How is technology enabling lifelong learning? - In Conversation with Chuah Kee Man
hello and welcome to staying the course a podcast for navigating the challenges of part-time study if you're new to the channel do subscribe if you find this helpful our guest for today is chua kiman an educator researcher and education technology innovator choi is currently a senior lecturer at university malaysia sarawak or unimas and a phd candidate at university science malaysia or usm hello kiman how are you hi azrael thank you for having me for this podcast pleasure to very i'm honored to be to be in your channel as well i'm honored to have you um so so in this episode i'll be speaking to kiemann about the role of technology in enabling lifelong learning uh the pandemic has truly transformed the way we learn and we are keen to understand how technology can improve access to quality quality education for everyone yeah uh just a bit about kyman before he started his phd last year kiman did his masters in learning sciences and then before that he did his bachelor's in teaching english as a second language both at unimas so without wasting more time i think we can begin la yeah so my first question is very very short tell us about yourself all right great this is like short but the trickiest question um i'm um as mentioned by uh you know ashraf i'm currently teaching in university mrs or better known as unimas people tend to confuse it with university mr saba by calling it ums so i mean you know because he both starts with us anyhow uh so i am still um with unimas at the moment meaning this is my 12th year as a lecturer at the university but before that i've spent like almost five years uh studying because i i did my undergrad uh at unimas and then i was offered the you know scholarship to just continue my masters there before i joined them as a staff took me a while to do this to kind of like get myself off for a phd study due to a lot of commitment that the you know the university assigned me to handle so luckily i managed to get off last year and uh actually i you know they they they the management was so um so sad that i i kind of left them during the pandemic because i was heading the e-learning unit so they were like why did you further at this time i said well i think if if i keep on waiting i don't know when i'm going to start so anyhow so um but i'm originally from glantan uh but i have spent my years in straw so i consider myself as half sarokin in a way because um you know i i think i speak fluent throughout malay uh you know sometimes i'm getting mixed up with clinton malay as well so uh yeah i don't know i i'm i'm like identity crisis now i'm not sure whether i'm planting this or starokin but anyhow uh that's a bit about me and like what was mentioned earlier i'm currently doing my phd in university science malaysia i was supposed to go far you know a bit far but then i decided to just stay locally in a way because i need to help out with my university as well as i decided to just stay to do it locally yeah that was one of the reason thank you everyone for sharing um yeah did you know you're from clinton yeah yeah quite an interesting interchange if you are mixing uh yeah anthony's dialect and yeah so true okay so 2020 has been truly a shift in the way we work and learn you know almost overnight students are pushed to adapt to studying online and professionals are forced to adapt to you know using microsoft teams zoom and so forth for them to interact and get things done at work in your role as a lecturer how have you integrated technology into your your teaching at the back of this pandemic i i consider myself lucky yeah you know or maybe fortunate in a way like i i started integrating technology in my teaching and learning since i started teaching you know during my even earlier years of teaching i have been using technology in my teaching and learning i mean i was one of the earliest academic in my university to actually stream my class live that was way back in 2007 2008 like way before all this craze about zoom and all that so there was one software i remember we zig which is very popular but developed in india and i i tested out on my students and i didn't expect them to be so excited about it because you know the connectivity at that time was even worse than now but the the reception was very good and i continued doing that like year after year and when pandemic kind of like happened uh a lot of my students actually said they didn't feel you know for my student they don't really feel uh the the the sudden change because this has been things that they've been doing for quite some time with me so when they attended other courses they felt uh like the the opportunity to learn from me managed to kind of help them to offer the you know the trouble or the problems that they face with other courses but i think the what changes was the the dynamics of the software or the application that we have now you can see uh before that like i told you is the live streaming is very like one to one even though it's like one-to-many kind of approach you don't really get to interact with your students like you know like skype if you remember the old the old version of skype where you just stream everything nothing much happening but now you can see a lot of web conferencing software are more interactive you get to do polling you get to do chatting i mean you can do more than just uh broadcasting like what we have we're doing now right it's it's more interactive than uh before and uh i also use a lot of uh all this web 2.0 tools like to to to engage the learners and to do a lot of virtual projects but luckily now i think because of the internet and the connectivity you get to kind of do things real time last time even though it's online a lot of work are kind of asynchronous meaning you have to wait for the student to respond and then you you see how they respond and then you react to that and all that so it takes some time but now i think you can do it real time even with uh google application and all that like google docs you get to see them writing you know real time and all that so i think what what has happened over the one year it's the the fact that a lot of companies or even all these tech developers they they try to accommodate that's one thing i notice they don't they don't just leave it like my software is like that so i don't want to change you can see a lot of changes done on the software itself from google made to even zoom itself they try to accommodate educational needs not just for corporate usage like you know most web conferencing software before this are meant for businesses right like they do a lot of business teleconferencing uh way before this but because of the pandemic they shifted the focus or they pivoted a lot to education as well so you can see like things like zoom which were not meant for education suddenly they introduced tools that can accommodate educators and then even google workplace workspace now that the google meet are more on educational needs and even microsoft teams now are uh you know streamlined to educational needs so that's something good and um but the uptake of the if you talk talk about overall update then i think it's still still a challenge a lot of schools are not so ready and like you said a lot of um even uh how adult learners are struggling to cope with the need to go online and all that so i think in my own usage i think it's still okay just that um when i might when i personally involved in the uh you know educating the other educators or lectures i felt i felt the challenge in a way like a lot of them if possible they want to go back to the old way of teaching if possible yeah yeah um in a way you've had a head start having done it in in 2018 13 years ago um you know it reminds me of the khan academy story how cell khan began with yeah whatever yeah messenger right he used messenger he used the fold at the beginning his cousin um math right so your your engagement with your your student reminds me of that head start or early beginnings right really so it's the mindset right mind is the mindset of utilizing technology for the betterment you don't wait for the readiness of what's available out there exactly yeah there are a lot of talk about like you know people say uh i you know in eddie tech people say you go for pedagogy you have to learn pedagogy and then you go for technology which is which is always the mantra like you need to know what you're doing before you even pick the technology but what i noticed uh for the past five years especially it can go both way like sometimes you don't think of what you want to do with it but when you look at the capability of the technology you suddenly realize oh i can accommodate this this strategy only strategy or new pedagogical uh approaches that you can use it's like you go both way now it doesn't mean that you have to learn the pedagogy you know pedagogical aspect first then you go for technology to me now it's like very gray you know the lines are really blur so i don't blame teachers for going for technology if you see a lot of teachers now they don't even learn maybe they don't really have time to go back to like learn the theory and whatnot they just look at the technology and then they see how that energy can be used then they immediately use but of course there are a lot of people or experts who will question this they will say you know you need to learn the basic you learn the fundamentals before you go for technology but because of the pandemic and the emergency need of all these tools i think i don't blame the teachers for doing that that's why you can see them going for all these tools like kahoot you know whatever all kind of tools and uh one thing good about all these schools now is like they they they themselves or the designer themselves uh have put some effort in thinking about the pedagogical aspect actually they don't suddenly come up with like palettes they don't understand suddenly come up with a feature just for fun right they may have considered like okay this palette feature would help teachers to do collaborative learning or maybe problem problem-based learning that's why they included the features so sometimes the technology itself can trigger you to think about the pedagogical aspect it's it's not like linear from pedagogy to technology it's like both ways now so to me whether it's pedagogy first or technology first it just like you said the mindset of doing it once you do it you you see how it works and then you start to make changes and then things will go i mean you know yeah i'm interested to know your your outlook uh in terms of how higher education is going to change from this experience because you mentioned earlier as much as there is availability of technology out there during your training of trainers and so forth there might be resistance or there is tendency for um trainers or instructors or teachers to want to go back to the old ways of doing things yeah but now we know that there's a cost efficient cost-efficient cost-efficient way of reaching more people or making quality education more available to more people and there's an argument saying that blended learning or hybrid learning is a way forward it's a long-term solution what's your take on the outlook of higher education coming out of this experience i i personally believe in hybrid learning or you know if if you can't go fully hybrid blended would be the best at the moment depending on the uh you know the access to technology or internet connection the reason why i say we we have to go hybrid or blended is that there are a lot of things that we cannot do online as well we have to accept the fact that uh there are certain skills that we we want to develop uh has to be done in person cannot be cannot be done online i mean we can do it online but it would not be that effective one good example would be communication i always use this because we can teach communication virtually i can teach you how to talk i can teach you how to you know how to use certain words or phrases in communicating but when i put you face to face with somebody you you probably will not be able to decide what to say what to talk because you are you are you know lacking that exposure to that in person kind of uh situation right you know because when you're in person you get to feel the uh the atmosphere you know the environment is totally different so it's it's not as clear-cut as we normally do online so i think the the future would be hybrid in fact we have seen this i don't know maybe five or a decade ahead if i i i i'm kind of uh fortunate to be involved with the e-learning development in malaysia in higher education especially because i'm part of the council uh during my earlier days and until now but if you look at the blueprint that we have for e-learning we have dasa e pamblazura nagara from 1.0 to 2.0 which i was also involved in in crafting it and all that you will realize that we are actually ahead of time we have foresee this like in 2020 we are supposed to be in the third wave uh if you look at the plan in the third wave all the classes should be equipped with high-speed internet where you can stream your class seamlessly but of course you know that didn't happen i mean because of the but that was the plan by 2020 we were supposed to have all this and you if you look at the history of it if you if you talk about schools then you will hear all this issue about vistarinet and because one vistarinet was supposed to do this where all schools are connected in one network and let's say if you are if you are studying in kl you can communicate seamlessly directly with people in star wars or schools in straw or saba using that that network where you know all classrooms are already equipped and then the moment we we don't have the chance to meet in person the learning can still take place through the cloud where we have all this uh learning management system and all that it was supposed to be like that if you go back to the plan now you will feel like a sense of deja vu in a way like we should we should have done this because by 2025 the hybrid learning or the blended learning should should be part and parcel of the teaching and learning process already especially in higher education i'm not sure if you follow the trend but if you if you refer to the uh all the all the things that we are doing in the higher education for with regards to e-learning programs are told to be blended since i think like 10 years ago a decade ago uh in a way so but we we do a gradual increa increment so last time it was 20 and then blah blah blah so right before pandemic actually the percentage of blended courses in university especially the public university is close to 60 wow surprisingly it means buy right by right all the courses should be ready to face you know all this hype you know a pandemic situation where you need to do online but the the problem was uh the uh the students were not ready i i i noticed academics because we already trained semester in semester out and then we are doing this in uh in a blended mode where students are in our class you know on our campus we get to control them but when they were you know back at their hometown doing their own things and all that this is the this is the part where we are not able to control so uh if they were all on campus i think no issue about all this blended learning or hybrid learning because we have been doing this for quite some time but because they are all over malaysia or all over you know the place or some some are in over other countries and all that it makes it difficult to to implement in a way because we didn't expect that to happen to begin with because all this while the hybrid learning or the blender learning was were kind of like very controlled basis where everyone was supposed to be on campus or maybe majority on campus so they can go to classes and then a portion of the content will be done online then they can complete it but i think dependent ring has changed everything like you said um people start to see the potential of this online fully online learning mode where like like in my case in your case we get to study even without being on campus and based on my own survey on students even though we hear a lot of resistance about mental health and well-being and all that if you ask those who are introverts or those who are not so active in class they are enjoying this moment because uh you know they don't get to they don't have to prepare to go to class because they can just turn on the computer or laptop and then you know talk to the lecture immediately or attend classes immediately they don't have to struggle to wake up early in the morning get the bus so you know take grab to class and all that they don't have to do that anymore in a way so they are pro and cons on this but overall i think if you ask me to about the effectiveness of education i still think hybrid learning or valuing will be the way forward uh fully online probably will benefit those who are well connected and maybe uh having more self-directed learning kind of mindset uh you know those adult learners are okay like um they they can balance between their working hours and all that i think that would benefit them more but if you talk about all these undergraduates and all that i think they they need the hybrid learning or blended learning experience not not fully online i mean that's my take on that yeah um i'm i'm interested to know on the perspective of students who are introverts sometimes we overlook people who thrive better in a situation where they don't have to then manage the anxiety of socializing as well right um in interesting and and i i did not know how advanced our blueprint was until you shared with me just now um it seems like the foresight and the strategic thinking was already there the implementation is where we might have done better yeah so over the past over the past decade you've been at unimas heading the e-learning unit you want to watch for your efforts towards inclusive education and now you're doing your phd at usm on educational technology it sounds like everything is culminating very nicely from your experience real on the ground when your observations right do this research that way that you're doing tell us a bit about your research what are you planning to do what are you do what are you working on well i'm if you are talking about the uh my phd on its own then i'm focusing more on more on the uh design based research because i kind of i'm i'm the type who like to do something and then check check out whether it works or not it's like the developmental studies uh where at the moment i'm i'm gathering all the uh all the problems that the teachers and educators face during the pandemic when it comes to student engagement and what i'm doing now is i'm trying to develop a mobile application it could be web-based if if i want to make it web-based but at the moment i thought what mobile would be would be a good solution you know why because i saw a lot of teachers and educators are using telegram and whatsapp to teach so i was thinking i know telegram has evolved quite rapidly over the past few months by accommodating all these needs right if you see the features in in telegram and you know they get they allow you to do video calls now you can actually share screen and you know a lot of things but when it comes to uh engagement the engagement is still pretty low i mean you get to see students in in the telegram but if you really measure the level of engagement a lot of them will tell you they just you know look at the thing and then you know they don't really bother to read or maybe they don't literally participate nativity so i my idea was to initially was to to kind of focus only on evaluating the existing one you know and then i thought might as well i come up with one and then i check out whether it works or not and then i'll evaluate it through different uh different rubrics and all that so right now i'm trying to figure out the uh the process of uh you know all the features that we need because i'm involving teachers students as well in the process of design so uh hopefully i will come up with like a like maybe a prototype that can kind of replace telegram for online learning or for maybe for hybrid learning as well that can actually engage learners so that's my phd when it comes to the study but i also do some some minor minor or research or study just to support my my my current you know phd study in a way because i'm checking on uh student engagement i'm checking on self-efficacy i'm also checking on the you know the usage of apps during this pandemic period so what i noticed is it's very hard for teachers to really plan they can have telegram and whatsapp but they they need some guidance so my app would allow that so if teacher login to that app they will be guided on how to how to how to how uh publish or create certain content and how to create certain activities according to the uh the structure that was given more on the pedagogical structure rather than the template kind of thing so hopefully it works interesting and i think the beauty of it is because your data is still evolving right yeah the life is is real life data and still changing like the society is still adapting to it and um i i find it i find it fascinating so you know one thing that i noticed um and i gathered this from your youtube channel is that whatever that you are undergoing in as part of your study um citation management for example and the stuff that you're doing as part of your work you you would always want to give back and and create a community and get the conversation going right um which which to me is is a great a very efficient way of finding intersections between work and studying passion now you are teaching in straw while you're learning with from university based in penang i can advertise with that distance learning measure but still my question is on um your the way that you are framing your time in managing your work in your study and your life commitment how do you manage all of that i i think yeah i mean like like you like you mentioned in a way i tried to find the uh how to put it the uh like killing many birds to one stone kind of approach where i i try to do something where you know while i'm doing it i get to churn out different output and although all those output i get to share or i get to i get to give it to you know like maybe publish on my youtube channel or share it on my other social media or maybe publication and all that so but of course it takes a lot of effort to to really balance the time i think time management is always an issue when it comes to balancing so many things at one time and what i did was a very rigid routine every day like i normally would spend the day time to do the necessary like more more on the work work kind of things and then the night time will be spent for studying and even for you know reading up or even for uh creating content but i've been slowing down on the content bit content creation bit because uh right now i'm i'm doing a lot of data collection and also analysis in a way so but uh but i constantly get requests actually every day i mean every single day i get requests um through my social media channel uh if you go to my youtube for example if you look at the comment section there are a lot of requests to do this to do that so if i notice that the requests are relevant to what i'm doing at the moment let's say like some some guy will come out can you can you explain a bit on how to do this analysis for example and just so happen i'm doing it so i will i will record the video you know and then put it online while doing my own analysis for example or i i just learn it maybe um i need it for my own research i i read it i read something about it and then i just shared it online things like that so but again i couldn't you know entertain all the requests but i try my best to to come come up with relevant content but you can see sometimes the contents are not so well well organized or well edited because um you know like turn on camera record then that's it just upload i don't even bother to sometimes i don't even bother to do anything and all that because i thought uh it's part of just sharing you know just sharing not so much about trying to get the likes of you just some people ask for it so i just explained and uh the the time management is an issue i think i personally felt like um but the the the good thing about now is we we have a lot of tools to help us to you know from all this calendar you know note-taking i find i find digital note taking very useful these days so last time you had to print out the articles and then you know manually read and all right now i can just read on the tablet and then i just put some annotation and then i'll gather it in a concept map and all that so that helps to structure my my thinking for for the day and whenever i have an idea i would just write it down and then i'll i'll do it uh maybe immediately or maybe the next day but i find i find digital note taking very useful for me because i'm not the type who likes to digital do annotation actually before this i really prefer print out you know you know typical printout and then use the hide the button then i notice it's not really effective because whenever i want to find something i have to go and dig sometimes i i don't know where i put my photos and all that so i decided to just okay jump into the no digital note taking wagon and then we're gonna then start to learn how to manage it but i find it very useful because every day i make i make it a a routine before i end the day i will kind of like summarize everything i did from studying like i would do a concept map about what i read about or maybe what i did today and all that so every day i have like a concept map so uh occasionally like every once once in a while maybe a weekly i'll just flip through and see the linkage and all that so quite surprising when you when you do that right and then by the end of one year when you when you reflect there's so many things you've done that you didn't realize that you have done it every every now and then so yeah yeah i mean that's how i i kind of force myself to be in that mode i think like nothing like control f to find what you want instead of diving into a pile of papers you know some some of them are in the car some in the kitchen and so forth um so so we you know both of us have been beneficiaries of technology enabling education from a distance i would like your perspective you know there's a search in a number of micro credentials um and i think the mooc um mooc movement have also driven this uh to to micro credential uh coursera and at the x are offering online masters now inc in in collaboration with with universities um do you feel that this will overtake the traditional face-to-face post-graduate study or do you think that demand for people to do full-time would still maintain for the long term i think we start to feel the um how to play the heat of this mooc challenging the traditional postgraduate studies for the past two or three years because the enrollment for police graduate i think is dropping as well if you notice in public universities the reason is i think the only reason why a lot of people are enrolling in the traditional mode is to get the assurance you know in a way to get to to feel like i'm actually doing this correctly in the normal way people call it or where it's accredited and all that when if if you ask people to do it you is using micro credential and they start to hesitate are you sure this this is going to be recognized you know i'm sure this one uh the company is gonna yeah yeah yeah i think that's that's the reason now but once this is gone like you said people will just go and uh take all this uh micro credential and even you know put online degrees and all that it has been happening for quite some time just that if you ask those who are taking online degrees they they would normally tell you like you know they are not sure whether after they complete this it's going to be recognized and and all that but mqa has done a very good job uh during you know 2020 because of the pandemic coming up with this guideline of they call it odl open and decent learning guideline where uh universities now are told to create odi courses so all these traditional programs that we have now are going to have odl mode uh soon i mean it's happening now and then but there will be more courses offered in odl mode meaning to say last time universities are all using this in person on campus kind of like you said full-time postgraduate studies now they are pivoting towards like what other open universities are doing and all that where they are going to offer this online and i think they feel the uh they feel the demand is there and you don't need the student especially overseas students to be on campus so they can pay a bit less but you still get them as your student and i think they are seeing the uh the the demand there and um the only issue like i told you now would be whether or not the quality is going to be uphold it will it be the same or you're going to compensate it with uh you know with the notion of easier degree when you do it online there's always this concept where if you do it online it's easier but to me whether it's online or offline i mean in person the quality is you know it's it's it's not the the problem with the mode it's more on the the auditing you know the the quality of the teaching itself right so if people start to see the benefit of um odl i think they would really really go go for that and and like like you mentioned uh if they have the chance to study overseas without having to be there why not right and but another issue will always be the uh the financial part because sometimes the online degree can be quite expensive as well surprisingly yeah i mean but of course is being there right not as expensive as bending the you know your fortune to be to be in another country i think i think in the turn of the millennium in the early 2000s i think the for-profit universities are built had built that stigma over over the online programs but now when you see you know ivy league universities you know the prominent universities um taking part into it um you know it's become more acceptable but as you have rightly said some of them still cause a bomb still are still quite expensive and i'm so encouraged to hear that mqa has has given that guideline i'm seeing the the fruit of that because at umccd new stimulia center for continuing education they've been very actively offering odl courses if i'm not mistaken hrdf once upon a time had an odl scheme which now i think has evolved into something else and think i think that's encouraging for for professionals yeah so um i i only have one more question for you keeman but before i go into the final question i would just like to round up some of the key points that i've gathered earlier yeah number one in terms of application of technology for the benefit of education is a matter of mindset right you are a real life example of that having done that for the past 15 years now um number two as far as the way forward for higher education potentially blended or hybrid is the way to go this might come down to the level of reception but i think the foundations have already been built yeah number three in terms of your own management of of your your your work and your study and and your areas the focus area that you're interested in is all about integration because i think you have successfully brought everything together to your benefit uh and also to the benefit society which i really salute to you so my last questions most this channel is actually intended for people like us who are working and considering to also pursue study um you are in your second year of phd but you were doing your masters while also working back then um i i was doing that as well what is your advice to others who are considering to pursue postgraduate study while they are working i think you it's it's really important to kind of what i call it like check and balance in terms of listing out what you can sacrifice and what you cannot sacrifice because you realize that there are a lot of things where you have to let go and in order to to balance the study and also the work a lot of people sign up for postgraduate study and then using working as an excuse to me that's not right that's not the right way because you decided to take the postgraduate study and you shouldn't use the working life or your work as the excuse because if if you are fully committed to your work like 100 or maybe more than 100 then you shouldn't be signing up for first graduate studies in a way you have to really think about this because i have a lot of students you know i also teach uh like uh coursework masters and all that there are quite a number of working adults uh who sign up and then uses all these working things as as an excuse hoping that we would give the easy way out letting them graduate easily so i told them it's that's not the case because we don't we don't really kind of force you to study but you decided to pursue this as your own professional development or your personal development so you really need to figure out what you can sacrifice and what you cannot for example weekends right before this when you work you probably enjoy the weekend as like a breeder but now because you're studying your weekends are gone because basically you're gonna sacrifice most of your weekend and then if you have family you have to really discuss with them because a lot of cases where we had spouses are not really you know supporting or they are not supportive imagine like normally on the weekends if you are you know housewife or you know you you'll be doing your housewife work for the husband for example and then suddenly you're gone studying of course your husband would be angry because the husband had to end up taking care of the child and blah blah blah all this issue happened a lot in in this kind of situation so so you really need to uh figure out what you can sacrifice and what you cannot and then find the easy not to say easy wait out the easy solution quick win kind of like that kind of uh idea or quick win solution with your if you have a family then with your family members and all that so that you can negotiate if you can't do that then maybe it's not the right timing sometimes for postgraduate studies is about timing as well you you you might be at the period of time where you are like at the peak of your career where you know you are going up so if you were to go study now you lose out a lot of things so you you have to consider whether you're gonna lose that or not or you're gonna you know just forget about work for a while and then go for your study so there are a lot of give and take to be honest and uh my own personal experience as well i mean i have to have to say no to so many things because uh normally i can do a lot of things that i like for example i mean not like just for fun but things like like for example uh like a workshop for example i normally before before this uh every weekend i'll be doing a lot of workshops and all that but now i have to cut down on that because i have to focus on my my own research as well and things like that i mean and then i have to juggle with the family commitment as well so if you have family members who need your care like your parents or even your spouse or your kids and all that you really need to consider all this factor i mean we can ignore it when we sign up normally we tend to feel confident about ourselves but once we start like one maybe one or two months you start to feel the heat of uh trying to balance work and you know postgraduate study so it's not that easy but uh it's not impossible i mean i have seen a lot of colleagues friends who struggle through and you know they still manage to to to get a degree and not just picking it easily but really really enjoy the moment as well like i had one colleague who uh had to take the bus early in the morning uh she she went back to drink i know i think but she was studying uk so i had to take bus a little morning and then go to kl and then sleep in the major you know and then come back late at night and things like that because she's teaching as well she was teaching in uh in schools at that time and then the the the husband is also working and with four kids things like that it's not easy actually come to think of it but uh and and also the the negotiation with your supervisors your are also important like in in my class case the supervisor was not really keen to do it online okay i mean they can always communicate back then maybe we don't use zoom but they can still communicate using email and whatnot but that that supervisor was so strict that uh he only wanted to meet in person so makes her feel like you know you can imagine the struggle that he had she had to overcome and all that so i think the negotiation with your surprises and also your lectures are also important if you're taking uh postgraduate studies while working because some some supervisor may not like your uh your approach in using work as an excuse for example you're supposed to meet him or her today and then you say oh i have work to do you know some professors cannot cannot accept that so a lot of negotiation going on and also i think it's it's okay to admit things are not right i think this is quite important a lot of postgraduate studies especially working about they felt like um once they sign up uh they have to they have to go through it you know uh buy it by crook in a way even even though they don't enjoy it but i think we are all working a doubt so we know what it's not working what is working if it's not working then we just we just have to uh stop and then you know change our pathway and all that during undergraduate years maybe we cannot do that or we cannot afford to do that now that we are slightly you know better off in a way if you for example like supervisors if if you notice that the the one assigned to you is not really helping or maybe not really compatible with you then you might want to figure out how to change or or maybe switch you know to a different program or switch to a different universities even and all that so i think that is important because some people hold on to it for three or four years and then decided to quit um yeah maybe you know maybe maybe some would say they would like to give themselves a chance but uh if you know that things are not working out earlier then might as well face it and make that harsh decision to to to change or to to switch because you don't want to you know kind of because you're paying as well right paying the fee as well i i have a few students who actually keep on paying fee but not never met the supervisor because the problem with the supervisor for example and i asked i mean i asked them why did you continue i mean what's the point when uh you know things are not progressing and then you just waste your money and you know waste your time and then they say they would like to see whether it's their problem sometimes we have to accept the fact that the problem may not be from us you know it could be from from other i don't know external factors as well so uh for adults or working and doubts i think we are better off in terms of making that decision to say no or maybe to just stop or to continue elsewhere some something like that because yeah i mean that's always a problem what i noticed is based on my experience teaching as well as seeing a lot of colleagues and friends who will try to pursue postgraduate study and end up not finishing because of this reason yeah i have one recently my faculty um one who managed to get the scholarship and everything went for three or four years and didn't finish because of the supervisor issue you should be supervisor because he wanted to do something else why i wanted to go for something else things like that you know not not compatible because i think when it comes to postgraduate studies uh compatibility with your supervisor or academic advisor is really really really crucial sometimes you don't want to be in trouble as well yeah so i i gather that clarity and also prioritization needs to come and given the many commitments that we have because when they are working as a boss when they're studying their supervisor right so it's a balancing act so uh kiman um this has been an absolute treat for me because i've learned so much from you uh not only that you are from clanton and you also speak both dialects of stronghold and clanton is very well um so much more on education technology the future of it and how uh it's enabling uh lifelong learning with that kimono thank you so much i wish you all the very best thank you so much as well for having me and also all the best to you and the rest of the viewers or listeners good luck take care bye bye
2021-10-14 18:24
