Aniqa Anzum :
What is keeping us lagging in effective classroom activities? Are students getting involved intently in their text? These questions haunt me like nightmares. In the era of technological advancement, pedagogical studies have gained a different dimension worldwide. As a university teacher, I often reflect on these issues to enhance the effectiveness of my classes.Student-centered learning is undeniably more effective than traditional teacher-centered methods, driving greater engagement and deeper understanding in students.
Many influential events at Rabindra Maitree University have significantly impacted my life as a teacher and my aspiration to be a true educator in the future, with which the close relationship between a person’s leadership and guardianship is undeniable. He is one of the country’s young education entrepreneurs, Dr. Mohammad Johurul Islam. His contribution may not be measured by a monetary yardstick, but the combination of both institutional and academic leadership that I have seen in him is extremely rare.
The institution, which began its journey about 10 years ago by the hands of financially poor academic, butrelentless hard work, unprecedented patience, honesty, and excellent combination of both hard and soft skills in education and administration, the institution has today become a trusted institution for higher education for about 100 staff including teachers, 2000 students, and many families.
Like a king in a kingdom, he not only provides administrative guidance, but also organizes and conducts regular professional training to develop teachers’ skills.I vividly recall the moment during my academic training (6/2023) when I encountered Bloom’s Taxonomy framework, a powerful tool that organizes cognitive skills into a clear hierarchy from basic recall to higher-order thinking. During this session, Dr. Islam effectively taught us how to design instruction and assess learning, empowering educators to drive students’ development across a diverse range of cognitive skills.During the training session, I also learned differences between lesson plans, assessment, evaluation, and the key differences between assessment and evaluation, as well as methods of evaluation. Recognizing the significance of improving faculty efficiency, Dr. Islam provided instruction on curriculum development, particularly focusing on outcomes-based education (OBE) curriculum design.Since then, I have been able to play an effective role in the formulation and development of the OBE curriculum for my courses.
Dr. Islam took the time to discuss impacts of multimedia presentation in the classroom, wherehe presented a comprehensive overview of John Keller’s ARCS model, Gagne’s Nine Events, and Richard Mayer’s Twelve Principles of Multimedia Learning (6/2024). Furthermore, he illustrated how constructivist principles can be effectively incorporated into lesson planning and enhance student engagement. During an intellectual discussion, he addressed misconceptions surrounding traditional classroom learning methods in the context of Bangladesh, providing clarity and direction.Since participating in this module, a kind of internal motivation started working within me and I started applying the knowledge gained to maximize student engagement and retention, after that I have been following John Keller’s four steps of student motivation namely attention, relevance, confidence and satisfaction.I am constantly adopting new strategies to capture students’ attention in the classroom. Storytelling, ice-breaking sessions, and experience sharing are adding a new dimension to my instructional approach.Moreover, I learned to use analogies to demonstrate the relevance of the lesson to their career and the importance of acquiring relevant knowledge.To ensure student trust and satisfaction, I continue to emphasize timeliness, friendly environment, motivation, and positive interpersonal relationships.
As a subject matter expert, I try to make my lessons understandable to students through repeated motivation, and currently, Gagne’s nine rules have a great influence on me in student guidelines, increasing performance,feedback, assessment and reassessment.Moreover, by applying Mayer’s 12 principles in my multimedia presentations, I can effectively present my lessons and achieve the highest learning objectives.
Additionally, I had the opportunity to take the Career Portfolio Preparation course created by Dr. Islam on the Talent LMS platform (4/2024). This self-paced course was a new experience for me. After completing this 50-minute course, I created my own e-portfolio using Google sites. The process from registration to e-portfolio creation was online, learner-friendly, and easy to navigate. Fortunately, I was somewhat responsible for promoting the course and student engagement, and to my knowledge, the success of the course was that all participants were able to create their e-portfolios.
Finally, the wisdom he showed in establishing the debate club at Rabindra Maitree University and formulating regulations related to it to enhance students’ communication, presentation, and other skills will remain memorable to me.
(The writer is a lecturer in English at Rabindra Maitree University, Kushtia, Bangladesh)
