I am from Singapore and I travel daily to work across the border to Johor Bahru to teach at the University there. The day that I feared would come since the spread of Covid-19 has just happened. Malaysia has declared a partial lockdown whereby foreigners cannot enter the country while Malaysians cannot leave, starting tomorrow till then end of May. This is due to a sharp rise in Covid-19 positive cases. In these times, I am glad I am prepared for eLearning.

I started planning this Semester last November so I could not have predicted what was going to happen in January 2020 onwards. I decided to implement Problem-Based Learning as a response to poor examination results by my first year Landscape Architecture students in theory-related subjects, in spite of incorporating Cooperative Learning (Kagan Structures), Active Learning activities and Interactive Seminars. The beauty of Problem-Based Learning is that it can merge with Flip Learning and eLearning very well. With the lockdown, I am no longer able to travel to work, which will be closed for two weeks anyway. I can now easily incorporate eLearning by mixing Flip, Zoom Meetings and students having to work on a Problem Statement followed by a reflection.

This is also when I realize that many of my colleagues, particularly older Professors, are resisting eLearning and still rather do face-to-face because they are not equipped to do so. I have extended my offer to help them with the concepts and technology and some are open to that. Meanwhile, I will push on with ensuring that my students still continue to learn asynchronously and synchronously while I am able to cross the border to go to my workplace in Malaysia.

I am from Singapore and the government recently increased its border control in order to minimize ‘imported cases’ of Covid-19. I am teaching a class of international students, so this news has a direct impact on some of them. They worry that they will be unable to continue with my course if I were to conduct face-to-face learning because a few of them are from countries from which Singapore has either banned visitors, or those with visa holders are given a ‘Stay-At-Home’ notice once they return from a trip. In times like these, I am glad I am prepared for eLearning. I just reassured them that I will continue to conduct the module via eLearning mostly synchronously via Zoom meetings.

I started planning for this Semester since last November so I could not have predicted what was going to happen in January 2020 onwards. Fortunately, I learnt how to use Zoom when I attended a webinar with the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects last year. I found that it is a very intuitive, flexible and very easy-to-learn tool for having online lectures, seminars, and student presentations. This settles the lecture series. However, the challenge for me is that this is a project-based module. After discussing with my Teaching Assistant, I decided to do a vLog for the field trip to the project site. I took the students for a ‘tour’ by talking while walking at the site and recording it. I also encouraged the students to explore the site using Google Earth in both map (2D) and 3D views.

The students are also provided with a Microsoft Powerpoint template at A1 with a print-screen of the map from Google Earth and Google Maps, which they can use to annotate when they carry out site analysis. The template sets up the map at A1, which can immediately be exported to an A1 sized pdf file and sent for printing immediately. They can also export the A1 maps into Adobe Photoshop to work with layers of different analyses, or to a GIS Platform such as Esri’s ArcGIS. Once they have completed their site analysis, they then present their work via Zoom while I host the presentations. The advantage of Zoom is that the students do not need an account. They just need a link to a Zoom meeting from me. The disadvantage is that I have to upgrade my account with Zoom to extend the meeting beyond 10 mins (under a free account). This is a small investment when compared to the value of being able to teach online as the need arises, which, in our current world, is not just for convenience, but rather a necessity and emergency to combat the spread of Covid-19.