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Joining the General Education Programme for over 10 years, Dr. Pang Kam Moon teaches the course UGEB2401 ‘Astronomy’, UGEB2390 ‘Perspectives in Physical Science’ and UGEB2501 ‘Forces of Nature’, which has been lauded consistently by the students. Upon the invitation of the Office of University General Education, Dr. Pang actively presented his articles in University General Education Bulletin and offered different seminars in the Book Club, GE Salons and GE lunch seminars. In addition to the passion for sharing the GE knowledge with the CUHK staffs and students, Dr. Pang devoted himself to the gifted education and popular science education programs. Currently he is the honorary curriculum consultant of the Program for the Gifted and Talented at CUHK and the academic advisor of Space Observers H.K. His research interests include the history of astronomy and physics of mesoscopic systems.
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I chose teaching as my life-long career because it not only brings me tremendous job satisfaction, but also carries the immense responsibility of educating our next generation. I love teaching, especially general education (GE) in CU, because I can help students reflect on their personal values and handle cross-disciplinary issues. However, teaching a GE course is a challenging task, partly because students from different faculties have great diversity in academic background, and they have different expectations on the very same course. In the following I shall share the happiness and difficulties of my experiences in teaching GE courses.
GE encourages students to discuss, organize and express their points of view. However, discussion about science may not be as straight forward as it seems. Scientific theories state facts, a theory can be either correct or incorrect, there is no grey area. Students can either say yes or no, they can hardly give any comments on these theories. For example, students could understand Newton's laws of motion and be able to apply them to explain a multitude of phenomena; however, there is no room for them to comment on how good or bad these laws are. Nevertheless, if the teacher can think out of the box and ask appropriate questions, the students will still be able to make fruitful discussion. I always ask students, “What if scientific theories are not expressed in mathematical formulas?”, and let them discuss a case that cannot be resolved without mathematical formulas. Through this discussion, students will appreciate the quantitative nature of physical science and the beauties of mathematical formulas in scientific theories, and see the difference between physical science and other disciplines.
Multi-assessment components are particularly essential for students to learn science GE subjects. Each component is designed to measure the different abilities of the students. For example, when a student is preparing to write a term paper, he needs to do literature search, organize information, and express his views and arguments in a systematic way. In observing the process of their preparations, I learn more about the students. I often find that students showed a lack of understanding of the scientific theories I teach. For example, students are required to explain the change of light speed in transparent glass. Most of them can use the atomic model to explain why light speed is reduced but one student explains with a “bullet metaphor”:
"Light speed in a transparent glass brick is slower than that in the air. Analogy is that a bullet is shot into a piece of wood, the bullet speed is reduced because bullet energy is partially absorbed in wood. Similarly, light energy in transparent glass is absorbed, and hence its speed is reduced."
The “bullet metaphor” is incorrect because the energy of light doesn’t diminish. The change of speed is due to refraction. Without this written assessment, I would not know his misunderstanding of the atomic model. Thus, in addition to term papers, students are required to do written assignments to handle structured-questions and multiple choice questions in order to consolidate students' knowledge learnt in class; through reading scientific articles, students can acquire the ability for self-learning; the use of online learning activities can add much to the fun in learning. However, students sometimes complain about the required heavy workload!
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