Designing online and distance learning: aid pedagogical approach for creative and critical thinking course / Hadijah Iberahim

The notion of delivering a module for a diploma program through an online and distance learning mode was to overcome the issue of accessibility to teaching and learning facilities. However, a more challenging problem in the design of such a class is to assure the course can successfully achieve the assigned course objectives for quality education. This project attempted to find the most suitable structure of a creative and critical thinking course, for 14 weeks of learning. It proposed the integration of the Active, Inquiry and Deep (AID) learning pedagogical approaches to shape the desired thinking skills among students. The project was conducted using 15 groups of students with a total of 308 working adults aged between 20 to 40 years old from 2011 till 2017 in UiTM Shah Alam campus. The online and distance learning mode is determined by 10 hours of face to face and 30 hours of online learning. In the beginning, class discussions were centred on developing communication and information-seeking skills. As the students were ready to share and listen, the teaching was directed to identifying problems critically, before they were allowed to take on creativity in finding potential solutions to selected issues. Students translated their ideas into tangible and intangible outputs based on scientific techniques applied in the process of thinking. Various activities were adopted to develop a set of skills for learning outcomes. Programmatic assessment tools were carefully selected to evaluate the progress. This project was successful as the students were able to present their innovative products at the end of the course; a small-scale innovation project.