My teaching work is not confined to the delivery of individual courses. Over time, it has developed across multiple levels: student learning, educator development, institutional teaching practice, and wider public and professional learning. This page highlights how my contribution has extended beyond the classroom through course design, digital learning leadership, open education, academic development, and wider engagement with future-oriented teaching and learning.
Impact on student learning
One of the clearest ways I recognise impact on students is through what happens during the learning process itself. When the teaching design is working well, class discussions become more animated and purposeful, students engage one another more freely within their groups, and the classroom feels less dependent on me as the sole source of response. These are important signs because they show that students are not simply present in class, but are actively participating in the work of learning.
The forms of student growth that matter most to me are their ability to connect theory and practice, followed by reflection, the quality of discussion, confidence, and teamwork. I do not see success primarily as recall of content. I see it in whether students can use ideas to interpret situations, make sense of practice, and respond with greater thoughtfulness and purpose. When this happens well, theory no longer remains abstract, and students begin to use it as a way of seeing, explaining, and judging.
I know that this impact is becoming real when students are more prepared to speak, more willing to question, and better able to produce work that reflects the demands of the coursework brief and the expectations of the final examination. One form of feedback that genuinely matters to me is when students explicitly ask me not to change my teaching approach because they find value in the way I engage with them. In a context where lecture-style teaching supported mainly by slides is still common, this tells me that students are experiencing learning as something more active, dialogic, and meaningful.
Impact through course and assessment innovation
A distinctive feature of my teaching practice is that I design the LMS as the focal point for student knowledge construction rather than as a storage space for lecture slides. Instead of relying on downloadable slide decks, I build each week or topic around a consistent structure that includes learning outcomes, curated readings or web resources, guided lessons, and clearly framed learning tasks with supporting materials. In weeks designated for self-directed learning, I provide numbered activity sequences with estimated completion times so that students can work through the learning deliberately rather than vaguely. I also take care to write descriptions for the materials on the LMS so that students understand why each resource matters and how it connects to the week’s learning.
My contact sessions are then designed to extend that preparation through a constructivist approach to learning. I begin with a short introduction, make the learning outcomes for the session explicit, and explain the active learning task that will support those outcomes. Guided by Laurillard’s Conversational Framework, I typically organise sessions around collaborative learning, with students producing artefacts of learning such as short group presentations, responses to structured questions, or jigsaw-style teaching to classmates. Before the end of the session, I use the final 10 to 15 minutes to summarise what has been achieved and to give feedback on the work students have produced during class. In this way, students do not simply attend a session; they experience a structured cycle of preparation, participation, production, and reflection.
My assessment design follows the course learning outcomes closely, but I also take the initiative to draw from professional experience and embed relevant challenges into the brief so that the work feels authentic and intellectually demanding. I want assessment tasks to reflect the uncertainty and disruption that professionals actually face. For example, in a project management course, I introduced a client-driven scope change after students had already completed much of their planning and asked them to report on the implications of that change for the project. This kind of design helps students experience coursework not as a static academic exercise, but as a space where theory, planning, judgement, and professional realities have to be brought together.
Impact on educators and institutional teaching practice
A significant part of my teaching impact extends beyond my own students and into the teaching practice of colleagues. Because I co-teach many of the courses assigned by the department, I have had repeated opportunities to shape course design, active learning practice, and assessment thinking in collaboration with other educators. This influence often continues beyond the period of co-teaching itself. For example, I have supported junior colleagues in redesigning course assessment and rubrics so that they align more clearly with the course learning outcomes.
At faculty and university level, I am regularly invited to conduct training on teaching and learning. One example was during the early stage of implementing mandatory open-book final examinations for final-year students, which coincided with the emergence of generative AI. In that context, I led training for educators on how to use AI critically to analyse their conventional exam questions and redesign them more appropriately for open-book assessment. My training work also covers pedagogical and practical areas such as active learning, flipped learning, and the use of teaching tools and platforms.
This influence extends beyond Universiti Malaya. I have been invited by other universities, including UTM Skudai, to serve as a trainer on Active, Cooperative, and Experiential Learning. Within UM, I also designed the teaching-and-learning section of the onboarding programme for new academic staff under ASCEND Session 1/2026, where I served as trainer for Delivery Methods of Teaching and Learning.
UM’s own profile records my service as Head of E-Learning from 2014 to 2024, a role that positioned me within wider institutional and national conversations on digital teaching and learning. Through that central university role, I was also connected to MEIPTA, the national council that brings together public-university representatives responsible for e-learning and OER to share practice and advance e-learning across the sector, eventually serving as the Vice Chairperson.
Taken together, these roles reflect a form of impact that is not limited to my own classroom, but includes helping other educators design stronger learning experiences and respond more confidently to changing teaching contexts.
Impact through open and public learning
An important part of my teaching impact extends beyond enrolled university students into open and public-facing learning. Since 2016, I have led MOOC development for Universiti Malaya through the FutureLearn platform, serving as coordinator for course development and helping sustain the university’s presence in the platform through two rounds of contract renewal.
My own MOOC, Building Pathology: The Science Behind Why Buildings Fail, represents this contribution especially well. The course not only extends disciplinary knowledge to a wider audience, but also demonstrates how online learning can bring together students and professionals around shared areas of practice and interest. Its recognition through an international award in 2024 gave visibility not only to the course itself, but also to Universiti Malaya and Malaysia in the wider MOOC and online learning landscape.
My contribution to open and public learning also extends through collaborative design work in wider international and regional initiatives, including projects such as ENEA SEA and ACoRD, both were ERASMUS+ CBHE projects, as well as regular writing on teaching and learning for broader readerships locally and internationally. Taken together, these activities show that my teaching work is not limited to formal institutional delivery. It also contributes to public conversations on learning, expands access to disciplinary knowledge, and supports the idea of lifelong learning as an important part of contemporary higher education.
Impact through future-oriented teaching and learning
My teaching and educational leadership work reflects a sustained early-adopter position in relation to blended learning, flipped learning, digital pedagogy, and more recently AI-enabled teaching in higher education. Since the mid-2010s, I have not only engaged with emerging approaches early, but have also helped introduce, interpret, and diffuse them through course design, staff development, workshops, conference presentations, and institutional initiatives. In this sense, my contribution has not been limited to using new approaches myself, but has also involved helping other educators and institutions respond to change with greater confidence and purpose.
This trajectory can be seen across a long span of activity. My work has included organising early conversations on blended online and offline learning in universities, presenting on blended learning and professional learning communities, sharing practice on flipped classrooms and equitable group work, and later contributing to wider discussions on digital education, AI in assessment design, learning analytics, and meaningful learning design using AI. Across these different moments, the consistent thread has been an interest in how teaching can remain educationally purposeful while adapting to new tools, changing learner expectations, and emerging institutional realities.
What matters to me in this work is not novelty for its own sake, but educational relevance and thoughtful adoption. I have tried to help educators see that new technologies and approaches should not simply be added onto existing practice, but understood in relation to learning design, assessment, feedback, and the student experience. In that sense, my contribution to future-oriented teaching lies not only in early adoption, but also in helping others translate emerging possibilities into more meaningful and defensible educational practice.
Taken together, these forms of impact reflect a teaching contribution that extends across different levels of educational practice. My work has focused not only on helping students learn more meaningfully, but also on strengthening how learning is designed, supported, and experienced in broader academic and professional contexts. For me, impact in teaching is not only about reach or recognition. It is about whether learning becomes more authentic, more thoughtful, and more capable of making a lasting difference.