kerjakerja

Being a lecturer/ tutor at MSU is quite a challenging job for me. Why? These are the reasons:

1. Too many workloadsAs a lecturer, u will be not only teaching, but you have too many works to do that sometimes you will be thinking, ‘Am I suppose to do all these?’. The answer is yes. Apart from teaching for high number of hours in a week (especially for English lecturer), I have to prepare my own materials.Therefore, I need to be very selective in choosing the best materials and references for students. I plan to teach students by using LCD projector this time around. I am very sure bachelor students need something that is more ‘colourful’ to look at. Thus, I need to prepare slides for lectures. I want to reduce the numbers of games that I have been included for last semester. I want the students to be more serious this time. I have already checked the appropriate materials that I could use for English Language Awareness (UCS 1163). So far, I am very satisfied with this one book ‘Success’. The contents are very interesting indeed. Also, ELA will be focus more on Listening and Speaking task. Therefore, me and my other two colleagues had came out with one solution for the big project-sketch ( I used to handle this when I was teaching in UiTM Sri Iskandar). Our big boss seemed agree with our proposal. And please bear in mind, I have 24 teaching hours in a week!

2. Preparing quizzes/ exam questionsI have experienced preparing exam questions in UCI before, but actually I am really looking forward to join a course or what we called it here as CTS. I want to learn how exactly to be a good exam questions setter. It is challenging u know, to set a exam paper if we don’t have the right skill. We must be very vigilant about the alignment, margins, and fonts and so on. And of course we have to choose a good material in order to prepare the best and quality question paper. Plus, the answer scheme. In MSU, all the lecturers must prepare their own mid sem and final exam question paper. And after that, there will be a moderation and vetting process before choosing the best exam paper. The selection will be made by our big boss or the experts. So, we can not be so depress if our paper is not selected. ‘Try again’ is the attitude here. Penat kan, buat penat2 tapi last2 paper org lain yg dipilih. Just look back and improve!

3. Preparing teaching and assessment portfolio
This is a must for all private colleges because it is required by MQA. But, it takes quite sometimes and effort to complete the compiling and stuff. Must be very tolerant in doing it. Here comes all the stuffs that will make u become headache such as preparing the Scoresheet, Item Analysis, QS1, Coursework Matrix, tagging, printing tagging, finding back your students’ quizzes and assignments to compile in the portfolios. It will take a year! Haha


4. Marking exam papersJust imagine, I have 113 students from last semester and I don’t know whether I will get more for tthis new semester. Some of my colleagues have 200 plus students while a few has less than 50 students. So, it depends on luck actually. Thus, just imagine how many exam papers that I need to mark each mid sem and final exam. 113 papers! And usually we will be given a week to complete all the markings.

5. Meeting
Almost every week we will be attending a meeting. Some meetings will drag to 3 hours. And sometimes, we have 3 meetings in a week!

6. Mentoring
One thing that I have never experienced before at my previous workplace is mentoring. So, when I have to do mentoring here, I was like in a ‘don’t know what to do’ mood. At the first place, I think it is too much if a lecturer should handle all the students’ problems and take all the burdens. I think students are just should refer to admin or counseling department if they have any problems. Mentoring sessions will be held once a week for two hours. Each mentor (lecturer) will have 20-40 numbers of mentee (students). As a mentor, a lecturer should alert if his or her mentees have any problems regarding academic or study. But of course, some students will drag the mentor into their personal problem. I am quite disagreeing with this mentoring because I think the students will be so spoiled and become too dependent. The mentor also needs to organize any event or interesting activities for the mentoring session.

7. And yes. I have to work on Saturday, sometimes by doing nothing at the office. And yes. Thank you very much for that one.=P