and completion. The beautiful thing about the Wiki is that students do most of the work, students help one another learn… all the teacher has to do is get the ball rolling!

Jason also shares how he graded his students on their wiki participation.

An early adopter of Wikis at Ngee Ann Polytechnic

With the emphasis on learner-centred learning here at Ngee Ann Polytechnic, we are introducing platforms where students can play a role in content creation. Some lecturers have been experimenting with wikis since 2005. Early on, it involved using an external wiki platform and dealing with the logistics of account creation and separate passwords. In 2006, we installed a wiki component inside our Blackboard e-learning platform that we use at Ngee Ann Polytechnic.

Mr. Wang IP (right), the module leader for Living in the Information Era, was an early adopter of the wiki platform.

ERA is an Interdisciplinary Studies module that looks at issues pertaining to the impact of infocomm technology on life, work environment, intellectual property, privacy, ethics and security. Students are required to brainstorm and come up with ideas on how to cope with the impact of emerging trends like outsourcing and collaborative learning.

Here is a screen shot from the ERA wiki:

The project involves groups of three to four students working together to generate ideas. Compared to using wikis on external platforms, the advantages that the Blackboard-based wiki offer are:

1. Integrated in Blackboard so there is no need to manage a separate set of passwords.
2. A more detailed statistics view, where the instructor can find out the percentage of participation of each student in a group wiki.
3. More user friendly markup language

Students attend an orientation session where they are introduced to the concept of a Wiki. They try out posting information with their team mates.

Mr. Wang has created a Research Template for the students. This helps the students get started and also helps in maintaining a consistent structure across projects.

Try it Yourself

The best way to learn about wikis is to get involved in one. You could:

• Write an article for Wikipedia
• Join an existing professional wiki in your field
• Create a wiki for your own students to use for collaborative problem solving.

Check out the related article, How to Create a Wiki in Blackboard.

Resources and Further Reading

Using Wikis in Education - Eight Ideas on how to use wikis in education.

How to Use a Wiki in Education: ‘Wiki based Effective Constructive Learning’
(PDF - 2 pages)

Planning & Sustaining Wiki-based Collaboration Projects, by Maish Nichani of Pebble Road.

Author

By Preetam Rai, technology trainer at Teaching and Learning Centre, Ngee Ann Polytechnic.

1. Create a wiki in Blackboard
2. Allow access and editing rights to the wiki for certain students only
3. Check the participation level of each student in the wiki

This tutorial assumes that your Blackboard installation includes Teams LX by Learning Objects, Inc.

1. Log into Blackboard

2. Select your Module.

3. On the left menu, select Control Panel

4. Select the Course Documents (or whichever Content area where you wish to place the wiki)

5. On the next page on the right there is a drop down menu. Select “Wiki” from this menu.

6. Click Go

7. Inside the Wiki field, type in the name for the wiki. Type in an optional description.

8. Then you can choose who will be able to see and edit the wiki.

You can choose between:

• All course (module) members
• Specific groups and course (module) members

If you only want one tutorial group to use this wiki, you can choose that group from the box below. Select the desired tutorial group and click the right arrow so it moves into the “Selected Members” area, like this:

Alternatively, the section below that allows you to select the individual students you want participating in the wiki. Click on the name in the Course Members box on the left and click on the right arrow (>). The name will appear in the right Group Members box.

9. You can remove a member from the wiki by selecting name from the Group Members box on the right hand side and clicking on the centre delete(X) button.

10. Sometimes you may need the particular Wiki to be hidden from the other students (who are not in this team). To do this first select the dates for which the group members can edit the wiki.

After this fill in the dates for which non-group members can view the wiki. Note that non group members cannot edit the wiki, they can just view it.

11. Make the wiki visible (first question below), Do not allow the students to purge the wiki (second question below) aond set the wiki so that the wiki member and instructor both can comment.

12. The last part here deals with creating a grade book entry, set it up if you wish. Click the OK button at the bottom to finish the wiki.

13. Once done, the wiki shows up in the list under your Course Documents. Click on Modify, if wish to change any of the settings.

14. If you want to make more wikis for other students, repeat the steps from 5 through 12.

15. There is an option under the Control Panel that lets you check the participation level.

Detail:

16. You will see a list of wikis and a View Participation button next to it.

17. You will see what percentage of changes have been made by individual students. The View Detail button gives you further break down of the changes made by that particular student.

Author

By Preetam Rai, technology trainer at Teaching and Learning Centre, Ngee Ann Polytechnic.

Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.
Benjamin Franklin

When I was asked to take up teaching of an Ecology module using a problem-based learning approach, I was truly looking forward to the experience. The Ecology module is part of the Diploma in Civil & Environmental Engineering at Ngee Ann Polytechnic.

As a student, I remember how I really enjoyed reading my Ecology textbook. But what registered most was the fact that theory alone can be drab. There was something about the examples in the book that really grabbed my attention − those examples were written from a West African point of view.

This gave me an idea of what my own students will enjoy and at the same time, learn from - something that is not too theory-oriented but rather case-based.

Initial Concerns about Using PBL

There were three key issues that I needed to address before using a PBL (problem-based learning) approach:

• How will I handle time pressures? I was only given 2 hours per week for the module;
• How do I switch from lecturer role to facilitator role? How do I resist the urge to just dish out the answers to questions that my students ask? After all, this is what I have been doing all these years as a teacher.
• How will I maximize learning from the student presentations? Thinking about previous experiences of group presentations brought back unpleasant memories of straining to listen as each group of students presented their results while the other students chattered their heads off. This was not something I was looking forward to with this class. How will I get through two doses of this every other week over an entire semester?

Managing the concerns

- Stretch the problem

I felt that using short, simple problems that students would be able to complete within two hours per week would not have a good learning outcome. Instead, I decided that each problem would have to run over a number of weeks in order for each problem to stretch students’ breadth of investigation and depth of thinking and analysis. The problems I eventually used were designed to run over 2 or 3 weeks.

- Switch to philosopher mode

For the second concern where I needed to adopt the “facilitator” role, I made a mental note to hold my tongue and keep reminding myself to answer every question with another question. Would I succeed at that? Frankly, I was not too sure! I was glad to find out from their reflections that I did OK!

- Showtime!

To address the third concern of getting students to listen to the presenters, I decided to tell them that I would encourage each group to ask questions of the presenting groups, to ‘keep the monotony out’.

I told them that since there would be a great deal of information in the presentations, I would be learning from it and would be noting things down. The same would apply to all of them, and since neither lectures nor lecture notes would be provided, they were responsible for extracting all the information.

They saw the logic in that.

The outcome was that the presentation sessions tended to be very lively and good fun, compared to the monotonous presentations I have seen in my other modules where the reflective process was not enforced and I left the class with a splitting headache and my spirits flagging!

Formulation of the PBL Problems

After attending a series of courses and discussions at the Teaching and Learning Centre, I felt more confident in my knowledge of the key requirements and methodologies for facilitating learning using PBL.

I asked myself what the purpose of the module would be. I decided that at the end of the semester, the students should go away with:

• An awareness of ecological disasters,
• The reasons why ecological disasters occur,
• The current state of the environment,
• The role of Ecology as a measure of the health of the environment, and
• How science and technology can be applied to solving or correcting these problems.

For almost all the problems, there was an abundance of “new” and “real” ecological disaster topics. This allowed me to formulate new problems every semester, as each species and each habitat is unique. Every group was given the freedom to choose a solution that they (as a group) agreed upon as appropriate.

There was the added bonus that such an approach reduces the chance of plagiarism.

Outline of the PBL Problems Used

Students solving a
PBL problem

1. Koala Overpopulation

There is a koala population explosion on an island off Australia. Koalas are an introduced species on this island, a nuisance there, yet an endangered species in the rest of the country − and a national icon. The choice of population control had to keep the delicate issues of tourism and animal rights in sight.

I still recall with amusement a debate in the class during a presentation in the first semester when one group suggested opening a “hunting season” for koalas to encourage tourism: the koala lovers and animal rights activists took the bait and argued, while the skeptics sniggered, and as the debate rolled on, one well-read student came up with a statement that put a stop to it all:

Who would want to shoot koalas - they are animals that move so slowly that they take half a day to move down or up a tree - what’s the thrill to a hunter - shooting slow animals and easy target is no fun.

I was really impressed with this group - I did not have to say anything else to them!

2. European Rabbits in New Zealand

In the second semester, the problem revolved around the thriving population of European rabbits, an introduced species to New Zealand.

3. Cane Toads

In the third semester, the problem statement concerned cane toads, an introduced species that became a nuisance in Australia.

In two out of the three cases mentioned above, the introduced species were brought in from elsewhere as a predator to control population of some agricultural pest, and ended up becoming a pest - this was the “catch” when introduction of predators was considered as an option.

The choice of such a topic covered a host of related topics in ecology, and helped to link these topics together in a neat manner:

• Population ecology,
• Food chain,
• Food web,
• Introduction of foreign species,
• Population control methods (the plus and the minus points of each),
• Competition,
• Extinction of species,
• Animal rights,
• Connection to economics and tourism

4. Global Warming

This topic also spanned across several topics.

A controversial solution to global warming was given. The concept was to add nutrients to parts of the oceans to encourage algae growth (the equivalent of pollution with nutrients, which elsewhere, the industry is trying to avoid!) - which would reduce carbon dioxide gas in the air during photosynthesis and in turn, feed fish (thus encourage a profitable aquaculture business as well, and feed the world’s hungry).

Students were given 3 weeks: In the first week, they would have to work on the topic of global warming and greenhouse effect, photosynthesis and geochemical cycles. In the second week, they would have to establish the efficacy of this proposed solution - to decide whether or not to support this idea. In the third week, they would present their findings and arguments.

5. Pesticides

The sub-topics that students needed to examine were:

• Pesticides - to ban or not to ban;
• Integrated Pest Management for control of Dengue fever or
• Develop a mosquito trap specific to Aedes mosquito.

The aim of a problem on these lines was to demonstrate the effectiveness and long-term effects of pesticides; holistic approaches to preventing an epidemic and application of information gathered on a particular species.

The Importance of Good Problem Writing

My conclusion from the experience was that the choice of topic and careful formulation of the problem statement played a key role in keeping their interest and increasing learning outcomes.

Workload Issues

On reflection, I decided that I would need to change and improve some of the processes so that students’ workload would be reduced. In part, this was achieved by getting the students to complete more of the tasks during class, rather than outside school time.

Also, not every lesson was devoted to solving problems. Towards the end of the semester I made use of a video on eco-tourism in class and I believe this had positive learning outcomes while reducing workload.

Using e-Learning Tools to Facilitate PBL

The PBL approach is certainly enhanced by the use of e-tools, since they help students to investigate, discuss, collaborate and present their results. Some of the e-tools that the students used were:

a. Discussion Forums

As soon as the groups were formed I would open group discussion forums on Blackboard. These forums were accessible only to the students belonging to the respective group and me, so that they can:

• Discuss the problem in private;
• Exchange information, files and pictures that they gather or prepare during their background research.

As time went by, the students tended to use various other IT tools such as MSN messenger – depending on their comfort level.

Most of the research was done online and when reflecting, they were asked to critique their sources.

b. Student-prepared Websites

One particular cohort of students had two interested groups preparing web-sites on ‘How Engineering can be used to Address the Challenge of Global Warming’ for the Sterling Website Competition organized by the British Council (Eco-Manifesto and Green Earth). Both of these were short-listed into the final round. Students used Adobe Dreamweaver to develop the Websites.

In that particular semester, the students were asked to discuss using a Lotus Notes-based ‘green-room forum’ that was linked to the two websites.

Participants in the Sterling Website Competition

c. Use of External Forums

Later on, I used the ‘green-room forum’ to update the class on the latest happenings in the environmental field and interesting topics. Topics discussed were: ‘Whimsical Solutions to reduce global warming’ and ‘Engineering Solutions to reduce global warming’.

d. Use of MS Office Tools

As a class, all groups made good use of Microsoft office tools especially Powerpoint, Excel and Word.

There were instances where the students were not using the most appropriate tool. In the very first semester, one of the students was not fully aware of MS Excel’s capabilities and he actually plotted his concept of a population model as a graph using Word’s drawing tools! While I felt it was a laudable attempt, I made sure he knew how to draw graphs using Excel…

e. Using the Library’s e-Databases

The students also got to use the e-library facilities in the Ecotourism problem. This increased their awareness of the availability of this resource.

Student Reflections

Reflection played a vital role in developing a greater awareness by the students of:

• Their learning;
• The areas that need further development;
• Their strengths; and
• Their weaknesses.

On the final day of semester, students submitted reflection forms. Included was a requirement for peer groups to comment on their degree of satisfaction with answers to the questions they posed to each of the presenting groups.

I realized that one of the key aspects to success is to convince students that the whole process of thinking, exploring, finding and presenting those solutions, and then justifying those solutions is important - even if the choice of the ’solution’ to the problem was not the ‘most appropriate’. This realization usually only dawned on them while participating in the critique of their presentation and as they reflected on their own learning journey.

One of the students wrote:

She said that the only way one could learn something is when that person is participating in the whole learning process

Feedback

Giving Feedback to Students

My observation is that the students value feedback - both from the facilitator as well as from their peers. Feedback is important especially for first-year students who might be presenting for the first time and grappling with a new method of teaching.

Once feedback is peppered with the good aspects as well as - room for improvement, no feelings are hurt, and they reflect on what they have been told, and work on the flaws for the next presentation. Normally, the earnest ones do show a marked improvement.

The PBL approach gives students much more developmental feedback on a range of learning issues, including problem analysis, quality of solution, presentation and also content learned. Feedback is also obtained from multiple sources and perspectives during the execution of a PBL learning event.

Getting Feedback from Students

Some of the feedback written by students:

‘The tutor asks us questions that make us think harder, gives feedbacks on some groups presentation which make me more aware what I should do or not in future presentations’

‘The feedback that she given help to point out the mistakes’

‘Telling us how to improve on the presentation - The feedbacks given’

Looking back

In retrospect, if I were to do this module again, I would ask the students to do their reflection using blogs. From recent experiences with students in another module, I find that some students who pass up mediocre submissions with pen and paper tend to do an impressive job especially when reflecting on a blog!

I also strongly feel that the use of such a module in the very first semester does play a vital role in class bonding.

By going through the problems and the process, I was confident that the students achieved the learning objectives, which were to ignite their interest in the environment, identify the role of science and technology in it, and to link the various environmental issues to ecology in an engaging manner. I also felt that the students gained by dabbling with the basic e-tools.

More importantly, by going through the reflection process, the students gained a deeper understanding of their own learning as well as gaining more insights into the ecology content that they had discovered.

By Mariam Mathew
Division of Building and Environment
School of Engineering
Ngee Ann Polytechnic

[Koala image source (used on the home page story summary).]

What are the factors that determine the value of a house? The typical answer is “Location! Location! Location!”

How about the factors that influence the value of teaching? My response is an emphatic “Connection! Connection! Connection!”

Important connections in teaching and learning

Let’s consider some of the connections that influence learning the most.

1. Connections Between Students and Teachers

Surveys of students consistently show that having a bond with their lecturers is one of the most important aspects of their learning success.

A good teacher teaches the students. A better teacher connects with the students, with the hope of influencing behaviours and inspiring souls.

In my seven years of teaching in Ngee Ann Polytechnic, I have learnt that this profession involves both heart work and hard work.

We cannot fake sincerity. In our daily encounters with students, our words, our silence, our actions or our body language - each has the power to make or break a student’s day, a student’s desire to learn, a student’s potential or a student’s esteem.

To create a non-threatening learning environment, we need to establish good rapport and a strong relationship with students. We know that we have connected with our students when we receive phone calls, visits or wedding invitations after they graduate.

The author connecting during a previous students’ 21st birthday party

The author connecting with students at their graduation

Surveys of students consistently show that having a bond with their lecturers is one of the most important aspects of their learning success.

2. Connections Between Students

The social aspect of learning is very important for today’s students. I enhance the connections between students through the learning design that I employ in my classes.

Learner-centred presentation of tutorial - by a student

Groupwork in tutorials: The students are required to meet together in small groups to discuss the tutorial questions before class. Then, for the first 10 to 15 minutes of each tutorial, I give the students a chance to clarify their thoughts on the questions before discussing the topic as a whole group.

Engaged and connected students

I give the students a chance to clarify their thoughts on the questions before discussing the topic as a whole group.

e-Learning: During our e-learning weeks, the students experience the discussion forum (asynchronous) beginning from their first year of studies. The forum gives them time to think through the pre-assigned questions. Other students give their inputs and the tutor facilitates the discussion but does not tell them if they are right or not until end of week. In the Economics module, an example topic that has been discussed in this mode is monopolistic competition.

We begin to use synchronous discussion (chat) for students in years 2 and 3, since by then they are more familiar with our Learning Management System interface (we use Blackboard) and they are more confident to discuss the issues online.

Discover and share: Groups are formed and they are each assigned an economics topic that will be discussed in class sometime in the near future. The students need to discuss the topic and decide what evidence they will gather and how best to present that evidence. They then need to take photos or videos (or other media) of relevant objects that help to explain the concept. The objects may be signboards, news articles or perhaps they may interview people on the street, or they may gather coffee shop talk on some economic issue of the day.

News Item Pair Assignment: In pairs, the students need to select a news article on some economics issue and then they need to analyse it using the economic concepts they have learned. The assessment for this task will prepare them for an examination question involving case-based scenarios where they need to apply concepts.

3. Connections Between Students and the ‘Real World’

I have the privilege of teaching economics, a social science discipline that encompasses many connections and linkages to the real world. Apart from the ‘discover and share’ and ‘news item pair assignment’ examples given above, two other examples come to mind.

Real-world examples make it easier for students to understand concepts.

When discussing the oligopoly market structure, we teach the concept of ‘game theory’, which helps to explain the decision-making process between different oligopolistic companies. To illustrate this concept, I took photos of petrol price display boards at several petrol stations. I used the apparent exact price of petrol charged by the petrol stations to illustrate obvious yet subtle business practices and firms’ behaviour. The frequent nodding of heads (to signal familiarity) and the many sparkles in the students’ eyes illustrated how real-world examples make it easier for students to understand concepts.

Second, in teaching the law of diminishing marginal returns concept as part of production theory to our first-year students, I got my students to conduct a role-play in class. Their job was to explain the concept to our canteen operators. It went something like the following script.

Role-play: Enabling students to understand the meaning of Law of Diminishing Marginal Returns (LDMR)

They learnt to use simple language to break down a seemingly difficult technical concept.

In the process of experiencing this role play, the students had much fun (and laughter), they learnt to use simple language to break down a seemingly difficult technical concept and most importantly, appreciated the relevance and realism of the concept. In connecting students to reality, I learnt that establishing relevance is the key in creating incentives to learn. Good and relevant real-world examples could both excite and incite learning.

Enhancing Connections Using Technology

Our students are digital natives. They have been surrounded by computers, mobile phones and the World Wide Web all their lives. As such, most of what we call “technology” is not technology to our students – it is just a tool they use to get a job done.

Most educators have a hard time playing technology catch-up.

Most educators have a hard time playing technology catch-up as we were brought up in a different environment. However, with a little boldness and endeavour, I have learnt that we can close the digital gap between the students and ourselves. We can complement the use of the physical classroom with the virtual classroom. The content remains the same while the variety of communication media has increased.

I have found that the use of chats, discussion forums, SMS, web-pages, YouTube and Wikipedia have helped to bring me closer to the learners.

For example, I use a short video clip from YouTube showing an “English Premier League match highlights” to introduce and excite students on the topic of monopoly. (Starhub won exclusive rights for the television broadcast of the Premier League.)

In the topic of Keynesian economics, we get our students to use online resources to find out more about the causes of the Great Depression and the role of government in the aftermath.

If we as instructors stay in touch with technology, it can help us to stay more closely connected with our learners. Harnessing the relevant technologies helps to establish more common ground between instructors and learners as it creates alternative learning platforms.

Conclusion

To summarise, I believe that:

• Teaching is more about making connections than giving information;
• The connections that we need to foster are those between students and tutors, amongst students themselves, and between students and the ‘real-world’;
• We should use technology to enhance these connections, and not use technology for its own sake;
• Since the students say that relationships are very important when it comes to teaching and learning, we should take the connections issue seriously!

“Learning is a process of connecting. [The] ability to perceive and nurture connections between ideas and concepts is a crucial skill.” – George Siemens

Author

Matthew Pon, School of Business and Accountancy

I believe that learning takes place best when learners take responsibly for their own learning. Competitions are an ideal environment for promoting such increased learner responsibility.

…As a result they are highly motivated.

Students join a competition with the desire to win. As a result they are highly motivated and prepared to spend time outside their regular school hours to train for the competition. Fortunately, students who are interested in competitions tend to manage their time well. Preparing for the competition helps them to develop their time management skills even further.

Learning Beyond the Curriculum

Competitions provide the opportunity for students to learn beyond their normal curriculum and thus widen their knowledge base. Very often the scope of any competition is far from what students need to learn in class. Whether it is a competition involving programming or debating, participants will learn a great deal beyond their regular curriculum during the process of preparation.

The Microsoft Office Specialist Program

Over the last five years I have been involved in preparing students for the Microsoft® Office Specialist program, which is:

“…a globally recognized standard for demonstrating desktop skills with the Microsoft Office suite of desktop applications.”

This competition tests software skills in Microsoft Office at Specialist level in the Preliminary round and at Expert level in the National Finals. Students from across Ngee Ann Polytechnic are encouraged to enter this annual competition.

There are 15 questions in the 50-minute examination. The result is known to the competitors as soon as the test is submitted.

I was thrilled that participants from Ngee Ann Polytechnic’s School of InfoComm Technology, (ICT) won the Word Championship twice, in 2004 and 2006 respectively.

2006 World Champion in Microsoft Word, Lay Yong Shun Edward

Training for the Competition

I take a learner-centred approach to training students for this competition. There are no formal classes and students need to learn the materials independently and in their own time. The participants are provided with:

1. A clear statement of the syllabus for the competition;
2. Online study materials; and
3. A desktop application that allows them to practice for the competition in a simulated test environment. This application includes Microsoft Office skill questions that are similar to previous years’ examination questions.

Fulu (in blue shirt) with competition participants

During the one-month training period, students can consult with me via email, phone or in person. So the students are learning but there is limited input from me. The clear learning goals for the competition help students to focus and take responsibility for their own learning.

Observed Learning Outcomes

During the training for the competitions over the last 5 years I observed the following learning outcomes.

The students had a sense of ownership for their own learning.

Students took responsibility for their own learning: The students had a sense of ownership for their own learning and as a consequence, they took it more seriously. I did not need to chase them all the time to learn the skills. Instead, they were motivated and took responsibility for developing the skills.

They became more skilled at managing their time commitments, having to juggle between regular school work and learning the new skills required for the competition.

I found them to be very enthusiastic in learning these new skills through the hands-on practice tests. The online assessment was helpful in boosting the students’ confidence and it encouraged them to close any skill gaps that they found.

Increased responsibility for learning was a valuable outcome of the learner-centred approach taken to this training.

Students developed a cooperative learning approach: Another interesting observation was that the trainees formed a “learning community” among themselves and naturally adopted cooperative learning during the training period.

Johnson and Johnson in An Overview of Cooperative Learning, maintain that in cooperative situations, students perceive they can reach their goals only if other students in the learning group reach their goals, while in competitive situations students perceive they can reach their goals only if other students in the group fail to achieve their goals.

Cooperative learning is a learning strategy in which small teams, each with students of different levels of ability, use a variety of learning activities to improve all team members’ understanding of a subject. Each member of a team is responsible not only for learning what is taught but also for helping team-mates learn, thus creating an atmosphere of achievement.

… the students shared their knowledge and helped each other to prepare for the competition.

I observed that the students shared their knowledge and helped each other to prepare for the competition, even though they were going to compete as individuals. There was a sense that they wanted fellow Ngee Ann Polytechnic students to be in the top 10 rankings for this competition, so they naturally formed self-help groups.

Collaboration in the learning process was another positive outcome of the learner-centred approach taken.

Teaching Others Promotes Better Learning

On reflection, I believe that in the process of helping each other to acquire the necessary skills, the students consolidated their own learning. They needed to think through the vocabulary used, the steps required and the correct order of those steps. They then needed to share that knowledge, and as a consequence, they learned the knowledge more thoroughly.

Competition Outcomes

Students who successfully complete the competition are awarded a Competency Certificate in Word and/or Excel issued by Microsoft. This certificate can be included in their portfolios and used in job applications.

From the Overview of the Office Specialist site:

“The results of an independent research study of participants in the Office Specialist program indicate Office Specialist certification improves employee competence, productivity, and credibility, including the following:

• Up to 87 percent of employers observe increased competency in their Office Specialist-certified employees.
• Up to 83 percent of employers feel their Office Specialist-certified employees are more productive.”

Conclusion

By taking a learner-centred approach to training students for the Singapore Microsoft Office Academic Skills Challenge, I believe that the particpants became more passionate about what they were learning. As a result, they became more responsible for the outcome and they naturally adopted a cooperative approach to their fellow competitors.

I am enthusiastic about the positive outcomes that can be obtained when we involve students in external competitions. The students achieve:

• Recognition of their learning by an authentic external body
• Motivation, engagement and responsibility for their own learning
• Skills in cooperative learning
• Self esteem (there was great jubilation when students scored full marks in this competition)

… The students have gained many important skills that would not be possible if I had conducted conventional classes…

I believe that in particular, the Microsoft Office competition has positive learning outcomes because:

• The competition has an obvious ‘value add’ for the students, since they will all use Microsoft Office products in their working lives
• The skills learned have a broad application
• The competition fosters the view that there is more to learning than studying for school exams
• The students begin to build skills for life-long learning

In conclusion, I believe that by conducting the training for this competition in a learner-centred manner, the students have gained many important skills that would not be possible if I had conducted conventional classes in Microsoft Office.

Author

Ismail Fulu, School of ICT, Ngee Ann Polytechnic

References

Johnson, D. and Johnson, R. An Overview of Cooperative Learning, (online). Retrieved 29 Oct 2007 from http://www.co-operation.org/pages/overviewpaper.html.

Overview, Microsoft Office Specialist Certification, (online). Retrieved 29 Oct 2007 from http://www.officespecialist.com.sg/benefits.htm.

I teach the Very Large Scale Integrated Circuits (VLSI) module to third-year students. VLSI is offered as an option within the Micro-electronics strand.

I began experimenting with on-line discussion in 2003. My motivation for wanting to use on-line discussions as a learning tool for students was that I thought there must be a better way to engage students in the learning process than for me to lecture from prepared notes – especially for the topics that students feel are very dry and theoretical.

Instead, I decided that I would replace some of those dry lecture topics and get the students involved in creating the learning materials using Blackboard’s discussion forum. (Blackboard is our learning management System).

This new approach would be more learner-centred and as a result, the students would be more likely to take responsibility for their learning and they would have more control over the learning process.

Motivating Student Participation

What would motivate my students to participate in the on-line discussions? The first thing that came to mind was marks, of course. However, I discovered that not all students were interested in marks. Many felt that it was not worth putting in a lot of effort to earn those marks. So while marks could be used to reward the quality of participation, they do not really attract the less motivated students.

I tried other ways of attracting students’ participation such as giving them a challenging and interesting problem (I learnt recently that this is called the “Spark” for motivating engagement in e-learning).

For example, during the Gulf War, I selected articles from the Web to show how integrated circuits are used in state-of-the art weapons. That excited them – and it was relevant to the VLSI module.

I thought back to when I used to choose articles from trade magazines to show applications of integrated circuits. Unfortunately, that bored them.

Peer pressure can be an effective means of getting non-participating students to become involved. I wanted my class to divide into groups of 6-8 for online discussions. At first, I tried letting the students form their own groups. For most groups it worked out well since the students were comfortable with each other and they were able to start off immediately. There were instances when the team members would urge one another to contribute and even chastise each other for deviating from the subject matter.

However, there would always be some students who ended up together because they had not formed any group. The performance of this group was generally poor. It took a long time for them to ‘gel’, by which time the discussion would be over. For future runs, I will take a more active role in the group formation process.

On-line Discussion Learning Design

My on-line discussions are structured over 5 weeks. The learning design involves problem-solving, where the students learn the concepts while they solve a problem presented within a case-study.

• The first week uses an ice-breaker to help the students become more familiar with the on-line discussion platform. 
• In week 2, I give the students an article which outlines the main issues involved in the case study. In class, they have the opportunity to ask questions about the article to clarify any new vocabulary or new concepts. They use the online discussion forum to report what they have found out in their groups.
• The discussion then moves online during the following 2 weeks. The students’ task is to discuss a problem scenario arising from the case study.
• In the final week of the topic, the students summarise their online discussion and do a presentation. This presentation can take several different forms. For example, in April semester 2007, the students were required to do a poster presentation.

Following are some excerpts from the online discussions to illustrate the students’ experience using this learning design.

The Students’ Learning Journey

Week 1: Ice-breaker

In an online environment, the usual cues that are so important for human interaction are missing. For example, there is no eye contact, no body language to observe and no sense of being ‘together’. It is important that a sense of online community is developed early, especially if the discussion is going to span a period of several weeks.

I used an online ice-breaker so we could get to know each other better. The task was as follows:

Task 1 (Ice-breaker)

Instructor
Dear All. Welcome to the discussion board. In this first task you are to write about an inspiring moment/experience or a person who had inspired you at some point in your life. Explain briefly why you were inspired. You have one week to complete this task.

Here are 2 typical responses from students, showing their willingness to share parts of their lives.

Student 1
The persons that inspired me the most is my parent. For my dad he wakes up every morning and return home late from work. he works so hard jus to get the average salary home for the family. Although the family is not very rich, but he always nv fails to give all the family members what each and everyone wants.

And as for my mother, she nv works when i was but had to when i started growing up because of the financial difficult of my family at that point of time. Although she dun return home as late as my father, but she also needs to wake up as early as well. And normally after works she still need to return home to do house chores and cooks dinner for the whole family. i inspired them for being so responsible and had done their duty fully as a parents.

Student 2
The person who had inspired me the most in my life until now is my primary 5 form teacher. I remember that when I was in primary 5, I was in an EM3 stream class, it was the lousiest class in the whole school. My class was being look down for our mischievous behavior and academic result. My academic result wasn’t very good, sometimes even got a FAIL in some of the subjects.

But every time when I get back my exam result from Mr Ho. He will always said to the class “Even though you all fail in this exam but at least you all improve, go home and tell your parents that you all have do your best and you all have improved”. From this sentence I was inspire not to give up on my studies even though I fail my exam. If I work hard I can do it.

Week 2: Case Study Article – in Class

Before students can solve problems, they need to have some background on the issues. I have included this next task so that students will become more familiar with the concepts involved and the vocabulary & acronyms that are used in the topic.

I could have given a lecture on this topic, but I felt that a learner-centred approach would be more beneficial. Students learned the topic more effectively by finding out the definitions by themselves. Their time wasn’t wasted by going over things they already knew and they could concentrate on the new concepts. They also felt more ownership for the learning.

Following is an excerpt from Task 2 ASIC:

Instructor
What is an ASIC? Read the article on ASIC in the attached link and complete the following:

1. List terms that you do not understand in the article.
2. Discuss what these terms mean.
3. Summarise the article in no more than 100 words.

Some representative student responses:

Student 1
The terms I do not understand are ULA, HDL, standard cell, FPGA and ASSPs.:

ASSPs: An application specific standard product or ASSP is an integrated circuit that implements a specific function that appeals to a wide market.

HDL: An HDL is a standard text-based expression of the temporal behavior and/or (spatial) circuit structure of an electronic system.

ULA: A type of ASIC chip that is partially finished with rows of the transistors and resistors built in but unconnected.
Non-recurring engineering cost: The cost to setup the factory to produce a particular ASIC

Standard cell: Standard cell methodology is an example of design abstraction, whereby a low-level VLSI-layout is encapsulated into an abstract logic representation.

A chip uses for a particular application, to improve performance as ASICs are “hardwired” to do a particular job and do not incur the overhead of fetching and interpreting stored instructions. A full custom ASIC chip use a designed mask for every layer in the chip, the full custom device have total control over the size of every transistor forming every logic gate for optimum performance. ASIC performs electronic operations by maximum speed it can go and provided the circuit design is efficiently architected.

Student 2
ASIC is application-specific integrated circuit which is created for only one purpose. In a standard cell design, the manufacturer will create functional blocks and the designers will implement their designs with what the manufacturer provides. Gate array design is where the diffused layers are predefined and wafers not connected.

Full-custom design defines all the photolithographic layers and has advantages of reduced area, faster speed and disadvantages like longer time to design and manufacture. Structured or platform design is able to reduce manufacturing and design cycle time due to pre-define metal layers and pre-characterization of what is on the silicon respectively.

Student 3
ASIC stand for application-specific integrated circuit. It is an integrated circuit (IC) customised for a particular use, rather than intended for general-purpose use. Due to the advancement of technology, size of IC became smaller. Design tools improve too. Hardware description language such as VHDL are use to describe functionality of the ASICs.

ASIC are generally faster than FPGA as they can handle as complex a design. Structured or Platform ASIC cut down the manufacturing cycle time and design cycle time by pre-defined metal layers and pre-characterization of what is on silicon.

Weeks 3 & 4 – Main Discussion Topic

The students now have a chance to apply the new concepts and vocabulary (learned during Week 2) to an actual problem.

Task 3: Case Study

Instructor
MyChip Enterprises Pte is seeking your teams’ advice on how best to implement their new product into a microchip. They have these questions:

1. What design methodologies should we use?
2. Should we use the Full Custom or Standard Cells Design Flow approach to design?
3. Which design flow best supports the design methodologies in (a)?

Your task:

1. Compare and contrast the Full Custom and Standard Cells Design Flow approaches.
2. Recommend one of the approaches for MyChip Enterprises. Explain how your recommendation is consistent with the design methodologies in (a).
3. Discuss the solutions among your team members.
   Your team has two weeks to reply to MyChip Enterprises.

The students responded well to this task. One resonse was as follows:

Student 1

1. Obviously, the design methodology they should use will vary depending on their expectations of the product, or the spec of it if they are going to design it into a microchip. But for ease of process simplicity, I will recommend them to implent it using the hierarchal method, and with it, the Standard Cell approach.
   
2. The main differences between Full Custom and Standard Cells are as follows:

   COST: Effectively, the non-recurring cost for Full custom approach is much greater, since pre-defined cells are not used, and often, each individual photo lithographic layer are defined by the design team, which has to highly skilled to perform the task effectively. In contrast, Standard Cells utilizes the manufacturer’s predefined cells, making it more cost effective

   SPEED: In terms of speed, the Full Custom approach definitely outruns the Standard Cells approach, due to the designer’s efforts in fine tuning and making use of every possible square micron in the chip. The designer will also be able to integrate an analog circuit into the chip. However, in many modern day digital circuits, the usage of the Standard Cells approach is still able to meet up with minimum speed requirments, thus rendering the super speed of Full Custom futile, unless of course maximum speed is required for the product.

   COMPLEXITY: In the area of complexity, the Standard Cells approach is much simpler, since the cells have all or mostly been predefined by the manufacturer, so there is no time wasted in implementing new cells, whereas in Full Customs, where speed and area and much more critical, the complexity inevitably increases as a result of minimizing space consumption while maximizing speed.

   AREA: Full Customs approach has a smaller area, since as mentioned above, each component in placed and designed to minimize its space consumption. This in turn, also results in a decrease in the recurring engineering costs (though much lesser as compared to the non-recurring engineering costs).

   Manufacturing and Design Time: Due to the complexity of most designs done using the Full Customs approach, and its never implemented before cells and layers, the time to manufacture and the design time is definitely much higher than that of Standard Cells approach. It takes approximately 8 weeks juz to construct the IC, without the design time included.
   

3. The Standard Cells approach compliments the hierarchal methodology, since primitive leaf cells, which can be obtained from the manufacturer can be used to build the overall complexed circuits, and should any errors be found in the overall circuit, correcting the primitive leaf cells will be sufficient(much like a domino-effect). With this approach, the product can be made in the shortest possible time, with ease of error correctibilty and circuit construction.

Week 5 – Presentation

The students presented their findings from the case study via group posters.

Task 4: Posters

Your team is to create one or more posters (minimum size A0) to explain your recommendations in task 3. The posters will be displayed along the corridors of the Micro-Electronics lab so that your classmates can learn from your efforts.

Following are 3 of the posters produced by the students:

Conclusion

Asynchronous on-line discussion has been a useful tool for my students to learn more about VLSI. While completing the discussion activity, the students have developed several skills like searching for information, questioning, comprehension, analysis, collaboration, problem solving and presentation skills.

I believe that it was much more effective to take a learner-centred approach with this topic. The students were more engaged and they felt ownership for what they were learning. And the best part – it was less boring for all concerned.

Author

Linus Low Koon Teck, Electronics and Computer Engineering