LETTERS: The upcoming review of the National Higher Education Policy by the Higher Education Ministry is timely to steer the national conversation towards improving teaching.
Two out of the three medical schools in Singapore now use Team-Based Learning (TBL) as their preclinical pedagogic approach. I have met only a few TBL advocates here, but we attest to its positive impact on our students.
I have conducted introductory TBL workshops at university level but the take-up was low. Problem-based learning (PBL), which reached us in 1980, has been described as the most significant educational innovation of the last 50 years.
It arose because knowledge taught by lecturing was poorly retained beyond the exam.
With knowledge increasing exponentially and available through hand-held devices, the most important skill our students need now is how to resolve problems by active and collaborative learning.
My recent count of PBL problems used in major public preclinical medical programmes ranges from about 20 to 60, showing PBL is often implemented not as an innovative curricular philosophy, but added on top of the lectures it is supposed to replace.
Our undergraduate medical programmes are accredited by the Malaysian Qualifications Agency (MQA), where the current standards include the shift from traditional teacher-centred to student-centred active learning.
While the accreditors do give warnings about excessive lectures, it is not the ambit of MQA to teach our academicians how to run a PBL curriculum.
The ministry's 2018 guidelines titled "Framing Malaysian Higher Education 4.0: Future-Proof Talents" included Future Ready Curriculum, with its 21st-century Learning and Teaching delivery that advocates learning without lectures.
The delivery of Malaysian Higher Education Programmes (MyHE) is to be transformed from 1.0 (teacher as source of knowledge) to 4.0 where learners are to be curators, creators and constructivists, consistent with TBL and PBL.
However, this is not happening on the ground as many university classrooms are still in MyHE 1.0 mode. Transforming to MyHE 4.0 will require a dismantling of the current academic culture, where staff are called "lecturers" and the university calendar calls teaching perkuliahan or lecturing session.
The staff appraisal ecosystem must no longer reward the giving of lectures. The Higher Education Leadership Academy (Akept) should train pedagogy experts in each university to act as consultants during curriculum development and review.
The few isolated pedagogic advocates in different universities should unite under national professional societies which the ministry can fund to train academic staff for MyHE 4.0.
These will help position Malaysia as an education hub that uses cutting-edge pedagogies to produce human capital for 21st-century challenges.
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR DR WILLIAM LIM
Universiti Malaysia Sarawak,
Kota Samarahan, Sarawak
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the New Straits Times