2012 Award Recipients
The Common Core Course Excellence Award
The Selection Committee viewed that for a truly outstanding course, imaginative pedagogical design and planning are indispensable. This course adopts a collaborative model that not only promotes teamwork, but also empowers the students to take ownership of the learning process, bringing out their best in creativity and in the pursuit of quality. The chance for students to cooperate, respect and lead their peers on their own initiative is a learning experience valuable beyond words.
The magic of this course is that students are inspired to approach and enter a field that is normally beyond their knowledge or confidence. This course calls for students to create their own musicals. Through the process of developing storylines and performing their musicals, students learn to work in various groups responsible for the break-down of sub-tasks. Together, they make a concerted effort to develop and deliver the very best for the final performance. One student remarked that it is “great to have a project in which everyone contributes his/her own expertise but achieves great success together!”.
In this course, smart design and planning have come together beautifully with Professor Lo’s enthusiastic delivery to produce a course that is exceptionally impressive. In achieving the noble Common Core course goal of sparking student passion for learning, it stands as a splendid model for other Common Core courses.
The Honorary Mention
To begin with, the teaching philosophy of this course is crystal-clear to the instructor and the students. In the teaching activities, the focus is squarely on the students’ self-reflection of their own ability. Through this awareness, they are more able to engage and manage their own learning, and even lead others in the same pursuit, while continuing to discover their own potential and limitations. This learning process may take various forms in class activities as well as group work. But they all result in a better understanding of their ability in accomplishing defined tasks and in furthering their own career path. As a platform to facilitate student learning and growth, it is about as good as it gets. Challenging students to have self-reflections is a unique element of this course.
Getting non-science students excited about learning science is not as simple as it seems, but it has not prevented our imaginative course designers from trying. Professor Chan came up with the enticing idea of “Physics in Movies”. Through the friendly medium of movies, students are lured to see the relevance of physics to their everyday life. Using an interactive approach and a diversity of learning activities, they are encouraged to make sensible connections between theories and their applications to the real world. Episodes and clips in the films are used to show how physics works and to pin-point how it may sometimes be misunderstood by the film makers. They add up to a better understanding of physics and the principles of physical phenomena, with a stronger capacity to question and debunk myths displayed in movies. To the students taking this course, learning about science has never been more student-friendly and fascinating. A student who hated physics in high school turned out to be a firm supporter after taking this course.
