Teaching and Learning activities for Environmental Biotechnology

• Main Authors: Nurashikin, Suhaili, Awang Ahmad Sallehin, Awang Husaini, Dayang Salwani, Awang Adeni
• Other Authors: Mohamad Kadim, Suaidi
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: UNIMAS Publisher 2023
• Subjects: H Social Sciences (General); L Education (General); T Technology (General)
• Online Access: http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/41256/1/Teaching%20and%20Learning.pdf; http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/41256/

Despite numerous advantages offered by the existing educational portals such as eLEAP, the platform somehow has some inadequacies such as small upload file size and limited attractive features for content creation. As a result, these have limited some activities of remote teaching and learning (T & L). Social media and animation software offer several attractive features that may overcome the aforementioned problems. In this project, we introduced the use of YouTube, Instagram and an animated doodle software, Doodly to support remote T & L activities for STB3022 Environmental Biotechnology, which was taken by 134 students in Semester 2, 2019/2020. A YouTube channel was created and used as a platform for students’ presentation and for posting Doodly videos created by the instructors. The links of the Doodly videos were also embedded in eLEAP. Additionally, the delivery of the course was boosted by an Instagram page, Biotechnologists at UNIMAS, which acted as a platform for fostering ‘learning during leisure time’ culture amongst the students. Overall, the approach resulted in excellent academic performance and positive feedbacks from the students. Although the approach was demonstrated within a Biotechnology context, the utility of the approaches is applicable for other science or non-science courses.