The jigsaw puzzle, based on the documentary Shoah about the Holocaust, does not fit together, and can never form a whole, cohesive picture. 

This was the intention of the student who created the artwork for an assignment. The message: that there are manifold subjective perspectives to history, not all of which can be captured in full by any single work of art.

This is a key point that Dr Roweena Yip underscores in her course, NHS2070: Tragedy, Culture, and Society, which applies the themes and elements of the classical tragic genre to art developed around the disasters of our time — including The Great Depression, the Holocaust, and the Cambodian genocide under the Khmer Rouge regime.

Tragedy is a genre she is familiar with, as a researcher in theatre and performance studies. While the term can be traced back to ancient Greek performances, “tragedy” nowadays often refers to sorrowful and disastrous events, noted Dr Yip, an NUS College lecturer.

Fascinated with how the classical term, so specific to her discipline, is now increasingly deployed in reference to contemporary disasters, she decided to create the course to examine the intersection of art and history, study crises through the lens of the tragic genre, as well as parse the idea of the positionality of modern witnesses to human suffering through time.

“I'm not going to go so far as to say that through knowing (tragedies), we are better placed to prevent them, although I hope that it's true,” she said. “But through nurturing the next generation who are going to inherit the world from us, (I hope) they can make it a better place than what they've received.”

Different mediums, different experiences

It’s not common to gain exposure to so many different art forms at once, but for students to better understand these historical tragedies through art, Dr Yip has chosen a diverse range of media, from theatre performances to graphic novels and animated films. Students discuss these texts in her seminars, steeping themselves in the consciousness of an event as consumers of art and representation.

Students also get the opportunity to head out for an excursion during one of the seminars, to experience the course material in person. One example was of the World War II exhibition in the former Ford factory at Upper Bukit Timah Road, a key location during the Japanese Occupation of Singapore that is imbricated in collective national memory. Students were tasked to write a reflection on their sensory responses to it, with one student noting how she felt overstimulated and disoriented by newspaper headlines placed high above their eyeline — a reaction unique to experiencing the exhibition in person.

Dr Yip’s regular lessons are discussion-based, where she tries to create a safe space so students, confronted with the evidence of human loss and suffering, can speak freely about such heavy topics. While classes are sometimes subdued, she does not mind.

“That’s okay, actually, to sit with the discomfort and heavy feelings that we all have,” she muses. “It's learning to process emotions of discomfort, to engage with things that are unfamiliar, uncomfortable, troubling, painful, and that itself, I would argue, is pedagogically valuable.”

Analysing different art forms also provides diverse experiences and can elicit varying reactions, from the immediacy and visual nature of a film to the tactility of physical monuments. The Studio Ghibli animated film Princess Mononoke, for example, provides a more visual and fantastical window into the climate crisis, while firsthand survivor testimonies and oral histories provide personal and emotional perspectives on crises.

The experience when examining these tragedies changes with the medium, allowing students to explore tragedies through not just an objective sociological and historical lens, but also a subjective artistic one where the form reinforces the content, and art becomes a vehicle—one of many truths—through which to witness the pain of victims.

Relating to the unrelatable

Stepping out of one’s comfort zone is not easy, but the course encourages it. Besides exploring the representation of tragedy in art, students see the perspectives of both the artist and the audience. In the process, Dr Yip hopes they also gain empathy.

But responding to a tragedy that you cannot relate to can be a challenge. To bridge the gap, she offers not just texts about historical events that students are spatially or chronologically removed from, but also those about recent, lesser-documented regional events closer to home. This helps students to engage with events even as outsiders.

“When we go beyond something comfortable and familiar, that is where we realise that people have had very different experiences from us, and we can exercise that empathy which art precisely allows us to do,” she said.

Indeed, students have surprised her with their innate capacity for empathy. In a discussion about photographs of The Great Depression, Dr Yip had expected responses to revolve around the 1930s, but students expressed the same anxieties the photograph’s subjects did due to contemporary concerns about the human condition in an increasingly fraught world. That lesson afforded Dr Yip a window into the younger generation’s perspectives, psyche, and outlook on life.

“If not for the class, I wouldn’t have known how they are feeling as young people. It has been very illuminating to see what the students come up with, both in their formal assignments and also more informally during class discussions,” she said.

Indeed, if the role of the tragic art form can be understood to be forming community to help people process grief and pain, then the participants of NHS2070—teacher and student alike—have come away from the course with their own community forged through understanding and common experience.

In this series, NUS News highlights the University’s innovative teaching strategies, spotlighting the educators breathing life into the lessons in unique and innovative ways.
 

There is one question Dr Lim Li Zhen often gets asked by dentistry students who are learning to take X-rays inside a patient’s mouth: “Dr Lim, does this look correct?”

Unlike extraoral X-rays, where the film is placed outside the mouth, intraoral radiography requires dentists to position X-ray holders with film behind the patient’s teeth.

It is a complex positioning procedure. When the film is placed in the mouth at the wrong angle, it can lead to imaging errors: teeth might not be fully captured in the image or might be overlapping – making it hard to properly diagnose issues such as tooth decay and bone loss around teeth.

Noticing that students were struggling to grasp the technique, Dr Lim devised two innovative tools – iRadiate2D and iRadiate3D – to simulate the X-ray taking process and help them practise their skills.

“Students tend to get overwhelmed when a task has too many steps or components – I break it down into smaller, simpler, and more digestible tasks,” explained the Senior Lecturer at the NUS Faculty of Dentistry.

Practice makes perfect

Previously, students learnt intraoral radiography in Oral & Maxillofacial Medicine, Pathology & Radiology (OMS2100) through a lecture and a 45-minute practical session.

But despite having been taught the theory beforehand, they often turned up at practical sessions unsure of how to set up and position the X-ray holders and films in three-dimensions to ensure the X-ray images are clinically useful.

“They had a lot of issues with visualising the end goal, so it made it difficult for them to prepare for the task, which meant that we were not using the practical sessions efficiently,” recalled Dr Lim, who graduated with a Master of Science in Oral and Maxillofacial Radiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2017.

To solve this issue, she worked with Ms Mandi Lee and Mr Eng Teng Chuan, design researcher and design engineer respectively at Keio-NUS CUTE Center, to build iRadiate2D. This interactive web-based intraoral radiography teaching tool helps learners reinforce theoretical concepts at home before they attend hands-on sessions.

Integrated into the curriculum in 2019, this learning tool guides students through setting up X-ray holders, as well as the ideal positions in the mouth for imaging.

Students drag, drop and rotate the holders to align them with the targeted teeth. If their answers are incorrect, they are asked to try again and cannot proceed until they input the correct alignment.

For their innovative use of technology in teaching, Dr Lim and the team received the NUS Annual Digital Education Award (Team category) in 2022 and the Faculty of Dentistry’s Excellence in Teaching Award in AY2020/21.

“I enjoyed the convenience of using the website at home and at my own pace,” said Silvester Chew Kheng Han, a second-year dentistry undergraduate who took the module in 2023.

“The software takes you through the process step by step, and corrects you throughout, which I found effective in consolidating the content Dr Lim went through in her first lecture,” he added.

Hands-on learning

However, there is only so much an interactive website can do. To give students more opportunities for hands-on practice, Dr Lim worked with design researchers from the Keio-NUS CUTE Center, Ms Lee and Ms Tracy Shen, to create a three-dimensional version of iRadiate2D in 2020.

Known as iRadiate3D, it allows students to practise what they have learnt online on a physical model – without the need for an actual X-ray room, specialised equipment and staff supervision. The latter is especially important given the safety concerns associated with handling X-ray equipment, which involves ionising radiation.

There were other logistical considerations. The growing number of students in class meant that there was a need to provide them with options to practise outside of these supervised sessions. Meanwhile, the manufacturers’ discontinuation of the manikins currently used in training meant that alternative methods had to be considered.

The setup of the iRadiate3D features a 3D-printed model of a jaw, tongue, and cheek mounted on a stand, along with a phone in front of it. The phone’s camera detects the position of the X-ray holder in the mouth and – with the help of augmented reality – displays the corresponding X-ray image on its screen.

Dr Lim first trialled this training simulator with her students in 2021. Since then, the team has not only resolved the technical bugs and glitches in its initial version, but also discovered the most effective way to use it in class.

For instance, she quickly realised that allowing students to use the simulator’s “dynamic” mode – which shows them what the X-ray would look like in real-time as they moved the film – made them over-reliant on the tool.

“We do not have this luxury in actual clinical practice,” she explained. In the real world, the image is only visible after the X-ray exposure is made. Moreover, the number of X-rays films taken should be kept to a minimum in order to reduce the patient’s exposure to radiation.

She now uses the “dynamic” mode only for demonstration purposes at the end of her lectures, while students work with a “static” mode, which shows the X-ray image only after they click the “capture” button.

Rosemary Tan Li Une, another second-year undergraduate, said it gave her a better understanding of how to position the film in a patient’s mouth. “The additional practice made performing the actual procedure less daunting,” she said.

With the help of iRadiate2D and iRadiate3D, undergraduates are finding it easier to pick up the intraoral radiography procedure. Dr Lim noted that students are now more prepared for lessons, making the sessions more efficient and productive.

Silvester added: “They allow visual learners like me to understand the set-up and conceptualise the content taught during the lectures.”

Innovate to motivate

While plans to scale iRadiate3D are in the early stages, its predecessor, the iRadiate2D website, is already being adopted by dental schools overseas, for example in the United States.

Dr Lim is now exploring new ways to teach students how to read X-ray images and make diagnoses better. These innovative teaching methods are a win-win. Students learn better, and as Dr Lim quipped with a smile, “it also keeps things interesting for me”. 

In this series, NUS News highlights the University’s innovative teaching strategies, spotlighting the educators breathing life into the lessons in unique and innovative ways.
 

The soft tickle of insects crawling on skin usually sets off a frenzy of flailing arms and screams. But for students taking the Biodiversity and Natural History in Singapore course, part of their first lesson is to face this fear head-on.

They are asked to sit down on a grass patch with their eyes closed to feel as many sensations of nature as they can, including tiny insect feet – or tarsi, as the students learn later learn during the course. Dr Yuchen Ang, the Senior Lecturer at NUS College (NUSC) who teaches the course, says this eases students into opening up their senses to nature.

Dr. Ang, who holds a Ph.D. in Biological Sciences, remarks, “You have to be comfortable with the environment before you can study it, and feel safe enough to be curious about it.” He playfully shares an unconventional teaching tactic where he wields a stick to mimic the sensation of insects crawling on his students who have their eyes shut, such that they can analyse their perceptions and experiences.

This exercise is part of his strong belief in experiential learning, which he implements with his class of about 20 students from across differing schools and faculties through components such as field trips and nature journaling. After seven runs, Dr Ang has seen students come in without much knowledge about nature – maybe even a slight fear of it – but leave with a deeper appreciation of the wonders of the natural world.

The biodiversity buff, who is also a Senior Curator at the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum (LKCNHM), was drawn to nature at a young age. “We didn’t have mobile phones back then, so I used to go out and catch spiders with my cousins after school at the kampung I grew up in,” Dr Ang recounted. “I had an affinity for nature since my childhood, but it blossomed into real curiosity only when I went to university and took a module on evolution.”

He was inspired by the professor who taught him that course during his undergraduate years in NUS, and hopes to pass on his passion for nature to his own students. “At the end of the day, I want them to be naturalists – people who are able to observe the natural world and notice things that you usually pass over,” he said.

“It is about opening a space for students to start being curious about the world, and teaching them how to approach this curiosity with scientific rigour.”

Beyond green fingers

Science, however, is not the only discipline involved when studying natural history – you need fingers in more than one pie.

“It’s a holistic amalgamation of different aspects of science and arts, from observing natural phenomena to knowing how to describe them scientifically, and also to illustrate them beautifully,” Dr Ang explained.

It is important to learn from other educators, he noted, especially those who teach in areas he is not as familiar with. He once collaborated with a visual arts teacher—Dr Chen Yan Yun of Yale-NUS College—to have their students teach each other about their respective fields of visual arts and biology. Environmental philosophy is another important area in which he actively engages with his pedagogical peers, seeking their input on effective methods and best practices to educate his students.

“I often invite other educators to give guest lectures to my students, and I also teach their students,” he added, citing collaborations in environmental philosophy with Dr David Merry of NUSC, and in evolutionary biology with Dr Rudolf Meier of the NUS Department of Biological Sciences. This focus on interdisciplinary education and experiential learning aligns with the teaching philosophy of NUSC, Singapore’s first honours college integrated into the larger NUS ecosystem, which grants its students access to programmes, facilities, and other opportunities across the University.

Another activity where multidisciplinary skills and knowledge are imparted is a field trip – the highlight of the course. During Recess Week, students camp on nearby islands such as St. John’s for three to four days, where theory comes alive and they get to apply what they had learnt in the first half of the course out in the field.

“During field trips, I try to replicate professional outfield surveys. Students practise investigative methods, sample collection and more practical field techniques like cooking,” Dr Ang explained, adding that this hands-on experience helps them to consolidate their learning and truly appreciate what it feels like to be out in nature.

 “My most enjoyable experience in the course is definitely the night survey because I've never gone out at night before in the forest,” Syakirah Binti Jamaludin, a Year 2 student from the NUS Faculty of Science and NUS College, enthused. “I was really shocked at the cacophony of sounds that I heard in the forest at night. Although I couldn't see a lot I felt as though I wasn't alone and that the forest was just teeming with life and biodiversity.”

One exercise during the field trip involves students attempting to illustrate and describe a plant in two hours as though it were a new species.

Back in NUS, students are also sent on mini-quests to observe nature around the Kent Ridge campus and record their observations and thoughts through notes, poems, sketches, and more. This activity, called nature journalling, incorporates visual and literary arts into students’ work. “Art helps students open up more because they tackle personalised issues, like their relationship with nature,” Dr Ang noted.

“I really enjoyed nature journaling, as I was able to appreciate and experience nature in my own time and at my own pace outside of the classroom. I was given assignments that allowed me to go out in my own time, sit at places that I chose, and experience nature for myself,” Syakirah reflected.

So the next time you see someone staring unusually intently at a plant on campus, they might well be one of his students composing a poem about it.

Freedom to explore

Besides the course content and modus operandi, Dr Ang’s unusual pedagogy extends to the form of assessment. Trust the students—this is Dr Ang’s philosophy for his students’ final projects, which begin after they return from their field trip.

“I leave it open to my students to come up with amazing projects, trusting that they have been engaged enough by the course so far,” he explained, adding that he is always pleasantly surprised by their project proposals.

One student, an avid dancer, decided to come up with an interpretive dance routine that mirrored the life cycle of a cicada, while another caught and cooked a meal of Asian weaver ants (Oecophylla smaragdina) for his classmates.

Another student project showcased various insect specimens in a glass box frame, including a rare species of Scarab Hunter fly (Pyrgotidae) – the third-ever specimen collected in Singapore thus far. For their project, these students curated a field guide, Insects of Cinnamon College, consisting of insects caught in the residential college, with the help of the community’s Telegram tip-offs. Their project ultimately won them a full travel scholarship to present their research at the 7th Conference for Student Research (StuFo 2022) in Berlin.

The creativity and calibre of his students’ projects are a testament to Dr Ang’s success as an educator. His hope is to instil a sense of wonder in his students, so they continue applying what they learn beyond the course.

He remembers one student in particular, who approached him after the course ended to initiate a research project on entomophobia, or the fear of insects. This student had such intense entomophobia that she would shed tears when handling insects.

“But she was very curious about the topic and made the effort to learn. She ended up more scared of insects after the project, but at least her fear became more rational,” he recounted with a chuckle.

This sense of curiosity and fascination with the natural world has also taken on a life of its own in the community that has grown up around the course. A group of alumni kickstarted their own interest group, “Biocurious”, even organising their own events and workshops like intertidal walks to further explore Singapore’s rich natural heritage on their own. 

“It is a good sign when I receive emails from ex-students with photos of plants or insects that remind them of what they learnt,” he concludes.

In this series, NUS News highlights the University’s innovative teaching strategies, spotlighting the educators breathing life into the lessons in unique and innovative ways.
 

With their arms stretched out and feet apart, the students practise the sikap pasang – Malay for “ready stance”. At their trainer’s command, they squat and stretch one leg out in unison, performing the sapu dalam, or inside leg sweep.

Students also learnt the langkah perguruan, consisting of strikes and footwork, along with moves such as langkah pedang (the art of the sword), langkah golok (the art of the machete), as well as many different styles of pokolan (kicks and punches).

These youth are not part of a silat club, but students of the Martial Arts in Southeast Asia course in the middle of a supervised silat lesson held on campus. It is just one of many hands-on martial arts sessions they enjoy throughout the course.

Typically, each session begins with a short introduction to a particular martial art, before a professional trainer demonstrates basic techniques. Students then pair up to practise their moves, before learning about the philosophy behind the martial art.

Dr Mohamed Effendy Abdul Hamid, who launched the course in 2015, says such hands-on lessons enable students to learn better by experiencing things for themselves.

“We aim to ignite students’ understanding of the region in less conventional ways,” said the lecturer in the Department of Southeast Asian Studies at the NUS Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS). “The best way is to practise the cultures embedded in the region, and martial arts can be a window to understanding Southeast Asian cultures.”

Students experience “the warrior spirit, especially resilience” when they practise these martial arts. “This spirit is emblematic of the Southeast Asian spirit itself,” added the martial arts buff, who began reading books about different ancient battles and war philosophies during rest periods while on patrol in the coast guard while serving National Service.

Lessons from the region and beyond

Although the course aims to educate students about the region’s cultures, it also taps into martial arts from all over the world, such as kung fu and baguazhang from China, and the Japanese sword-fighting art of kendo which Dr Effendy is trained in.

Dabbling in a wide variety of martial arts helps students grasp an essential truth – Southeast Asia has always been connected to the rest of the world. “Studying martial arts in the region, you can see that we have a long history of exposure to trade and connections with other communities,” he explained.

“For example, Japanese, Malaysian and Filipino martial arts all have a strong emphasis on spirit and ethics during fighting. People in Southeast Asia encounter people from other regions, see how they fight, then adapt things to their own fighting style. This is what we call localisation.”

Another clear example of this “cross-pollination” is how silat warriors greet their opponents with their fists against their palms, a traditional Chinese martial art greeting.

“I had a friend, a kung fu master, who saw a video of silat being practised in Sulawesi, Indonesia, and he told me that silat looks like a martial art with Chinese hands and Malay feet,” Dr Effendy shared. “To me this is a good example of historical exchanges that enriches cultures in the region,” he quipped.

Combat and core values

These perspectives on the region’s history brought to life through the martial art forms practised by its people has been illuminating for students.

“We learned through Prof’s class (that) many martial arts had their origins in actual warfare or combat. So certain martial arts may be perhaps more adapted to certain types of combat,” said Bryan Cambo, a Year 1 undergraduate at FASS, who intends to major in Southeast Asian Studies. He cited, for instance, how certain forms of silat are geared towards one-on-one combat and employ the karambit as a tool in battle, reflecting how combat was carried out in earlier times.

Gergana Biserova Atanasova, a Year 3 exchange student majoring in Cognitive Science from Denmark’s Aarhus University, recalls a particular manoeuvre from the demonstration by local silat group, Pencak Silat Bawean Dheun, which involved throwing sand at an opponent to deceive them.

She later learnt that the technique arose from the sandy terrain on which the martial art form is traditionally practised. “I think you can learn a lot from the martial arts just from looking at the movements they teach you at these very basic training sessions.”

Aside from discovering the historical and cultural contexts behind the various martial art forms, students also learn about the individual philosophies underpinning the different styles.

During the class exploring kendo, they gained insights into its core values such as courage, humility and perseverance while trying their hand at basic footwork and strikes with the shinai, a bamboo training sword, under the guidance of the NUS Kendo Kai student club and JSK or Joushinkan, a local kendo group based in Tiong Bahru Community Centre led by Peter Ong sensei.

Terence Chong, the captain of the NUS Kendo Kai student club and a Year 3 Computer Science undergraduate, said he hoped the exposure to kendo would instil a sense of confidence in his fellow students. “What we try to convey in our lessons is to be confident in your strikes because without confidence it will hold you back in kendo. In my opinion, this can (also) be applied to everyday life.”

Dr Effendy, too, has learnt a few things while delving into the world of regional martial arts with his students. They realised, for example, that women play a very important role in the development of martial arts in Southeast Asia.

“There is a strong tradition of female practitioners in the region. In northern Vietnam, when the Chinese invaded in C.E. 39-43 the Trung sisters fiercely fought back,” he noted. “Apart from northern Vietnam, other examples of women warriors exist such as prajurit estri, or female soldiers and warriors in the Javanese court of Sultan Agung (1613–1645 C.E.) of Mataram. Even in Aceh, women warriors played an important role in the struggle for independence from the 19^th to 20^th centuries.”

“The evidence tells us that, compared with other regions, more women practised martial arts and played an indispensable role in defending their communities in Southeast Asia.”

This tradition is reflected in the demographic of the course – it draws about an equal mix of males and females in each class of 30. “Sometimes the ladies are even more enthusiastic than the guys,” he said with a laugh.

Going beyond convention

The course, which runs every second semester of each academic year, is open to students from all faculties. There are no seated final examinations, but Dr Effendy expects the students to think outside the box.

“I tell my students that they can stick to the traditional essay for their final project submission, but I strongly encourage them to go for more unconventional formats – music videos, documentaries, even paintings,” he said.

His aim is to let them have fun, which he believes helps them better appreciate the learning process. “After each class, and this module, I want students to walk away feeling fulfilled, that they have learnt something new about themselves and the subject,” he added.

His students’ work has been enlightening. He fondly recalls a video documentary by a former student, Mr Khoo Yi Feng, which detailed how domestic workers in Singapore used their days off to learn taekwondo. Some turned this new skill into a viable means of living when they worked as taekwondo trainers upon returning home.

“This documentary was so memorable that I still keep in contact with this student,” he recounted.

Khoo, a manager at the National Council of Social Service and a mental health advocate, recently received the prestigious NUS 2023 Outstanding Young Alumni Award. The accolade is awarded to alumni below 40 who have made significant contributions in their fields of work.

To Dr Effendy, a good gauge of whether students are really learning is their level of engagement in class. “If students are asking questions, discussing with one another and participating, that indicates they are enjoying themselves and learning,” he noted.

The most important indicator, however, is whether students explore the topic beyond what is taught in class and seek out information on their own.

This, to Dr Effendy, is the ideal learning approach. “A victorious and effective learner of martial arts is someone who is self-motivated, independent, and unafraid of pursuing new knowledge in new ways,” he said. “I hope every one of my students will grow to embody this spirit of a fighter in their learning.”

As far as Zoom lectures go, it was nothing special. The only recognisable face on the screen was his own, as Graham Wolfe, Associate Professor in Theatre and Performance Studies, spoke to a virtual audience of hundreds.

But then a sense of the uncanny set in as three other Graham Wolfes joined the Zoom call. One, smartly dressed and smiling, responded enthusiastically to what the first Graham Wolfe was saying. Another, older and with a moustache, listened to the lecture with concern. The third, a thuggish and hooded figure, snarled disdainfully from his Zoom box, occasionally interrupting and criticising the first Graham Wolfe’s ideas.

Soon it became clear that all three of these new Graham Wolfes were characters from the play that Assoc Prof Wolfe was discussing, Caryl Churchill’s A Number, which examines the ethics of human cloning and identity.

“Thumbs-up” and “clapping” reactions from the students cascaded across the screen. Students comment that his impersonation of various characters, and the interactions between them on Zoom, provoke them to think critically from a range of perspectives.

“I’m hoping students feel, just for a moment, like they’re watching the impossible,” said Assoc Prof Wolfe, who had tried to explain the concept of the uncanny in an equally uncanny manner. Most of his teaching is in Theatre and Performance Studies, but he is also a guest lecturer for HSH1000: The Human Condition, an integrated humanities module that is part of the common curriculum for students at the NUS College of Humanities and Sciences (CHS). 

At the Department of English, Linguistics and Theatre Studies, the medium is just as important as the message. For Assistant Professor Beryl Pong, who teaches an honours-level literature course titled EN4244: Topics in Cultural Studies: Drone Aesthetics, that medium can even include the most unlikely subject of inquiry in a humanities classroom: video games.

But it’s not all fun and games. When students decimate an entire village (virtually, of course) at the click of a button, this points them to a larger revelation – that the gamification of drone warfare has desensitised drone operators to the suffering they inflict.  

As Asst Prof Pong puts it: “Humanities and the arts are not just an add-on to understanding society or to hard questions about science. They mediate complicated issues, and looking at them critically helps us to see these issues more clearly.” 

Out of the box

Assoc Prof Wolfe knows that Zoom classes can feel just as “claustrophobic” for the teacher as they do for students, which is why he challenged himself to think out of the box – literally – to deliver lectures that would stick. And what better way to teach a play than to act it out?

Decked out in different costumes, he doubles, or triples, as different main characters. It is not merely a way for students to experience how the plot and dialogue play out on stage. After he and his clones act out a scene, the characters return as “guests” to discuss the assigned class readings with each other in a meta talk show.

Wacky as the whole set up is, he has a more profound hope for his students – that they will be more conscious of the frameworks through which they perceive things.

“To a large extent, whatever I talk about is going to be filtered through Zoom. No matter how exciting an idea I raise might be, I’m still raising it within that little box,” he said. Similarly, the ways in which people perceive the world are sometimes filtered through structures, conventions or expectations that they are not necessarily conscious of.

Human perception is never objective, and existence is never singular. These are perennial concerns tackled by the humanities, and which he hopes science majors in the cohort might find useful in their own fields. “Doctors are much better doctors if they’ve studied the humanities,” he added. 

Plays and playfulness

As with any performance, it takes a whole lot of dress rehearsals to pull off Assoc Prof Wolfe’s self-cloning technique – as well as the tech know-how. The former was something he is accustomed to, the latter not so much, considering that he never owned a smartphone with an Internet connection until the pandemic struck.

“I couldn’t even donate it to Singtel because it was too old,” the Canadian, who joined NUS in 2012, said with a chuckle. Out of sheer necessity and boredom during the pandemic, he familiarised himself with the world of green screens and editing software.

“It doesn’t have to be Hollywood quality. Theatre is usually a little bit rough around the edges…Part of the effect is that it’s just a guy with a camera playing around, and that might make the self-cloning even more useful than if it were professional,” he explained. 

Ultimately, he wants his students to have fun learning. 

As the German playwright Friedrich Schiller once said, human beings are only fully human when they play. Assoc Prof Wolfe is a strong proponent of the value of play and comedy in learning, especially when people have the misconception that literature and theatre are ‘stuffy’ topics. 

“I think people can be learning in powerful ways when they’re laughing,” he said. “It’s not just about occasionally injecting a joke to lighten the mood before getting back down to ‘serious thinking’. People laugh sometimes when their expectations have been overturned, or when their normal frameworks have been challenged.”

‘Close reading’ of technology

The utility of play is featured in Asst Prof Pong’s class too. It is not every day that students get to play video games for class. But her syllabus dedicates a week to two indie video games which dissect the aesthetics and ethics of drone warfare.

In Unmanned, for instance, students inhabit the role of a drone operator. Players follow him through his mundane everyday routine of brushing his teeth, shaving, pressing a few buttons at work, then having a post-shift drink with colleagues – only to repeat it all over again. 

More office workers than military personnel, drone operators in real life are often derisively referred to as “cubicle warriors”. This raises ethical concerns about the asymmetry of drone warfare, in which operators seem to be “manhunting” unsuspecting victims from a safe, remote location via a screen. 

Tracing drone technology is Asst Prof Pong’s take on the wider field of cultural studies. Despite its roots in violence, drones have proliferated in popular culture and everyday life, including in filmmaking and recreation. 

“I wanted to pick a technology whose developments are still changing as we speak…we don’t have a throughline that connects all its uses, which involve very different ethical questions,” explained the Canadian, who joined NUS in 2021 and is also a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow at the University of Cambridge.

Instead of beginning with theories in the field, she starts with real-world applications. “One of the things my students like to ask is, ‘What is the real-world utility of literature?’ My experiment with this course is that we’re not only looking at literature, but we’re close reading this technology, looking at the way its “forms” relate to the socio-political issues of our time.”

It is not just games. Every week explores different mediums, from visual art to popular media such as Twitter fiction and even an episode from the hit Netflix series Black Mirror.

For literature students accustomed to poetry and novels, it is not always easy to introduce them to non-text-based media, but Asst Prof Pong’s advice is to simply approach it like they would any other text.

“By encouraging us to look at the products of pop culture through a critical lens, Dr Pong showed us that culture surrounds us all,” Kevin Khoe, an English Literature student from a previous iteration of the module, said. “Just evaluating the shows we watch and games we play unveils so much about the subtle cultural energies, beliefs, and practices that influence our lives.”

“The most satisfying part about teaching this course is also the most challenging,” she said. “It’s helping students leave their comfort zone and take risks with what they study and write about.” 

Thought experiments

While literature courses typically require a final essay, Asst Prof Pong’s students have the option of submitting an “un-essay”— a creative work in any medium – that reflects critically on class material.

About half to two-thirds of the students choose to do the un-essay. That in no way means taking the easy way out – students are still graded on their thesis, analysis, and clarity of thought. They also have to submit a short write-up to explain their thought process and how their work relates to critical concepts learned over the semester. 

In fact, the creative assessment arguably requires more effort. For instance, Kevin hand-carved a tribal drone motif on a plank of olive wood that he ordered from Carousell – symbolising how much drones have been inscribed in people’s lives, resulting in them having to navigate a culture with machines constantly hovering above and surveilling them. 

“In the study of literature, we deal with abstract topics [and] the conceptual world of ideas and language,” he mused. “Working on the un-essay was a refreshing opportunity to exercise my intellectual energies through a tactile and visual medium.”

At the end of the day, Asst Prof Pong’s pedagogical rationale is simple: “I want them to do things not just for a good grade, but because it’s a question that bothers them and they want to answer it.” 

From clones to drones, the question of human ethics and morality is a never-ending rabbit hole of inquiry. Luckily, these professors know just where to start. 

Furiously scribbling down notes and equations from the blackboard in near silence – that is how Associate Professor Ryan Bettens remembers many of the chemistry lectures from his undergraduate days in 1980s Australia. “And if you talked, the professor would turn around and throw the chalk at you!” he recounted with a wry laugh.

Interactions between teacher and student were just as limited during tutorials, where students were handed problem sheets to solve independently. But this was a method that Assoc Prof Bettens, who joined the NUS Faculty of Science in 2000, realised was not helpful to students’ learning, prompting him to adopt a new teaching philosophy.

Today, he takes extra care to prioritise an interactive learning experience. “It’s what the students do that makes them learn,” he explained.

No better course showcases this mindset than HSI1000 How Science Works, Why Science Works, which is coordinated by Assoc Prof Bettens and run by a team of lecturers and teaching assistants. The interdisciplinary course is offered to College of Humanities and Sciences students and teaches them about scientific inquiry – the process of observing, asking questions, and seeking answers via tests and experiments – through hands-on lab sessions known as “exploratoriums”, as well as interactive discussions during workshops.

These sessions are complemented by field trips to Singapore’s nature reserves and parks, where students take on the role of citizen scientists, collecting data to answer a scientific question posed in class.

One such question was whether nature reserves have better quality forests than nature parks. Students then carried out simple surveys of the forests, measuring the tree heights and densities, as well as characterising their plant diversity. These data were later collated and discussed in class. "We also discussed the pros and cons of this scientific method, and when would be the best time to use it," added Dr Angeline Shu, one of the course’s teaching assistants.

The course was introduced to reinforce the fundamental principles of the scientific method among students. “Science is about discovery and problem-solving, why things happen as they do in the natural world,” said Assoc Prof Bettens, emphasising that this concept has become increasingly important to underscore in a post-truth era marked by misinformation and disinformation.

Learning to ask ‘why’

Assoc Prof Bettens, who is from the Department of Chemistry, added that students are so used to being told how to get the right answers that they no longer appreciate how we come to know what we know.

“They are taught the output of science. It’s like, Newton said, ‘Force equals mass times acceleration’, and then the teacher says, ‘Now you must apply this equation in this way to solve problems, please practise’. This is absolutely not science; it’s the opposite of science.”

To remedy this, students are asked to focus on the process of finding an answer by testing out various possibilities during the lab sessions. In one experiment, students were tasked to investigate the concept of buoyancy using a beaker, water, and various objects. They had to come up with a hypothesis as to why certain objects float while others sink. 

As Dr Shu elaborated: “The better science students will say, ‘Oh, it’s density’, and I will ask them questions like, “Why is it density?” or “Why is the formula for density: mass over volume?” It’s to help them realise that they are not practising science but relying on scientific content.”

Workshops are just as engaging. During one of these sessions, students discuss how scientific inquiry is applied to a less established and more contested field, like climate change. They wrap up the workshop with a role-playing game to propose and negotiate multiple climate action strategies and evaluate their impact via a scientific model known as EN-Roads.

Elyse Tan Yuexuan, a first year Sociology student from the Faculty of Arts and Social Science, greatly enjoyed the classes. “HSI1000 is an innovative, beginner-friendly foray into the expansive world of science. Assoc Prof Bettens made an impression on me with his home experiments and comedic presence, as he tried to make abstract concepts easier to comprehend for those without prior scientific background," she shared.

Applying the scientific method to everyday life

By the end of the module, students learn the steps needed to establish whether a claim is true or not – a skill that is especially useful in a world where people are inundated with information every day.

“When you see a fantastic ad with a crazy claim, like a hand cream that will turn back time and give you youthful-looking hands, you will ask, ‘Really? where’s the evidence?’,” said Assoc Prof Bettens.

Dr Shu hopes the course will spark scientific curiosity in students. “I sincerely think kids have it, but it gets stamped out of them as they get older due to information overload. It becomes ‘just remember and regurgitate’,” she said.

How Science Works, Why Science Works recently completed its third run. Some aspects of the course are unrecognisable from the first iteration as the teaching team continues to improve the material. “To me, this is the essence of good teaching – having the passion to make it better, or finding things that are wrong and trying to fix it,”  said Assoc Prof Bettens.

In this series, NUS News highlights the University’s innovative teaching strategies, spotlighting the educators breathing life into the lessons in unique and innovative ways.
 

 
 To attend Dr Kuan Yee Han’s class, students have to suit up – like Iron Man. But instead of becoming a superhero with special powers, the effect is quite the opposite.

Consisting of earmuffs, a hydration backpack, weights, gloves and goggles, the body suit – named the Elderly Life Simulation Attire (ELSA) – was created by Dr Kuan for his Technologies and Ageing in Singapore course to help students understand the needs of the elderly.

“For students who are in their early 20s, imagining what it feels like to be old is very challenging,” explained the Senior Lecturer at NUS Tembusu College.

“They can only observe the elderly around them, but to feel (what it’s like to be elderly) will be very difficult.”

The suit aims to bridge the empathy gap by limiting students’ ability to move and flex their limbs. It also muffles their hearing and blurs their vision. This, Dr Kuan hopes, will help them produce more effective and feasible solutions to help seniors live better.

He spent a year conceptualising the course before its rollout in 2018 at Tembusu College. Over a semester, students from the college delve into how technology can be used to strengthen elderly people’s ties to their community and improve their social life, especially in Singapore’s fast-ageing society. 

Bridging the empathy gap

When he was a student enrolled in the NUS Overseas College Programme in 2007, Dr Kuan spent a year in Silicon Valley at a medical device start-up. It was his time there that shaped his interest in pursuing medical technology engineering.

But graceful ageing did not become an area of passion for the NUS alumnus, who holds a BEng in Mechanical Engineering and a PhD in Biomedical Engineering, until several years later.

Seeing how his parents were growing older – developing wrinkles, losing hair, and becoming frail – made him realise that it was a topic he wanted to explore. He also interacted with the “aunties” working in the dining halls of the college, and wished that people would “not just see them as a group of elderly but as people with individual stories to share”.

Dr Kuan did not recall seeing any ageing-related courses during his time as a student. So as an educator, he decided to design his own.

In its first iteration, he replicated a two-room Housing and Development Board flat in the college’s reading room. The goal was to simulate daily living and allow students to understand what the elderly need to live independently and safely.

However, the learning outcomes were limited as students could not experience first-hand the physical struggles of the elderly.

To address the gap, Dr Kuan worked with former student Lai Jiongrui to build the ELSA bodysuit. Consisting of weights from Decathlon, earmuffs from Mustafa Centre, and hydration backpacks, each bodysuit costs below $100 – significantly cheaper than alternatives on the market that are used for education and research and could cost thousands of dollars.

While wearing the bodysuit, students enter the simulated flat and complete tasks such as cooking a meal and changing bedsheets.

ELSA may be the most memorable part of the course for most students, but fourth-year Chemistry major Tan Eu-Hsuan Chloe noted that the course explores more than just the physical process of growing old. It opened her eyes to the “different perspectives and dimensions” of ageing by covering the emotional aspects as well.

“The course really helped us to understand the negative feelings towards slowly losing your ability to conduct daily activities,” she added.

Learning outside the classroom

By incorporating experiential and authentic learning in his teaching pedagogy, Dr Kuan enables his students to gain first-hand experiences and develop new perspectives. This also helps them see the connections between real life and what they are learning.

As part of the course, he also encourages his students to have end-of-life conversations with their parents and the other elderly people in their lives.

While this is a taboo topic for some people, he believes the conversation is necessary to ensure clarity on critical matters such as lasting power of attorney and advanced care planning. He prepares students by conducting role-play sessions where they brainstorm various ways to strike up the conversation.

Dr Kuan also gets his students to organise activities for the elderly during their visits to day-care centres such as St Luke’s ElderCare and Lion Befrienders. Afterwards, they assess if their activities were successful in engaging the seniors.

For instance, some students coordinated an origami session during one of their visits. But they later learnt that many of the seniors found the activity frustrating. Dr Kuan explained: “(The elderly people) did not know what was happening. And when they folded, they did not know whether it was correct or not.”

On the other hand, an activity that involved guessing the prices of different items was a hit. “We got to see a very different atmosphere. It was more collaborative,” Dr Kuan recalled.

The students often have a good time, too. “We really enjoyed going for (Dr Kuan’s) lessons,” said Titus Hutch Jr. Yim Yi Zheng, a second-year undergraduate majoring in Psychology who took the course in 2023. “It’s not just sitting down and learning about the statistics of how many elderly people there are.”

Ageing like fine wine

Six years after its launch, the course is still a work in progress. Dr Kuan often collaborates with course alumni – such as Jiongrui, who helped design the ELSA bodysuit – as he seeks ways to improve the learning experience.

Next on his agenda? Coding a Telegram bot to help him run self-guided field trips.

“It will be a treasure hunt in which students have to solve puzzles related to the elderly,” he said, adding that the bot would help him communicate with students efficiently while allowing them to learn at their own pace.

“I’ll see if I can code the bot myself. If not, I’ll work with a student researcher or a computer science student,” he added.

The course is ageing like fine wine as it continues to develop, encouraging more youth to engage with a topic that is often glossed over.

As Chloe pointed out: “People often talk about ageing like it’s a simple process, but there are actually so many aspects to it.”

At the start of every term, Associate Professor Emi Morita, from the Department of Japanese Studies at the NUS Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, asks students to name their favourite Japanese food. Sushi and ramen are usually the top contenders.

What many of her students do not realise is that these two dishes originated outside Japan.

Sushi, for example, traces its origins to the paddy fields of Southeast Asia, where people tried to ferment and preserve fish using rice. And ramen, which comes from China, became more popular in Japan after World War II, when the country faced a food shortage and received large quantities of wheat from the United States.

“What they think is Japanese food has very complex histories,” said Assoc Prof Morita. “We cannot ignore such histories of culture, politics, business, and international relations.”

Her module, titled Itadakimasu – Food in Japan, has been running at NUS for the past 11 years. And of course, there is no better way to appreciate the complex history of Japanese culture than to get an actual taste of it.

That is why a Japanese tea ceremony (sado) – where students get to partake in the ceremony led by instructors from Japan – has long been a highlight of the course, which emphasises immersive experiential learning that takes education beyond the classroom.

There is meaning and intent behind every step of the ritual – from the way people sit on tatami mats to the orientation of tea bowls and the exchange of bows. The decorations in the room, and the types of sweets served, reflect the time of year. Every tea master, dressed in traditional kimono, serves matcha sourced from their favourite tea farm in Japan.

“Because it has a lot of Zen Buddhist elements, the tea ceremony is not really explicitly – or verbally – taught, I don’t want to explain it too much during the tutorial, because the students should feel something themselves by experiencing it,” said Assoc Prof Morita, who added that the 45-minute session, held in the university’s Japanese Studies Culture Room, consists of a heavily-abridged version of the full ceremony, followed by class discussion.

“There is a certain way to pick up the utensils, and what to say, and how to bow. I emphasise (that they should think about) why there are such prescribed rules. For example, the (right) way to pick up chopsticks or pick up the tea bowl minimises the chance of damaging the precious object. And knowing how to bow, what to say, is about showing respect to others.

“You situate yourself in the nexus of the social network, and think that you are here but you are also aware of the other people. You are here because other people are also here.”

To see the world in a grain of rice

Assoc Prof Morita and her department colleague, Associate Professor Hendrik Meyer-Ohle, have helmed the Itadakimasu – Food in Japan module from day one. Itadakimasu, which means “I humbly receive”, is commonly said before the start of a meal in Japan.

While the two professors are the course coordinators, most of the classes are run by guest lecturers from different disciplines who share their insights on Japanese politics, religion, culture, and society through the lens of food.

“You cannot really understand food culture,” said Assoc Prof Morita, “unless you look into history, politics and religion.”

“We wanted to create a larger image of Japan, and food was a vehicle to do that,” added Assoc Prof Meyer-Ohle. “We are one of the larger Japanese departments in the world, especially in terms of the breadth of colleagues – (among whom are) historians (and researchers of) popular culture, business, politics, and society.”

Both professors have lived in Singapore for about two decades. Assoc Prof Morita, an applied linguist from Tokyo, has an especially deep affinity with food – her family runs a 75-year-old restaurant near Shinagawa selling “home-style” Japanese dishes. Assoc Prof Meyer-Ohle, who comes from the northwest German city of Osnabruck, wrote a PhD thesis on the introduction of supermarkets, convenience stores and modern retail formats to Japan.

Savouring the taste of umami

Another hands-on feature of the course is a tasting session by monosodium glutamate (MSG) producer Ajinomoto. Students take part in a “chemistry experiment” where they mix solutions consisting of bonito (a type of fish) and kombu (kelp) to create the flavour of umami, or a uniquely Japanese savouriness.

Assoc Prof Meyer-Ohle shares that students are encouraged to think critically about issues such as the “MSG debate” which includes criticisms that the popular flavour enhancer is bad for health.

Claims about its negative health effects date back to a letter published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1968 from a physician who suggested that the food he ate at Chinese restaurants led to symptoms such as headaches and heart palpitations, coining the term ‘Chinese Restaurant Syndrome’.

Subsequent studies, however, have failed to show a clear link between these adverse reactions and the flavour enhancer, and the US Food and Drug Administration considers MSG-seasoned foods to be “generally recognised as safe”. The term has since been criticised for being pejorative and unscientific.

Such negative perceptions were “partially motivated by anti-Asian sentiment at the time,” said Assoc Prof Morita. “What I emphasise during the lecture is that if you hear some kind of statement, you should always check who is saying it, and what is the political motivation behind it.”

Besides tutorials, hands-on activities and readings, students also get the opportunity to engage in a debate on the controversial topic of whaling, challenging them to spar intellectually about real-life issues. They also have to write a reflective essay on their takeaways from the tea ceremony.

“The course material is very fun, but that doesn’t mean it’s an ‘easy’ course,” noted third-year undergraduate Isabelle Metzger, who is majoring in Political Science. “The topics are very structured and very insightful. It has that academic rigour to it.”

To fellow student Irfan B. Ibrahim, a third-year Psychology major, the tea ceremony was a highlight of the course.

“What it is trying to do is pull you away from the mundane, into the ritualistic realm,” he observed. “The concept is about ichigo ichie, which means one meeting, one occasion: you should really cherish the moments you experience, because you never know when you’ll get a chance of having it again.”

He added: “It’s a very enriching module. You don’t just learn about food. You learn about life, about yourself, and even your own culture.”

Not many would think twice about the process of moving from a sofa to a dining chair. But for double-leg amputees, the otherwise effortless task of shifting between furniture of varying heights is not just a challenge but also a fall risk as they can only use their upper arm strength to support the transfer from their wheelchair. 

Wanting to make a difference to persons with disabilities (PwDs) who could be struggling to live independently, Dr James Kah found himself drawn to the field of assistive technology.

It is a change from his usual research on nanomedicine that focuses on developing treatments for diseases, a pursuit he has been dedicated to since receiving his PhD in 2009 and continued even after he joined NUS to teach. However, despite the many years invested, he could not see the impact of his work beyond his journal publications.

“So what if I could eliminate tumours in mice? I struggled to see the impact translated into humans,” recalled Dr Kah, a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME) at the NUS College of Design and Engineering.

What brought him closer to the end-user was assistive technology, an aspect of biomedical engineering.

“The fact that assistive technology for PwDs is very bespoke was my greatest motivation,” he added, explaining that this meant that they were not easily available and often expensive.

To plug that gap, he put together the Assistive Technology for Persons with Disability course in 2020. It prepares Biomedical Engineering students to be proficient in understanding and applying various engineering solutions to mitigate challenges faced by PwDs.

But one thing he knew for sure was that his students should not be stuck in the classroom solving hypothetical problems associated with disability. So, he went a step further to adopt a community-based learning approach in the module where students were linked up with community partners like the Singapore Association of the Visually Handicapped to solve real-life challenges.

Putting school projects to good use

One problem he often encounters as a lecturer is how many student projects go to waste after grading – “even though they can be very useful and cost-accessible, especially those that are very simple and low-tech,” he said.

So he went a step further to create the BME for Good – or bGood – initiative that supports students and pushes them to develop their projects beyond what is solely needed for grading. The aim is to manufacture and eventually deploy them for use within the PwD community.

One such project is the Heighty Mighty, where students worked with a double amputee, Mr DeCosta, to learn about the difficulties he faced. “For him to transfer himself from the wheelchair to the sofa, the bed, or the kitchen chair was a challenge because of all the different heights,” Dr Kah explained. They also realised that without high head rests, the wheelchairs were not comfortable for users.

To overcome this, the students replaced the seat of a second-hand wheelchair with one of an office chair, before implementing a mechanism to adjust its height with the press of a switch. This would allow wheelchair transfers to happen along the same horizontal axis, making it both safer and easier for users.

It might not be groundbreaking, but the project provided the client a height adjustable wheelchair for $200 instead of up to the $8,000 that it would take to buy and ship one from overseas.

Getting students out of the classroom

While traditional methods of giving lectures and problem statements to students help them build a strong foundation in theory, Dr Kah believes it is far more important for students to go out, meet PwDs, and solve their real-world challenges.

“It makes the problem statement very real, and not just another hypothetical problem given by professors,” he explained.

Through interacting with PwDs while working on the projects, students “get to feel what PwDs encounter in their lives, which makes this course all the more rewarding, especially since you know that your invention will play a better part in improving their lives,” said Ong Jun Kiat, a third-year student who took the module in AY22/23 Semester 1.

Gabriel Wong, who took the module in the same semester, shared that getting out of the classroom and working with community partners allowed him to “appreciate the nuances of the design process”.

“Working on our project also exposed my group members and I to prototyping skills and knowledge that were not explicitly taught in class. This allowed us to grow as engineers and as independent learners,” the third-year student added.

Students also gain a sense of fulfilment from being able to see their projects through and witness its impact on the community.

Such experiences are also what Dr Kah relishes. For instance, watching the eyes of a girl with cerebral palsy sparkle as she fed herself for the first time using a robotic arm designed by the students was one memorable moment for him.

“You can see the joy and excitement in her. Her teacher told us that they had never seen her so enthusiastic when eating,” he said recalling the past project. “It may have been two years ago, but I still remember it vividly.”

Dr Kah is intent on expanding the programme, with a goal to transform it into NUS’ in-house assistive technology hub in the future. So far, he has worked with 10 community partners and deployed five projects into the community, including those designed for seniors. The device Grip Buddy, for instance, helps stroke survivors to open and close food jars. What he needs now are donors and supporters to fund more student projects to be deployed to the community.

For now, students are enjoying the “well-rounded” experience to both learn and apply their knowledge to real-world issues.

M Farhana, a fourth-year student who took the module in AY21/22 Semester 2, shared how Dr Kah invites experts from various fields of disability to share about their respective areas of disability. “This helps us gain a better understanding and further insight into different topics,” she said.

With the rapidly changing world, whether in the way students learn or how the industry evolves, Dr Kah believes it is important for educators to step out of their comfort zones when developing their courses.

“When we start to think of new ways to engage and teach students, it is also in itself a process of self-development. Whether we like it or not, it is important,” he said.

Watch how the NUS College of Design and Engineering is developing innovations for seniors through its gerontechnology course.

Those who frequent downtown Singapore would be familiar with these three iconic buildings: UOB Plaza, Republic Plaza and Parkview Square. One thing they have in common, besides their monolithic presence, is that they are owned by family firms: UOB Bank (the Wees), City Developments Limited (the Kweks) and Chyau Fwu Development (the Hwangs) respectively.

Family-run firms are more common in Singapore than one might expect. In fact, they make up about 60 per cent of companies listed on the Singapore Exchange (SGX).

This is something that recently dawned on NUS Business students as they traipsed through Raffles Place, Little India and Bugis during a scavenger hunt orchestrated by their professor. The idea was simple: arrive at a landmark associated with a family firm, watch a mini-video lecture, then solve a riddle or puzzle to get to the next building.

Titled “Know Your Crazy Rich Asians”, the street game is open to Bachelor’s, Master’s and Master of Business Administration (MBA) students who sign up for Associate Professor Marleen Dieleman’s popular Family Business course.

“They will never look at Raffles Place in the same way,” said Assoc Prof Dieleman, who teaches at NUS Business School's Department of Strategy & Policy. “They will realise that many of the buildings in Raffles Place are in fact family business buildings, and sense the important role business families played in the economic success that Singapore is today.

“I can tell them this with some statistics, but that’s not the same as discovering it on the spot when you are there.”

Going on tycoon trails

The idea for the game, which is part-scavenger hunt, part-heritage trail, came about during the COVID-19 gloom, when students were not allowed to gather in class but could meet outdoors in groups of five. Assoc Prof Dieleman jokes that it took her “a million hours” to design.

“I didn’t really have a budget, so everything was done on free platforms. The videos were shot by me using Zoom, and then we used WhatsApp groups and YouTube channels to communicate the videos to the people in the game.”

The prizes, in keeping with the theme, were sourced from long-lasting family firms: a meal at Islamic Restaurant in Kampong Glam, or traditional Chinese medicine products from Eu Yan Sang.

One challenge Assoc Prof Dieleman faced was ensuring her students were not too preoccupied with winning.

“Because they want to win, they forget to learn. After the first few rounds, I realised they didn’t retain the insights I intended to convey. Now, before and after the game, I have recaps – I ask them to talk about the lessons (they learnt) from each venue,” added the savvy professor, who has since co-founded a company, Tycoon Trails, that offers a version of the game to corporate clients.

Assoc Prof Dieleman’s course, which focuses largely on Asian firms, helps students understand issues from the viewpoints of owners, employees, investors as well as policymakers.

They go on excursions to places such as homegrown wine company Hock Tong Bee, and listen to illustrious guest speakers like Mr Lim Hock Chee, the chief executive of supermarket retailer Sheng Siong; Mr Richard Eu, chairman of traditional Chinese medicine company Eu Yan Sang International; and Ms Michelle Cheo, chief executive of edible oils and fats business Mewah Group.

Lessons to remember

Assoc Prof Dieleman’s innovative teaching approach has earned her many accolades over the years, including the Outstanding Educator Award, NUS Business School Outstanding Educator Award and NUS Annual Teaching Excellence Award.

“Students learn in different ways,” she added. “They can listen, they can read. But to feel it, to stand in that context, that has a real added value.”

Assoc Prof Dieleman, who has served as a consultant to family firms in Asia, was also an independent director at bulk shipping firm Mercator Lines (Singapore) from 2014 to 2016. She has a PhD from Leiden University in the Netherlands, a Master of Business Science from the Rotterdam School of Management, and first joined NUS as a visiting fellow in 2007. She also recently co-published The Gruyter Handbook of Business Families, which explores emerging research themes and interdisciplinary insights relevant to business families.

Prioritising family values

Through the street game, site visits and stories, students gain valuable insights. One of these is that family firms that emphasise their unique values can excel as compared to their competitors.

The Art Deco-inspired Parkview Square in Bugis, owned by the Taiwanese Hwang family, is a notable example of this.

“It’s full of art and the architecture is stunning. It’s clearly not built to optimise the value of the square metres. It’s done with love, and the building aims to project the beauty of the architecture,” she said. “Families are not only in business for the financial gains – there are also socio-emotional goals, such as reputation.”

As for Sheng Siong’s Mr Lim, “his values are really what makes the difference,” Assoc Prof Dieleman noted. “Everything according to him starts with ren (‘human’ in Chinese), and is about how you relate to other human beings and how you improve yourself. This philosophy is reflected in the way the company is managed. As a result of its unique culture, Sheng Siong has outranked its competitors in terms of profitability.”

The course also explores the various challenges faced by family firms, which could include matters of corporate governance.

“In family firms, the owners identify with the firm, and that sometimes blurs the boundary between what belongs to the company and what belongs to the family business owners. There have been cases where the owners were accused of using company property as if it was their own.”

Former student Mr Kanishk Killa (MSc in Management, 2022) describes Assoc Prof Dieleman’s teaching style as an “eye-opening” mix of fun and learning.

“She has a lot of industry contacts, which give us inside information on what goes on in a family business, and how to tackle business issues,” said Mr Killa, who is now working for his family’s steel and iron manufacturing firm in India.

Ms Azreen Suffiyah Binti Johari, a fourth-year Bachelor of Business Administration student, said the street game was a highlight of her school year. “I’m a ‘story’ kind of person, and the amazing race was basically (about) living in stories and finding out stories in a very physical way.”

She is also a fan of Assoc Prof Dieleman’s teaching style in the classroom. “She made me feel like I had my own voice. She would say, ‘If you were that person, what would you do?’ It put me in the shoes of the people she was talking about.”

The family business course is important as anyone with a business career will inevitably deal with family firms.

“Either they become your employers, or, if you are in a bank or the consultancy industry, they might be your clients. If you are in production of goods, they might be your suppliers or distributors,” said Assoc Prof Dieleman.

It sounds like an episode from Star Trek: a spaceship crash-lands on a strange, alien planet, stranding a group of young cadets. Lost in the jungle and woefully ill-equipped, they must find a way to communicate with the planet’s furry inhabitants – or risk being blipped out of existence.

This is not the latest instalment of a space opera but Source Academy, the flagship teaching tool of CS1101S: Programming Methodology. CS1101S is the introductory course of the computer science programme at NUS.

Part video game, part learning management system, Source Academy closely follows Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP), a textbook first published in 1984 and widely considered required reading for aspiring computer scientists. But the teaching team at NUS has put a spin on it.

“Our goal is to give students experiences they can relate to,” said Associate Professor Martin Henz, one of the minds behind CS1101S and its distinctive pedagogy alongside fellow lecturers Dr Boyd Anderson, Dr Low Kok Lim, and Dr Sanka Rasnayaka. “The more meaningful their experiences are, the more effective the learning can be.”

In CS1101S, students acquire programming skills which they can then deploy to process sounds and 2D and 3D models, for instance. Source Academy contextualises these skills in a semester-long storyline, allowing students to learn through hands-on experiential learning, be it communicating with aliens or guiding robots through nuclear wastelands.

“[Computer scientists] invent our realities more than we describe what we see out there in nature,” Assoc Prof Henz said with a grin. “It is an interesting field that defies the boundaries of traditional disciplines.” 

By students, for students

Source Academy has been an integral part of the CS1101S curriculum since 2018. It is mission-critical to the education of over 800 students a year, so it may come as a surprise that the original architect of the tool is, in fact, a student.

“‘Cadet’ was Evan’s invention – he decided it would be a web-based system,” said Assoc Prof Henz, referring to the first version of Source Academy, launched in 2018.

Mr Evan Sebastian, then a prominent graduating student, had been engaged by the CS1101S teaching team to create a new learning tool. His decision to launch a web-based system was significant, allowing students and facilitators to navigate Source Academy on their devices without having to download additional software.

Beyond being pocket-sized, portable and highly accessible, CS1101S is also maintained and improved upon by students – for good reason.

“When students make their first attempt at programming, they know that the tool they are using is built by their seniors,” said Assoc Prof Henz. “They relate to it differently from how they would relate to a commercial software system.”

True enough, that emotional connection is partly why third-year computer science major Lee Hyung Woon invests time and energy to coach junior developers as they take on projects to advance Source Academy.

“As a student, you see many different kinds of learning platforms for programming out there on the internet,” said Hyung Woon. “But [Source Academy] was specifically made for CS1101S. There’s something of a community being built here.”

“Coding” is taboo

While it may be tempting to think of the course as building a community of coders, this is not entirely accurate.

The word “coding” draws a particularly impassioned response from Assoc Prof Henz.

““Coding” conveys the opposite of what computer science is,” he said. “If you speak in code, you speak a language that is purposely designed such that it cannot be understood. That’s the opposite of what we need to do when we program.”

It is why the word is semi-banned in his classes. For a generation used to the magnetism and obscurity associated with computer programming – à la falling green code in The Matrix – this may come as a shock.

For Assoc Prof Henz, it is a gradual process of guiding students back to the basics. To that end, Source Academy is designed to – counterintuitively – limit students to an extremely small sublanguage of JavaScript. This encourages them to focus less on acquiring the language and more on building up mental models that are fundamental to programming.

Still, mental models have to be put to the test – gladiator-style. In the second half of the semester, students find themselves handed a nondescript-looking kit containing what Assoc Prof Henz describes as “a brick that doesn’t have any wheels”.

In the “Sumobot” segment of the course, this kit is transformed into a robot capable of` battling other robots, and even performing tricks. For about three weeks, students work in groups of four to modify and programme their robots to victory via fight, dance and song.

“There’s no remote control involved at all,” said Assoc Prof Henz. Robots must rely on their software to devise a strategy to push other robots out of the ring.

He recalls watching two robots locked in a tie, only for one to backpedal and attack from another angle — in other words, behaving as though they had minds of their own. “That’s the core of computing – to design processes that evolve when a machine interacts in the real world,” said Assoc Prof Henz.

Beyond giving students a chance to practise their programming skills, the Sumobot contest also allows students to hone their teamwork skills by collaborating with their peers on an assignment.

“We have a lot of team projects in the School of Computing,” Assoc Prof Henz revealed. “This contest gives students a sense of what is important when working in a team.”

Magic on the horizon

At over 500,000 lines of code, Source Academy is a behemoth of a passion project. This labour of love is garnering international attention – two universities in San Francisco and Sweden have recently adopted it as part of their teaching curricula.

In March, Assoc Prof Henz will be flying to Toronto for a high-profile presentation of Source Academy at a conference for computer science educators. It may just be the next big step for the learning tool – and for experiential learning in computer science education.

The teaching itself can also be experiential. “What I enjoy most about my daily work is the classroom interaction,” admitted Assoc Prof Henz, who has been with NUS since 1997. “I like presenting the material in the most engaging way, making eye contact with students and seeing if they relate to the material.”

His love for the performative is, perhaps, a natural extension of his interest in acting. As a member of Singapore’s oldest theatre company The Stage Club, he has been part of stage productions of Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew.

With Source Academy gaining traction overseas, it is clear that it won’t be curtain-call for the programme, now in its fifth iteration, anytime soon.

One thing remains clear. Whether hurtling through space towards an alien planet or riding for Camelot, Source Academy delivers not only on the science, but also on the adventure.

Hiking through the forest, Dr Chua Siew Chin knows she is getting close when the smell of something akin to rotting flesh hits her. A few more steps and there it is: a species of Rafflesia, the biggest flower in the world, that is endemic to Peninsular Malaysia – and under threat from the loss of rainforests.

Dr Chua snaps a quick picture to immortalise the moment, knowing full well that in about three months’ time, her students will do the same. The nature lover and Senior Lecturer for the Bachelor of Environmental Studies (BES) Programme at the National University of Singapore is not there for leisure. Instead, she is on a trip surveying the location for the upcoming instalment of her course, “Environmental Challenges: Asian Case Studies II” and will return with her students in May to visit the sprawling Belum-Temenggor Forest Complex in Perak.

Besides the rainforest complex, she has planned a two-week itinerary packed with other stops, including at mangrove ecosystems and peat swamp forests in Kuala Selangor, and the coral reefs of Pulau Redang and Pulau Bidong.

These site visits stem from her deep-rooted belief that fieldwork is a must in environmental studies, especially when it comes to topics like tropical ecology, environmental conservation and sustainability.

“It’s an opportunity to take students out of the classroom to see real ecosystems and real-world issues. It’s harder to imagine what a natural ecosystem is like if you don't spend some time in it,” she explains. “If you don't have that relationship (with nature), it’s harder to say what exactly you are trying to conserve, or what exactly you are trying to protect.”

Translating data into action

Since 2014, students were given the chance to travel to the Philippines for their field trips. But when Dr Chua officially took over the course last year, it had to be conducted fully in Singapore due to the pandemic.

Yet, this in no way made the learning experience less valuable for her and her students. In fact, this local iteration was right up her alley. She is an ecologist by training and no armchair academic – she actively does restoration work in Singapore, with her area of expertise being dipterocarp forests and the restoration of buffer parks.

The themes remained largely the same – wetland conservation, the changing landscape of lowland forests and coral restoration – but with a Singaporean twist. The cohort of 40 to 50 students was broken up into smaller groups and led by faculty members to visit sites including Pulau Hantu, Pulau Ubin, Clementi Forest and Bukit Timah Nature Reserve, among others.

“It was actually more tiring for the lecturers than the students because we repeated the course content three times,” she jokes.

Of course, it was not all fun and games – fieldwork is still work. Besides familiarising themselves with the content, students had to produce deliverables by the end of each of their three field trips.

For instance, Ernest Teo You Cheng, a Year 3 BES student, recalls snorkeling among the coral reefs at Pulau Hantu. Of course, there was a larger mission he had to fulfil: installing BioBoss tiles – concrete structures incorporated into sea walls – to provide habitats for marine organisms in the hopes of increasing biodiversity in coastal areas.

“If you’re a desktop environmental manager and all you see are maps, it’s very easy for you to say ‘I draw a line (here)’ and ‘this is how the management should be like’. But when you know the actual situation, you realise the line is harder to draw than you think,” Dr Chua explains.

Put simply, scientific data means nothing on its own if it cannot be contextualised and translated into real-world policies that affect real lives. It is a reality that she is well-acquainted with, having worked with various stakeholders – including the National Parks Board – during her restoration projects.

This emphasis on data will similarly feature in the Malaysian iteration of the course, though the stakes have been raised. Students will present their findings at every pitstop to local stakeholders, be they managers of local mangrove forests, local users of coral reefs or the non-governmental organisations and universities they are partnering with.

She also hopes that this will spark a long-term collaboration with them and allow a database of her students’ data to be built on year after year, such that it can eventually be put to practical use.

Learning across fields

Environmental Studies is a cross-disciplinary programme that marries both the natural sciences and social sciences, says Dr Chua. That the faculty comprises members from both the Department of Geography and Biological Sciences also means that students can benefit from a wealth of expertise.

“No single stakeholder, no single discipline, will have the ability to resolve an environmental issue entirely,” said Ernest.

This remains his greatest takeaway from the course: it takes good scientific research, hard and soft engineering measures, financial analyses, good policy and law-making and community engagement to successfully enact environmental policies that will be supported by the public.

For Year 4 BES student Yew Ke Yao, the field course was also significant in informing his future plans. “It gives students a glimpse into what the field entails, of what they would be doing for their career or further studies,” he said.

Indeed, as Dr Chua points out, “You need people who know how things are linked and how to draw expertise from different fields. That is exactly what the next generation of environmental professionals need to do to solve complex environmental issues.”

“The students coming in are very passionate – that's not something we need to teach them. It's more of how to nurture that passion, with a certain direction.”

Vibrant red and blue roofs dot the water’s surface, while wooden boats skillfully weave between patches of flooded forests and quaint floating homes. This is the Tonle Sap, the largest freshwater lake in Southeast Asia, where most of Cambodia’s floating villages are located. 

But this illusion of an idyllic retreat belies the reality of extremes of the Tonle Sap’s natural terrain. During the rainy season, its whole landscape turns into a sea and the only way to get around the area is by boat. In dry seasons, its grounds can become so parched that the water becomes almost a trickle in creeks and streams, affecting both lives and livelihoods. 

“There's a lot of everyday realities that those people (living there) have to face. By taking students there, they realise how important water is to society, to particular places, and how difficult it is to live in a place where the water levels change dramatically between the wet and the dry seasons,” Dr Carl Grundy-Warr, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Geography at the NUS Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, explained. “I think it's really the direct experience of experiential learning that helps to deepen students’ understanding of the real world environmental and social problems,” he added. 

Therein lies the value of field studies and experiential learning. It is one thing to have an epiphany in a classroom, and another to witness and experience others’ lived realities. 

He remembers taking students to a village once where the only available source of fresh food most of the time was water snakes. “And so, I got used to eating water snakes for lunch and dinner every day. But in a way, that experience made me love the place,” he recalled. “It's because it was so different. I kind of got so used to this notion that that's the food that people had available and that's what they could eat. So that's what we ate.”

The rationale of exposing students to field experiences informs his two courses: Field Studies and Field Investigation in Human Geography. Since 2001, he has brought countless batches of students to Southeast Asian countries to conduct fieldwork. To him, marrying theory and practical experience is key to a fruitful education.

Sitting among the trees at the NUS campus, a gentle breeze sweeping fallen leaves onto the table every now and then, he shared, “It is about going deeper into real-world situations that you can’t do from just the classroom.”

Beyond the borders of a book

Fieldwork is a long-standing tradition in Geography, but Dr Grundy-Warr believes that Field Studies has its own unique charm.

While a highlight is having students spend between one to six weeks in another country during the semester, more importantly, the field is where theory and applied geography comes to life.

It is not that class-based learning is unimportant, he clarified. Rather, it has to be complemented by field experience. “One thing that a field-based (course) can do that a class-based one can’t is engage all our senses. Immersing students in environmental contexts is valuable because they feel it, they smell it, they get an understanding of everyday geographies and ways of life,” he noted.

For example, in his Field Studies trip during 2019, he and his two colleagues, Dr Wang Yi-Chen and Dr Miles Kenny-Lazar gave their students a project on the life cycle of a parasite, opisthorchis viverrini, that lived in the waters of Isan, a region in northeast Thailand. Together with students from Khon Kaen University, they traced how the parasite moved from snails to freshwater fish to human beings.

The liver fluke parasite contributes to a major public health issue in the Mekong region, a fatal bile duct cancer (cholangiocarcinoma) affecting tens of thousands of people. Through the life-cycle, students were engaged in various projects, including landscape ecology, land-use change, fishing and farming livelihoods, food cultures (particularly eating raw, semi-cooked, and fermented fish dishes), and the geographies of public health.

Ms Chong Yee Ching, a former-student-turned-teaching assistant in NUS Environmental Studies at the College of Humanities and Sciences, shared that taking both courses during her undergraduate studies “humbled” her.

On her trip to Kratie, Cambodia, in 2019, she interviewed local fishermen about Irrawaddy dolphins in the Mekong, which were part of an ecotourism and conservation programme by the World Wide Fund for Nature.

When she asked whether these endangered animals – unintended victims of illegal nets and electrocution fishing practices – should be protected, their answers surprised her. “They said, ‘Yes, because it affects my income,’” she recounted.

This gave her a fresh perspective on environmental protection efforts. “As someone from a position of privilege, conservation value is how I view conservation. But when you’re on the ground, people’s concern is not conservation – it’s getting by day to day,” she said.

“I understand the need for conservation to be profitable, even though that’s not the most palatable concept.”

Living life lessons

Beyond academics, field studies also provide fertile ground for cultural exchange to take place.

“Instead of seeing people as subjects we learn about, we see them as friends, family, and neighbours,” Dr Grundy-Warr elaborated. Through homestays, students eat, work and play together with locals and students from host institutions.

In fact, it is sometimes the minutiae of everyday village life that make the greatest impact. When asked about his greatest takeaways from both courses, Mr Matthew Lu – another former student and teaching assistant of Dr Grundy-Warr – replied without missing a beat: Friends.

From the village chief who taught him to sow rice seeds, to his Cambodian friend who took slow-motion videos of him having a dip in the Se San River where villagers take their baths, these moments are stamped fondly on his memory.

Such moments, including learning to meet and greet people in new contexts, is a soft skill that students have to hone.

“Knowing how to sit with your legs crossed on the floor and conducting a polite interview with an elder is a skill! You don’t just go in as a group, surround the person and fire questions,” Dr Grundy-Warr explained.

Trusting the process

The one thing that he is most adamant about is that education is a process. “It’s not just about grades,” he emphasised.

His teaching philosophy is reflected in how he assesses his students’ progress. Besides field diaries and a final presentation, he makes it a point to gauge his students’ thought processes throughout various stages of their field projects.

This means assessing what methods they use, how they work as a team and whether they have moments of self-reflexivity.

“These are things that aren’t seen as much in a class-based setting,” he said. “I meet all teams at least three to four times throughout the entire process (of a project) to gauge how they’re going about their work.”

Some projects have lived on even after the courses ended. For instance, one project on reducing plastic waste on the Tonle Sap was developed into a year-long funded initiative involving specialist practitioners, students from Singapore and Cambodia, and community volunteers.

“We periodically went back to work directly with villagers on this plastic-on-water project. Field studies essentially enabled us to do community-based work,” he said.

For now, Dr Grundy-Warr is looking forward to field studies making a comeback in the upcoming semesters, after a three-year hiatus due to the pandemic. “Learning can be fun in field settings, and that element of fun is important in exciting the passion of students,” he concluded.