Archive for the ‘Research & Students’ Category

Last night’s anniversary celebration was a success - with the host of VIPs, ex-principals, alumni, current students, ex-teachers and current teachers all attending the occasion. I’m glad that we finally pulled it through after months of preparation and rehearsals.

The choir put up a good show and though the songs performed were not technically demanding, they were crowd-pleasers as such occasions require. I felt that the new choir gown is lovely but some of my girls would tell you that it looks very gay. Well, its the overall stage effect that matters at the end of the day. This purple fabric has a electric blue tinge at a certain angle and has that royal feel which in my opinion is uncommon and attractive as compared to other school choirs’ gowns. I admit that the design is nothing to shout about though … we were constrained by time and budget.

Anyway, I’m happy that the headache of sourcing for the tailor, gown design, fabrics and budget is all behind me now. :) It was quite an undertaking.

It’s coming to the end of the year again. Towards the end of each year, I’d sit back and reflect on some of the key events and decisions made in the past year or so. It’s a pretty interesting exercise as you’ll see the decisions that turned out right, and those that turned out all wrong; all with the benefit of a mite bit of hindsight at the end of the year now.

So, running off my head and in no particuar order:

Going to Phuket first in June then Bali later in September (WIN). Because right smack on the week we were in Bali in September, thousands of travelers in Singapore had to postpone their Phuket trip because the airport had shut down! Too funny for words. Bali posts tagged here, with Phuket ones here.

Having a baby (IN PROGRESS). Well, not saying too much away here, but the decision wasn’t an easy one. There were concerns about health and well-being for example. Funnily, we faced little of the ‘traditional’ sort of pressures. Oh, Ling’s mum asked about it now and then, but there was absolutely no (even polite) queries or pressure exerted on my side of the family. Nor did the announced incentives in August factor into our decisions. First announced here.

Going with a Nissan Latio (WIN). Well, on the upside, the car hasn’t broken down. Moreover, our Latio survived pretty much unscathed compared to the Honda Civic I bumped into nearly a year ago. On the down side, Ling’s been remarking that the car makes funny squeaky noises occasionally, and doesn’t give her the vibes that the Latio is better built than the old Civic we were driving. And we haven’t been getting the 14 km/litre fuel consumption milleage some drivers claimed. But a 12.5 to 12.8 km/litre isn’t too bad. First blogged here, then here.

Red and silver.

Publishing a book (WIN). This, funnily, was the hardest decision I’ve made this year. My work and research has been published in several places prior to this of course, but publishing in academia is quite different from producing a commercial publication. There’s all the legalese in the author’s contract with the publisher, all my liabilities since there’re now new issues of distribution, ownership and copyright. And to top if all off, it’s not as though my book is gonna be selling a million copies allowing me to enter early retirement. The summative royalties I expect are essentially, for lack of a better word, non-existent. First blogged here.

Deciding between a PS3 or an XBox 360 (WIN). No kidding! I had long chats with Matt about the virtues of one console over the other. Moreover, the decision wasn’t as simple as which had the games I was interested in or studying. The decision to go with one of them was made when the high definition standards war was raging, and investment in the PS3 wasn’t a sure decision. It could had turned into a white elephant! First blogged here then here.

Of course I could have bought both, like Matt…

Ling having a go with Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune.

Investing in a new camera system (IN PROGRESS). And what a huge investment it turned into. I was determined to get it right this time by doing proper research, and proper accounting to what I was acquiring. So far, so good. Ok, so the photos are still a long way off to progressing from ‘crappy’ to ‘mediocre’, but I’m working on it! First blogged here.

Trying to fatten Matt up (LOST). As soon as Matt firmed up arrangements to visit and stay with us for a month in June this year, Ling and I drew up a strategy to make sure that this time, he’d leave Singapore weighing heavier than he arrived. And boy, did we try hard! We enlisted everyone’s help. Even my mum, and Doreen. Even our small group was involved. But Matt easily showed that he could beat us all without trying, and he left Singapore weighing less than when he arrived. So we failed miserably again.

He conquered durians even.

But as soon as he’s firmed up plans for a third visit, this time, it’s WAR. If we have to bury him with Banquet pratas or drown him with teh tariks this time, we will!! Ling’s tribute to The Champion here.

There you go. If I can think of any more significant milestones, I’ll append them here later.

No this isn’t an entry about the well-known “Mr. Wang” from blogsphere. Rather, Mr. Wang is a key fictional character in the subject I’m teaching this semester: Software Engineering.

Now how does Mr. Wang fit into this subject? Well, for the last couple of semesters now, this subject has been offered in a comparatively new instructional mode, specifically Problem-Based Learning. There’s at least one IHL in Singapore employing this learning mode en masse. Briefly, this mode of learning involves the use of realistic problems issued to student project groups, and students discover their own solutions and learning with the instructors typically facilitating only their knowledge discovery rather than doing actual teaching. Mr. Wang is a character I created as part of the central story that ties in three large problems that my student groups undertake to solve over the term.

But my entry this time isn’t about the instruction mode  but about the subject itself. It’s pretty funny, because I’ve been teaching Software Engineering for more than 12 years now but this is my first time blogging about it in a personal capacity. This was the very first subject assignment I had when I first started teaching in 1995, and in 2008, I’m still teaching the same thing. Oh, the instruction modes have changed, the institutions I’m at, and (naturally) the students too.

What’s this subject about? Well, in the most simplistic terms, it concerns itself with the study and employment of traditional ‘engineering’ principles in software development. Now that statement may not mean much, but if one tracks the evolution of software development in itself, that statement says a lot. Specifically, one of the analogies I’ve used in every one of my lecture groups over the years is this: if you received your first software programming assignment, then sat on a toilet bowl and starting writing code on your notebook, you’re at some level engaging in software development.

But that isn’t software engineering. You’re only said to be engineering software if you went about developing that software in a specific manner i.e. by using principles, ideas, and best practices that have its roots in engineering that’s developed over hundreds if not thousands of years. Friz Bauer, an exponent of the subject writes that:

Software Engineering is the establishment and use of sound engineering principles in order to obtain economically software that is reliable and works efficiently on real machines.

This definition is included in Roger S. Pressman’s book, one of the key reference books for students anywhere studying the subject.

Some examples of these principles: e.g. the idea that before you create a product, you’d best properly specify what is it you’re creating first. Or when you’ve finished creating the thing, you should evaluate that product against that specification you created at the start.

Now, all these ideas may seem a natural part of software development, but they weren’t always. And more importantly, these ideas didn’t stem from our understanding of software. It’s been with us for ages, long before software first came about.

Unfortunately, the subject isn’t easy to teach. I remember at one point in another institution I was lecturing at, Software Engineering was the most dreaded subject among academic staff. The complaints were usually the same. “The material’s dry and difficult to engage students with.” Naturally that sort of difficulty staff wrestle with occasionally affects student learning i.e. if the instructor finds it dry, how will students not find it the same?

Ironically, I like teaching this subject. It’s a challenge of course. But one advice I’ve given to new staff routinely assigned to my teaching teams is this: the trick is to ground in the real world and common sense every one of these software creation principles. E.g. one analogy I use. Why does it make sense to employ software metrics? Well, the idea isn’t unique in software creation. We use metrics in just about everything else we do, including looking for potential life partners! That always perks my students up.

My book!

One of my (secret) dreams after I started teaching and lecturing 12 years ago has been to publish something. I’m not quite sure where that came from, but it was sort of at the back of my mind. Oh, I had other dreams, like singing the role of Figaro, or performing one of Mozart’s piano concertos in a concert hall. But of all these wants, this one about publishing seemed to be the least fanciful and possessing that tiny glimmer of possibility. After all, my throat croaks and my fingers are as nimble as Matt’s are he eats 6 roti pratas (!), so singing and performing are all out.

Things picked up substantially when I started the Ph.D. It’s not necessary to publish when doing a Ph.D program. In fact, a couple of fellows at my research office didn’t publish at all as they just don’t have the time for it. I did, so in a sense, my very first ‘publication’ ever was a paper for an international conference that NUS was hosting in June 2004. Never mind that I thought my paper was pretty crappy, but hey it was peer reviewed, accepted, and my name’s in a Proceedings now. But the Proceedings are only available for conference delegates who show up and pay their fees, or in online databases - and those require subscription too. So yeah it’s a publication, but not the one that I’d ultimately been hoping for.

Many papers later, and 4 years since I first had a paper in the proceedings, I’m thrilled to say here that I’ve finally published a book proper! The type that people can pay good money, buy and read my trashy writing! But seriously, it’s really my doctoral thesis published by VDM Verlag, a German-based publisher of academic literature and theses.

This isn’t a big thing by any measure in academic circles by the way, since this publisher actively solicits academics for theses and works in areas they’re interested in, so it’s not as though they invited my thesis publication because I wrote something that qualifies for a Nobel prize.

Moreover, publishing a book hasn’t been without its trauma. Specifically, given that this book is commercially available and can now be scrutinized by anyone who decides to fork out good money for it, I’ve suddenly become more than a little nervous that someone who reads it thoroughly will send me an email asking about the bloop in Chapter 7. Or the one in Chapter 2. Or the two in the References section. That’s not even considering any one of those game publishers who may decide to sue me off all my pocket money for saying all those things about their games!

And the book’s a whopping USD124 on Amazon.com! I wouldn’t buy my own book at that price. But seriously, I do get an author’s discount, so if anyone is in a mood to spend money, I’ll help you buy one with the discount.:)

All that said, it’s a milestone reached and what lies beyond is in equal parts scary and exciting. Most of all, it’s a dream that’s finally come true, and I should be allowed by 2 seconds of glory before I find myself a hiding hole and hope the wolves don’t find me haha.:)

A couple of students and staff (including myself!) from the department were at the Singapore Zoo the other day for a talk given by Will Wright, the very famous game industry person and designer of the upcoming Spore game. I haven’t been playing a lot of games since GTA IV—the two of us are still struggling to finish the Lego: Indiana Jones that Matt bought us—but Spore has piqued my interest for a while now since it was announced what 3 years ago.

One of the freebie items that was included in the Guest Bag provided by Electronic Arts during the talk was a coupon for the Spore Creature Creator, an appetizer of sorts that’ll allow you to create your own custom critter. The trial version is freely downloadable here (the coupon was for the full version which saved me $20—mwahahaha), and it’s quite a ball of fun.

The animated avatar on this page is my pet critter generated from the program itself, and you can just let your imagination run wild.:)

And what a huge can of worms this letter writer has just opened. We’re just about to leave Singapore for our trip to the Ayara resort, but this morning’s letter to The Straits Times is too interesting not to post it up.

June 14, 2008

A tutor’s take on Tuition Syndrome

I AM a full-time tutor with both private students and students at education centres. I have more than 2,600 hours of teaching more than 100 students from both neighbourhood schools and elite institutions like Hwa Chong Institution and Raffles Junior College, and almost 3,000 hours of training school students in my previous vocation. I am currently teaching the full range of English language syllabus such as PSLE, N, O and A levels.

Although I was never a Ministry of Education (MOE) teacher, I have numerous MOE-teacher friends, and I am currently a postgraduate student at the National Institute of Education (NIE) with MOE-teacher classmates who always share their views. I even relief-taught in an MOE school before.

These combined experiences, I believe, qualify me to make the remarks below.

Tuition Syndrome exists because of the fault of both school (and teachers) and students. Teachers typically spend about 10 hours a day in school, of which only an average of three are spent teaching in the classroom. We all know what happens to the other seven hours. Question: How much teaching can actually go on in that three hours, after deducting time taken for students to settle down, take attendance and so on?

My tuition students always complain they do not understand what their teachers are talking about in class. Many also complain that hardly anything is taught in class. I am no longer surprised to teach my students certain important skills they should have learnt in school, but which they have not heard of before. I do know these skills are taught to teachers in NIE’s Postgraduate Diploma in Education which all MOE teachers have to take (since I’m in NIE myself right now) so it’s anyone’s guess why these skills are not transferred to students in school.

(more…)

Since I was writing recollections of my extra-curricular activities the week before last, here’s another entry on debating at NTU. The Australasians tournament in Melbourne ‘95 was an eye-opener, and from that point till 2000 I got involved training polytechnic, secondary school, and JC debating teams, and also adjudicated in several other local and regional tournaments.

The highlight was in 2000 when we headed to Sydney for the World Universities competition. This competition is the largest of its kind, and unlike the World Schools, the participants at World Universities span the age range. In Singapore at least, undergraduates tend to be those compacted around either the post-diploma/’A’ levels/NS age group. Elsewhere from the world, and certainly so for Australia, there were a number of adult debaters who were also post-graduate students. And with that age came a more mature understanding of content matters and tenacity to boot when delivering their speeches.

The host university this time was the University of Sydney, and this institution isn’t merely regarded as one of the top institutions in Australia. Their debating team has on more than a few occasions won the competition. The tournament saw participation from more than 100 Universities around the world, and NTU as I recall it sent three teams, with three motherhens, whoops adjudicators; two staff and myself. No, at that point I was no longer a student of NTU (I was legitimately a student of Curtin University at that juncture), so I registered as NTU-Alumni.

We were housed on campus, and the building I stayed in was St. Andrews’ College, and there was an incredible feeling of history and heritage as walked through its corridors. I wish I’d taken more pictures of the place. The NTU teams fared well too in the tournament, though they were eliminated from the competition during the advanced knock-out rounds. The championship was eventually taken by Monash University.

The thing about these tournaments ultimately isn’t about debating, but about meeting people doing the same thing as you are but in other parts of the world. I certainly enjoyed all the social functions, and this picture here never fails to make Ling a little green-eyed. The lovely ladies are from the Tokyo Woman’s Christian University. No, that’s not me getting drunk during our Championship Dinner event (I’m teetotaler!), but me blushing furiously.:)

I’ve got a longer writeup at this link here, which I remember I was writing and updating on the fly on a daily basis at Sydney’s Internet cafes. And you have to keep in mind that this was pre-Internet blogging days.:)

Here’s one for Matt, our ang moh friend. ‘Boh liao‘, which one pronounces as ‘boh’ ‘leow’ is a commonly used word in Singapore. It literally means “no substance”, but for daily usage, it’s used to describe someone who has nothing better to do, backside too itchy, finish eating no feces to defecate (it sounds a lot more hilarious in Hokkien) etc. among some very colorful descriptors.

I thought the letter from April where one guy complained why he couldn’t use the power socket in Coffee Bean was the exemplar of boh liao-ness. Well, this one letter written to over the weekend was printed in capsule form and it takes the cake:

‘Why are teachers allowed to park for free at their place of work?’

MR RAJASEGARAN RAMASAMY: ‘Other statutory board staff and civil servants must pay to park at their place of work. Let’s assume that there are 500 schools and tertiary institutions, each with 50 teachers. Assuming a rate of $65 per month, which is the price for a publicly-run season parking lot, the Government is losing a potential revenue of some $1.625 million monthly. The principle that one should pay for parking at one’s place of work should apply to all. Can the relevant ministry comment?’

Some of the reaction from posters into the discussion rooms were, not unexpectedly, along the lines of the fellow suffering from a bad case of sour grapes. Sample responses on ST like here, here, here and here. Maybe the letter writer has to pay for parking at his workplace, so he wants every one else in Singapore to have to do the same. Ling calls this a equal misery policy.

Personally, a public school teacher’s life is already hard enough as it is, and here we have someone who’s wants one of the little benefits of a teacher to be removed. I imagine if it does come to pass that staff in public schools have to pay for parking, the letter writer is going to become public enemy no. 1 for teachers at least.

(Picture from the Dallas Observer blog)

I wrote this entry several weeks ago to post up when I’m too busy to write current entries. So here it goes.:)

A student blogger on the other blog I write for was noting how quickly time has passed in his course, and how in the matter of a few months he won’t be seeing his classmates, lecturers, and school anymore. His whole cohort will be starting on their 4 - 8 month industry internship program.

Truth to tell, it’s the student experiences when I was in school that provided the most memorable moments. Ok, so I don’t remember every nugget, but my memory is still reasonably fresh of my bachelor degree days at NTU onwards. So, following up from an earlier entry, one of the activities I was heavily involved in was debating. I went from being on the reserve list as a freshman to captain for the faculty team in my second year, then captain for the university team in my final year, and adjudicator just before I convocated.

The first competition I adjudicated in was the Australasians Intervarsity Debating Championships, which was hosted by Monash University in Melbourne, June 1995. NTU sent two teams of three student-speakers each, and being older and just finished my final year examinations, I was the trainer-mentor-chaperon aka Mother Hen during the trip.

At that point 13 years ago, adjudicators while still students like myself were very uncommon even though they are the norm in current competitions today. In fact, adjudicators then were University teaching staff. So, to get selected and then represent NTU as a adjudicator while still a student was a bit of an achievement. The tournament didn’t use adjudicator panels in the preliminary rounds then (and that’s also changed for some of the international tournaments too), so I was all alone to have to listen to six persons debate extempore style for each of the seven prelim rounds.

The debaters themselves spanned quite the range. I remember that the Philippine teams were always passionate. Many also had an attractive timbre in their debating voices. The local i.e. Aussie teams all spoke the language fluently and exhibited comfort levels in employing quips and humor that weren’t common in other teams. The Malaysian and NUS-Singapore teams were hard to differentiate given how similarly we speak English. And there was that running joke about the NTU teams - whether we were a Singaporean or really an Indian national contingent given how dominant was Indian scholar representation on the NTU teams.

I was blessed enough too to emerge relatively unscathed in the rounds I adjudicated too. And boy, do complaints fly like wild during these tournaments. How so? Well, bear in mind there is always a winner and a loser in a debate, the loser does not like losing, and the losers still comprise each University’s brightest and most eloquent students to have made it this far. Put it together and you get complaints galore. So, maybe I took meticulous notes. Or I was just persuasive. Or more likely I was just super loh-soh i.e. long-winded in my verbal assessments that teams readily accepted my verdict just so I’d shut up and they’d be able to move onto the next round.

And all that is just the debating part of it. We had time during our 9 day trip to hit the sights, and that was where the fun really began. The 1995 trip was my first to Australia, though at that juncture I of course had no idea I would be a frequent traveler to Australia 8 years later during my doctoral studies. We went on day trips up and down the coast. We walked. We hit their local cuisine.

And that wasn’t the end of it. Because on the very last day, the NTU team checked out late from the hotel despite my stern reminders the night before that we would be paying an extra night’s stay if they weren’t timely. They got a terrific earful from me, especially because I was the one footing the additional hotel bill for their slovenly attitude. The Student Affairs Office at NTU promised to reimbursed me for the bill, but I never got round to it - bleh.

But all these are memories, and great wonderful ones at that. The two photos here; one is with my other fellow adjudicators. Notice how old and wizen they look compared to my youthful appearance. The other is with the University of the Philippines that I’d adjudicated and became friends with thereafter. I started work about 5 months after the trip- I had to return to national service to fulfill three months of training that I’d deferred. And while there’s been many great memories at work over the 13 years I’ve worked, it’s been student memories that’ll brighten my day.

So, yep, I know how Ling felt during her recent Venice trip mother-hening her choir girls.:)

I was having a fun MSN conversation with a colleague several months ago, and it started off when I saw she had marvelous wallpaper on her notebook.

Me: “Wow - Star Wars: Clone Wars wallpaper!!!”

Friend: “nice anot… i compose it myself… haha which is superimposing 2 pics together…

Me: “Not bad not bad. I have no photoshop sense - wish I had the kind of skills you have haha.:)”

Friend: “i wish i have ur brains then… haha”

Yep, so lecturers sometimes talk nonsense and fun on MSN too. But seriously, as far as Photoshop is concerned, I have no brains and am an utterly clueless noob. I mean, I can handle some of the easier functions, like resizing, lens distortion correction, color alterations, but anything that goes into layers and histograms is like venturing into the Bermuda Triangle for me.

But one of the nice things about working in an IHL are the tools in the computer labs. There’re several dozen computer labs in my faculty alone, all armed to the teeth with all the expensive software that I could never afford. Photoshop CS3 costs a not-very-modest USD630 for instance. The tools are all there for students to learn and do their practicals, or at least before they wreck the PCs (typically) by downloading all sorts of funny things from the Internet. And there’s at least one lab in the faculty whose computers are Photoshop CS3 equipped.

So, here’s what I’m going to do. My newest mission for this month: Learn Photoshop CS3. The library has like several person high racks and shelves of nothing but Photoshop books from versions a decade (?) ago till the most current versions. Starting today, I’m going to exhaust this library and park myself in the lab whenever I’m free to learn the tool. If nothing else, it’ll let me correct all the mistakes I’m making in my crappy photos.:)