Malaysia made history with a national ‘partial lockdown’ due to Covid-19 – how it affects me as an educator in Malaysia teaching Landscape Architecture

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.

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