URBAN PHOTOGRAPHER
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My Teaching Philosophy
I believe that teaching is a lifelong learning process involving the ongoing, voluntary and self-motivated pursuit of excellence in pedagogical knowledge and skills. Hence, I continuously improve my teaching through professional and critical reflection processes. In doing so, I use a range of evidence to evaluate my teaching to improve my practice.
I have been involved in a field of education throughout my life, both as a learner, teacher and researcher within different cultures, including Thailand, the United States of America, Australia and Europe. These diverse experiences have shaped my teaching philosophy: teaching with enthusiasm, passion, and genuine respect and understanding for students. While I keep in mind that teaching is all about the students, I do realise that every student in every class has taught me in such different ways to be a better teacher. Therefore, I have applied my teaching philosophy to my daily practice to provide the best learning experience possible to my students, regardless of their backgrounds.
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My Teaching Contexts
I had been teaching chemistry in Thailand from 2003-2014 and have taught educational psychology and quantitative research methods for undergraduate and postgraduate at UQ since 2019 through various modes (i.e., in-person, online and dual-mode). Additionally, I have been a casual researcher across multiple units at UQ, which allow me to collaborate with UQ staff to further develop my skills in instructional design, teaching and advanced research methods, all within the context of teaching and learning. This experience enables me to remain up-to-date on current educational design principles and knowledge of their application to different delivery modes in Australian contexts.
Source: video taken from Wix collection
My Teaching Strategies
To teach complicated concepts, I apply a student-centred approach using appropriate technology to facilitate active learning. I acknowledge that university students are self-directed learners who are willing to take control of their learning. Hence, I design learning activities and assessment tasks in the ways that students have various options. Furthermore, adult students are motivated to learn the subjects they could apply to their work or personal lives immediately. Therefore, I make lessons relevant to students’ lifeworld, where all learning experiences involve everyday-related or discipline focused situations. Besides, I strongly believe that feedback is a key to learning, so I make sure that I provide a range of appropriate feedback to enhance students’ performance. To put these facets of learning into practice, I apply a discovery learning approach, which allows students to explore ideas whilst receiving sufficient feedback and support. As great teamwork is essential to effective teaching, I work collaboratively with course coordinators to design and develop curriculum, learning materials, activities and assessment tasks. After weekly tutorials, course members discuss and actively seek ways to improve their teaching strategies.
Selected learning materials
To enhance student learning, I have developed a range of learning materials. If you are interested to know more about them, please feel free to contact me.
Source: video taken from Wix collection
YouTube
I have created some Youtube videos to help students with weekly challenges. For example, many students asked about how to answer question 43 on the consolidation activity as they prepared for the midterm exam. To help them visualise the procedures involved, I created some YouTube videos. One of them is presented below.
I also create videos about the statistical procedures to allow students to practice on their own time.
Handouts
In addition to helping the course coordinator develop the course curriculum, I volunteer to create weekly handouts for two reasons. Firstly, I want to apply and further develop my learning design and technological skills. Secondly, I want to use this process to be well prepared for each week tutorial. Initially, I planned to use the handouts for my own tutorials, but the course members appreciated them, so we have used them to guide our class activities. Students also inform me they use the handouts as the primary reference for their learning. To develop Weekly handouts, I identify the measurable learning objectives and then summarise content using infographics and visualisations. I also include a series of questions to facilitate class discussion, increase engagement, and quickly evaluate student understanding throughout the tutorials. The handouts include weekly housekeeping, recaps of previous week activities, weekly resources, summaries of content, in-class quizzes, online quizzes and concept maps, emphasising how different weekly concepts are connected. Additionally, step-by-step statistical procedures are provided for students to practice any time anywhere. I apply UDL principles to the weekly handouts. For example, the handouts involve multiple representations such as text, images and embedded multimedia.
Weekly Quiz
Besides, I create weekly quizzes to help students self-evaluate their learning. Below are some of the quizzes.
In addition to teaching at the University of Queensland, I have been developing the professional community of practice which involve a series of online learning modules and expert presentations embedded in a highly interactive social learning platform. This is the link to the community website.
My Teaching Contexts
I had been teaching chemistry in Thailand from 2003-2014 and have taught educational psychology and quantitative research methods for undergraduate and postgraduate at UQ since 2019 through various modes (i.e., in-person, online and dual-mode). Additionally, I have been a casual researcher across multiple units at UQ, which allow me to collaborate with UQ staff to further develop my skills in instructional design, teaching and advanced research methods, all within the context of teaching and learning. This experience enables me to remain up-to-date on current educational design principles and knowledge of their application to different delivery modes in Australian contexts.
My Teaching Strategies
To teach complicated concepts, I apply a student-centred approach using appropriate technology to facilitate active learning. I acknowledge that university students are self-directed learners who are willing to take control of their learning. Hence, I design learning activities and assessment tasks in the ways that students have various options. Furthermore, adult students are motivated to learn the subjects they could apply to their work or personal lives immediately. Therefore, I make lessons relevant to students’ lifeworld, where all learning experiences involve everyday-related or discipline focused situations. Besides, I strongly believe that feedback is a key to learning, so I make sure that I provide a range of appropriate feedback to enhance students’ performance. To put these facets of learning into practice, I apply a discovery learning approach, which allows students to explore ideas whilst receiving sufficient feedback and support. As great teamwork is essential to effective teaching, I work collaboratively with course coordinators to design and develop curriculum, learning materials, activities and assessment tasks. After weekly tutorials, course members discuss and actively seek ways to improve their teaching strategies.
Source: video taken from Wix collection
Selected learning materials
To enhance student learning, I have developed a range of learning materials. If you are interested to know more about them, please feel free to contact me.
Source: video taken from Wix collection
YouTube
I have created some Youtube videos to help students with weekly challenges. For example, many students asked about how to answer question 43 on the consolidation activity as they prepared for the midterm exam. To help them visualise the procedures involved, I created some YouTube videos. One of them is presented below.
I also create videos about the statistical procedures to allow students to practice on their own time.
Handouts
In addition to helping the course coordinator develop the course curriculum, I volunteer to create weekly handouts for two reasons. Firstly, I want to apply and further develop my learning design and technological skills. Secondly, I want to use this process to be well prepared for each week tutorial. Initially, I planned to use the handouts for my own tutorials, but the course members appreciated them, so we have used them to guide our class activities. Students also inform me they use the handouts as the primary reference for their learning. To develop Weekly handouts, I identify the measurable learning objectives and then summarise content using infographics and visualisations. I also include a series of questions to facilitate class discussion, increase engagement, and quickly evaluate student understanding throughout the tutorials. The handouts include weekly housekeeping, recaps of previous week activities, weekly resources, summaries of content, in-class quizzes, online quizzes and concept maps, emphasising how different weekly concepts are connected. Additionally, step-by-step statistical procedures are provided for students to practice any time anywhere. I apply UDL principles to the weekly handouts. For example, the handouts involve multiple representations such as text, images and embedded multimedia.
Weekly Quiz
Besides, I create weekly quizzes to help students self-evaluate their learning. Below are some of the quizzes.
Outcomes
2021 HASS Teaching Excellence Awards for Tutors
On 4 November 2021, I won the Tutor Award 2021 from the University of Queensland, Australia
Although I genuinely acknowledge that my practice is not perfect and perhaps never be perfect, I strive to improve myself every single day. Therefore, I actively engage with a range of activities within community of practice and apply professional and critical reflection processes into my practice. The results are positive, as I received teaching evaluation scores higher than 4 out of 5, and students showed appreciation through personal conversations and unsolicited emails during and after the course.
Some evidence of my teaching is demonstrated through students’ comments on SECaT. When responding to “What aspects of this teacher's approach best helped your learning”, some students wrote:
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"Nantana is amazing because when she shows the statistical procedures in JASP and SPSS. Her explanations are clear. When we asked her to repeat the steps, she would check many times if everyone was ready to take part in the activity."
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"Nantana was very helpful especially when it came to assignments. She is well prepared every week and uses a variety of sources to help us further understand weekly topics as well as having a further understanding of the lectures."
Besides, I used students' concerns to address similar issues which the next cohorts might have. For example, one student in 2020 noted that "For the consolidation activity part, it’s a bit hard for external students to catch up." Although this issue was not relevant as we did not offer the dual-mode in 2021 anymore, to optimise student learning, I included the consolidation activity in the handout so that students would have the reference. I also created video clips explaining some challenging items so that students could review those questions at their own pace.
In addition, below are some testimonials who are members of the SEAMEO-AUS EduLink community of practice and have finished two core courses by 24 November 2021. Kindly note that these members are amazingly active in discussion in both the courses and social groups. Hence, it is possible for them to have different experiences from someone who is not as well-engaged as them.
"Thank you so much Dr. Nantana for being the impetus of this community. Your remarkable accomplishment of spearheading this program is worthy of emulation. Words are not enough to express my gratitude because it was my first time to make my own e-portfolio and I really felt the sense of achievement. True enough that when I am passionate of doing something, I automatically do things or activities on my own volition. I am really indebted for this remarkable endeavor."
Nitaflor, Teacher & member of SEAMEO-AUS EduLink
"Thank you Dr. Nantana for your heart and passion to help other educators by leading this community. I am overjoyed to see how other educators are into improving their craft and motivating others as well. The passion and time that you have given to this program are very remarkable and I hope I can also take even an inch of that as I try to participate to improve myself and to extend help also to others as I share my journey in my career and growth."
Kathrine, A teacher & member of SEMEO-AUS EduLink
"Being a part of this online community makes me express freely my ideas based on my experiences. I am very happy to share to everyone what I have for benchmarking in the future. As I go along with the course, my energy level and determination to finish the course is increasing. This is it! This is the kind of course that could help me to grow and collaborate with my colleagues in the field. "
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Nelia, A teacher and member of SEAMEO-AUS EduLink