Hello there, as for this post, this is somehow the last writing post I will be doing. It is somehow sad, and quite despondent. Nevertheless, I would like to share my thoughts and experiences on this course, the journey I had alongside the tasks given, not to forget our beloved lecturer, Dr. Hashimatul, with her teachings and effort in giving her best for us in succeeding this course.
First and foremost, I would like to wish my greatest gratitude that I was given the opportunity in taking this course STB 1083: Biochemistry, as it is per required for my program, Resource Chemistry. Biochemistry is the discipline that uses the principles and language of chemistry to explain biology. As a matter of fact, biochemistry is very closely related to organic chemistry where organic organic chemists are more interested in reactions that take place in the laboratory, whereas biochemists would like to understand how reactions occur in living cells. So it is undeniable that chemistry and biology are heavily related and bring about many breakthroughs in the world of science, hence biochemistry field is one of the most important component in science.
Our first class was a more of an ice-breaking session with our lecturer, Dr. Hashimatul. We were told to introduce ourselves as briefly as possible. Afterwards, we head straight to out first lesson which is the Introduction to Biochemistry. The lessons went on quite well and the content was well-managed with the given time-frame for the course. Our class was scheduled twice a week, 2 hours on Tuesday morning and another hour on Friday evening. After the first lesson was settled, we were asked to create an eportfolio with specific tasks to be completed based on our learning outcomes as it is part of our major assessment for the course. Our lecturer always reminds us to complete the tasks as early as possible so that amendments can be made as regularly as possible to avoid losing marks for our eportfolio.
Apart from that, I personally find it intriguing and entertaining when a quick quiz Kahoot session is conducted after each lesson were covered. By participating for the quiz, we are able to recall back and tests out our depth of understanding on the lessons that has been delivered. It was somehow a nerve-racking situation but we ended up enjoying it more than taking it seriously. In addition, the questions included in the Kahoot session can be very helpful for our examination and can also be the source of reference for tasks completion of our eportfolio.
Furthermore, our lecturer has always been giving us several useful and effective tips for our middle-semester examination conducted on the past week 7. They are exceptionally informative and concise. I personally find the tips given was extraordinarily a booster to my understanding towards lessons incorporated in the middle-semester examination. I am happy that the tips and the way of teaching was efficiently adequate for us students to to do well for our examination.
However, after a contagious disease, an outbreak that occurs worldwide or simply known as COVID-19, our classes and lessons were required to be conducted online via the platform E-Leap. In spite of the classes being held online, our lecturer still keeps in touch with us students, and continuously giving simple tasks for the rest of the lessons that hasn’t been delivered, in light of the pandemic. The simple tasks is sufficiently effective and useful for our ongoing eportfolio tasks as they covers everything from the lecture notes. Moreover, initiatives done by our lecturers in producing a quick-mini video, summarizing on each lesson included in the course is something that I look forward to. They were presented with feasible language, concise content, and very presentable with moderate and colorful animations. It is indeed useful as students like us needed something to entertain us in the midst of completing the assignments given.
Practical and Problem-based learning (PBL) sessions were also conducted online in light of the COVID-19 outbreak. Simulation results was given to us students in order to complete our lab report as it is a part of our continuous assessment for the course. It is truly a loss for us students for not being able to carry out the practical sessions physically, but a video explaining the gist of the content for the practical sessions were published. Watching the video might seems trivial, but trust me, it can be very informative and helpful as it provides many important and vital information of the practical sessions. Moreover, PBL session discussion was conducted in groups. As for our group, we discussed and communicated with each other via Google Hangout & Zoom app. Since everything was conducted online, our PBL session format has ultimately changed from rather than than speaking and presenting own’s facts and findings physically, it was changed to a dialogue report format. The drastic change in format was quite challenging for us, but it can be as effective as presenting physically by visualing the dialogues with our imagination. It can be tiring to read, but it can ultimately enhance our knowledge on a certain particular topic.
So there it goes, those are my two cents on this course. It has been a wonderful and beautiful journey and I would always cherish them in my memory. It has been a great and fruitful time spent on this course. I wish everyone the best of luck and never forget how biochemistry has widened our horizon and they can be very useful in our daily life. Thank you to Dr. Hashimatul for your endless efforts and advises for keeping us updated and stay focused in achieving the learning outcomes of this course. I hope everyone can achieve the best for this course, STB 1083: Biochemistry. Goodbye and have a great day ahead! Signing off now…
Regards,
Danish bin Abdul Razak (64690)
“Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.”
Carl Sagan
Biochemistry: E-Portfolio 