Outstanding Teaching Award 2024

"There is a saying that ‘The money you earned does not belong to you; only the money you spent belongs to you’. I often like to make an analogy of this regarding learning: ‘The marks you earned (knowledge demonstrated in examination) do not belong to you; only the marks you spent (knowledge applied afterwards) belong to you’.

 

The above is pretty much the main guiding principle when I plan and design my teaching. My main goal in teaching mathematics is to engage students in the learning process and to guide them to understand and appreciate the materials, so as to teach not facts but skills – knowledge that actually ‘belongs to the students’.

 

With that in mind, I have tried out various new teaching approaches throughout the years. I have made extensive use of technology to transform traditional teaching practices with the aim of helping students understand concepts, retain knowledge and develop transferable skills. I design student-centred and problem-based learning approaches that emphasise understanding, logical and critical thinking as well as communication skills. I teach my courses in a flipped classroom setting, allowing plenty of interactions with and between students during class.

 

I also believe that the method of assessment directly impacts the way students learn. Based on this belief and my goal of guiding students to understand and appreciate the materials, I design my assessments accordingly. I adopt new practices such as open-book examinations and oral tests, which see students shift their focus from memorisation and mechanical drills to understanding and developing problemsolving skills. I also believe in assessment for learning, in which feedback to assessments plays an important role. I make use of AI-assisted grading to enable students to get detailed and individualised feedback on their assessments.

Teaching and learning are interwoven. I am continually exploring new teaching approaches, with which I hope to keep myself updated with the latest pedagogy and technology, and to further improve the learning experience of students."

 

"Learning mathematics with Dr Law has been an exquisitely delightful experience. Mathematics lectures from my perspective were deemed to be dry and humdrum; we just follow the instructor elucidating terse and opaque definitions, theorems and propositions line-by-line and take notes and that’s it. Dr Law has completely upended this paradigm. By encapsulating all core content into vividly animated lecture videos readily accessible on Moodle, we can accordingly learn outside the classroom at our own pace and pause or rewind to delve deeper into difficult concepts. Lecture slots instead become assignment sessions. This inversion greatly optimises our learning efficiency and comes with unprecedented flexibility.

Dreaded mathematics tutorials are brilliantly renovated with discussion sessions centring around carefully crafted lists of challenging problems. We are naturally motivated to do our own light research prior to each session. During the sessions, we share our own perspectives and solutions, engaging in meaningful discussions that spark intellectual collisions and foster collaborative learning. Dr Law promptly guides us when progress stalls, summarises when conclusions are made and connects us to more advanced concepts to learn beyond the classroom. 

Never have I ever imagined that learning mathematics can be this interactive and engaging. The opportunity to inspire and be inspired by fellow classmates has turned what was once a solitary endeavour into a rich, communal exploration of mathematics. The four courses I’ve taken from Dr Law are for sure an unforgettable and treasured memory." 

HU Xiannan
BSc 2023; PhD, current student