As mentioned in Part 1, the previous entry, I've been having some dissatisfaction with UniSIM, and one of the reasons why were because of my Audio Technology lecturer.

Just to illustrate how frustrating his pronunciations can get, last Wednesday, he said, "VLC means Vorrell Length Coding". I asked, "What's that? Vorrell?" He repeated, "Vorrell, Vorrell Length Coding." I was frowning, scratching my head, wondering if he was mispronouncing the word. Sure enough, he finally turned around to the whiteboard and wrote out... Wait for it... He wrote out "VARIABLE".

VARIABLE LENGTH CODING! Gah! How the hell does a word like variable get turned into Vorrell?! What the hell is a Vorrell?! If I had misheard it, I knew I wasn't the only one 'cause Kyle, who sat beside me, heard him say Vorrell too!

So imagine that happening (without us interrupting all the time - 'cause we usually just try to figure out what the hell he's trying to say ourselves) almost every other word he says. Even worse when (like in the example above) he's referring to initials in his Powerpoint slides which are not in the lecture notes. Can you imagine how destructive his lesson would be if we keep interrupting him every time we don't understand a word he just said? If things doesn't change, that's what me and another classmate plan to do. Not trying to be mean, but trying to get a decent education here.

Here's the reply I received from him, sans editing :

Hi, Zulkifly:

thank you very much for your feedback, I am appreciating you guys and the feedback is priceless. don't worry you are not rude, your direct feedback actually will help me greatly.

let me comment your feedback one by one.

1. Your suggestion is great here, a book reading style will be hard for student to understand for sure. I guess it will be easier for you if i can demonstrate in a top-down manner, start from the key points and then go into details. the same thing will also be on formula explanation. so from next session, i will do some change according to your suggestion, and i believe it is a great way to improve my teaching skill. so i will appreciate that.
   
   
2. i believe this is about the balance between theories and activities/examples. so definitely i will modify the time allocation between them.
   
   
3. for my accent, i believe it will be helpful if i can speak slower and clearer. Also, more preparation will also be a way to improve it. I can fully understand your feeling because i myself also feel hard to communicate with someone with strong accent. so i will try my best to improve it.
   
   
4. the Fourier transform part is only for the enrichment of knowledge. i cover that part is because it is almost the foundation of any kind of signal processing. and my intent here is not asking you guys to know how to calculate everything manually, but to let you know how and why they are defined in this way. the Fourier transform will be not in exam for sure, but i wish you can know the basic idea of Fourier series and Fourier transform, which will be really helpful in practice.

btw, i will give a review in the final session of Audio and specify what will be in exam and what will not be. and last week i was in fever and soar throat, so really hard to talk loudly.

so again, i appreciate your feedback, you are actually helping me to improve my teaching skill now, for this point of view, you guys are my tutor.

wish you enough the course in the future.

best regards

xxxxx

I commented to a couple of my classmates that at least in this email, I only don't understand 10% of what he was trying to say... Compared to his lectures when I don't understand 90%. Seriously though, what the hell does "wish you enough the course in the future" mean?!

Regarding point number 4, in one of the seminars, he had actually added a whole new section on in-depth explanation of Fourier series and Fourier transform. He spent 3/4 of the seminar trying to teach this new addition. We were trying to relate what he was teaching to what was in the notes... Oh wait, what he added weren't in there! Not in the set textbook either! What the hell?! We asked him about this at one point, and he said that he had "the right to add" to the course material.

I. Was. Pissed. Off. You can't even teach what's in the course plan properly, now you want to add on to it? Then when I read his reply to my email... I said to my classmates, "You know what this means, right? He had just wasted almost one whole seminar teaching something that's not in the syllabus." I'm all for enrichment, you know, sure, bring it on. But as I had mentioned in my previous entry, in a part-time degree course, the classes are few and far in between. You do not waste almost one whole freaking lecture on something that's not essential! You can take up 15 minutes, half an hour even, sure, then give options for those who are interested in learning more. But to use over 2 hours of a 3-hour seminar teaching it? Set your priorities straight, dammit! He could've better used that time to go over activities and examples instead. That would've been much more useful.

But I have to give him props... I mean, he really did try to improve. In the seminar right after this exchange, he actually stopped mumbling to walls and blackboards! I was pleasantly surprised! He has overviews now, which as I had hoped, really helps. The other parts... He still needs to work on. But I was glad that at least he replied positively and seemed to be trying to apply the feedback we had given to him.

We actually had more frustrations with him that we didn't include in the email 'cause we had forgotten. One of them was his illegible handwriting. He would just anyhow scribble on the board (and sometimes super miniscule) and we would be trying to figure out what was it he had just scribbled. How is that useful? We would've been better off without him scribbling on the whiteboard than confusticating us with illegible doodles.

The bunch of us who came together to send this email still wanted a change of lecturers though. He was getting slightly better, yes, but we didn't want to take the chance. So, I typed up another email to send to our course's Head Of Programme.

Yes, it appears that I'm always the one who's sending out emails and voicing out/complaining in class. -.-"

I'll post the email exchange regarding the request of change of lecturers a couple of entries from now. Next entry will be on my feedback to our Fundamentals Of Graphics Design lecturer.