| Faculty of Arts
& Social Sciences
Geography Department’s Field Studies Module Offers Students
Fresh Perspectives of the World
The Geography Department’s Field Studies module is both a
conventional university course and something very different. It
involves several seminars before the overseas component. These seminars
focus on practical fieldwork issues, methodologies, research ethics,
an introduction to the places to be visited and health & safety
matters. The actual period of field studies is five weeks. The next
round will be based in Chiang Rai Province, northern Thailand from
14 June to 20 July 2004. Upon return ‘from the field’
students work on an individual field report for submission and assessment.
During the field studies overseas, students work in small teams
on specific projects that range from physical and environmental
themes to social and cultural geographies. Much of what the students
learn is purely and properly academic. They apply different techniques
of gathering primary data, which they must later analyse and synthesise.
However, there is also another element to the learning process.
Many of the activities involve cooperation and collaboration, not
only among students and professors, but also with their hosts abroad—student
buddies, scholars, various non-academic practitioners and local
communities. Thus, Field Studies is as much about getting to know
and appreciate different cultures and ‘ways of living’
as it is a challenging academic module. It is clear from the video
made about the last Field Studies in Pattani, Songkhla (southern
Thailand) and Penang (Malaysia) that the module delivers more than
information and concepts—it changes ways of thinking about
the world.
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NUS students learning about forest plants and
their uses from a community forest practitioner in Tamot, southern
Thailand, December 2002. |
Faculty of Medicine
OSCE in Medical Assessments
The Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE), a measure of clinical
competence that focuses on outcomes via observable behaviours, is gaining
recognition. First introduced in 1975, it is a way of measuring clinical
competence that allows for control of many of the biases of conventional
methods. The evidence to date suggests that with appropriate attention
to design, the OSCE is a reliable test with good validity.
The Faculty of Medicine has been using OSCE as a measure of skills competencies
at the end of Year 2 in the Clinical Skills Foundation Course (CSFC) and
is considering extending the use of OSCE as a component of the clinical
examination in the Final MBBS Professional Examination. The objective
of this proposed OSCE is to assess Final Year medical students in the
medicine and surgery tracks, on their level of clinical competence and
communication skills. Generally, competencies in following tasks/skills
will be conducted:
- History taking
- Physical examination
- Procedures
- Data interpretation
- Patient management
- Communication and Patient Education
In principle, this method of assessment is an extension of the clinical
training environment that the students were trained in. Thus, they should
be familiar with it as part of clinical practice. The OSCE would help
assess a comprehensive set of integrated core skills and practice knowledge
in the medicine and surgery tracks.
Faculty of Engineering
Using Narrative Strategies to Enhance Teaching of Engineering Modules
To help students learn effectively, teachers must continuously innovate
new ways of teaching to engage the students meaningfully. For Engineering
modules that are not predominantly mathematical, the following teaching
methods may be used:
- Integrating fundamental knowledge with real life events that has
received tremendous media attention,
- Linking fundamental knowledge/concepts with stories, and
- Highlighting breakthroughs in research/innovations that have made
a significant impact on mankind.
The above-mentioned approaches were used in an Engineering module, MST
5006/ME5506 “Corrosion of Materials” with a class size of
196 postgraduate students. One of the examples used was a recent real
life incident of how a corroded lamp post fell, struck the head of a 13-year-old
boy and caused his death (see The Straits Times, 4 March 2003,
‘Fallen Lamp Post was Checked 3 Days Before’). In addition,
the emergence of new award winning industrial products to combat corrosion
was highlighted to the class. To inculcate the spirit of teamwork, students
were divided into small discussion groups during the lecture to analyse
the factors that caused the lamp post to collapse. Students were then
asked to deliberate on their interpretations, which were simultaneously
refined to arrive at the best possible logical solution. The main emphasis
of conducting such exercises during the lecture was to highlight to the
students that a firm grip on fundamentals may enable them to overcome
such engineering failures/tragedies.
The effectiveness of such teaching methods was confirmed through the
students’ feedback at the end of the module. Part time students
from industry were so thrilled that they wanted to train their colleagues
in a similar area using the same style of teaching. Yet another student
used the knowledge gained from this module to select the best material
for replacing his house gate. The interior decorators’ advertisement
message, ‘There is Always Room for Innovation’ applies to
education too.
Faculty of Science
Course on Current Trends, Innovation & Entrepreneurship in Biology
 |
 |
Mr Anwar Jumabhoy, a business
consultant based in Kuala Lumpur, talks to students about writing
biotechnology business proposals |
Students from Faculties of
Science, Medicine and Engineering, Division of Bioengineering, Bioinformatics
Institute and NUS-integrative Graduate School attending the course |
Current advances in modern life sciences and biotechnology have not only
propelled scientists to form multidisciplinary teams but also to innovate
and commercialise research outcomes at unprecedented rates. The Department
of Biological Sciences has been responding to the existing swing in modern
life sciences, by evolving and mounting courses that expose students to
the ‘real world’ situations in innovation and commercialisation
in biotechnology. Recently, the Department organised a course on current
trends, innovation and entrepreneurship in biology. The profiles of guest
speakers included technopreneurs, biotechnology-based business consultants,
venture capitalists, patent attorneys and industry liaison experts from
NUS. During the course, students formed teams and learnt how to write
and defend their business plans based on talks and outlines given by the
various speakers. Students from Faculties of Science, Medicine and Engineering,
Division of Bioengineering and Bioinformatics Institute have taken the
course.
Faculty of Science
Setting up an Environment for Independent Thinking
The module, LSM 5201 “Structural Biology and Proteomics”
focuses on recent advances in topics related to structural biology and
proteomics. It discusses various fundamental technologies that are used
in the determination of protein and nucleic acid structure, protein folding,
structure-function relationships of proteins, proteomics and functional
genomics. Most of the lectures are conducted in an informal environment
where students have a lot of opportunities to openly ask the lecturer
how to tackle a specific problem and other problems related to the students’
research. The casual environment also applies to lectures given by
in-house experts on their area of specialisation as well as guest lectures
by distinguished visiting scientists from abroad, NUS and other Research
Institutes in Singapore. Such open and informal setting makes the
course attractive to many graduate students.
Besides attending lectures, students are required to participate actively
in the form of presentations/discussion and analyse recent research articles
in the area. For oral presentation, the students may choose research papers
in one of the four major areas covered in the module: Structure Determination;
Structure-function Relationships; Protein Folding and Engineering; or
Proteomics and Functional Genomics. Each student will then select a second
paper for critical analysis from the remaining three fields. The
oral presentation and critical analysis would need the students to learn
how to critically read and evaluate the techniques, results and conclusions
of the paper. Such arrangements help the students think independently
and develop skills in the area of Structural Biology and Proteomics.
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