Yap Tat Kwong
TK has been with School of IT, Nanyang Polytechnic for over 25 years. Prior to taking up academic position in the IHL, he worked as a management consultant in a global consulting firm. TK graduated from National University of Singapore with Honours degree in Mathematics and obtained his MBA from University Queensland.
TK has held various management and operation positions in polytechnic, include Course Manager of Diploma in Business Informatics, Financial Informatics, Business Intelligence and Analytics where he was a pivotal member for the launched of these courses. He currently holds the appointment of Senior T&L Specialist in the Teaching and Learning Innovation Section that provides academic support and services on pedagogy, assessment strategy, academic quality assurance, ICT-enhanced T&L and learning experience design to fellow faculty members.
TK is married with 2 sons. He is a voracious reader and enjoys cycling and hiking during his leisure time.
Nanyang Polytechnic, Singapore
Position –Senior T&L Specialist
Title –Dr
Sessions
While Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 saw all lessons moved online out of necessity, Singapore IHLs’ leverage on the affordances of blended learning remains elevated when the safe management measures have been lifted. In this paper, the author will share his experience in implementing differentiated instruction with blended learning for over 500 mixed-ability stage 1 learners in all IT-based diplomas in their learning of mathematics in the form of asynchronous online lecture and in-person tutorial.
Differentiated learning during asynchronous online lecture is achieved with the use of bite-sized content, a mixed of media-like text, infographics and instructional videos where learners can view and review them at their own time and pace. This, augment with monitoring of learners’ performance in learning-validation quizzes to address learning gaps at start of associated tutorial, help to ensure learners with mixed ability are adequately and effectively prepared to partake and benefit from the active learning activities in the tutorial sessions.
Through active engagement and interaction with learners during in-person tutorial classes averaging 20 learners, the tutor is able to further differentiate and monitor individual learner’s progress to provide immediate feedback and to identify learners who needed more attention and provide them with the necessary help while the faster learners are given additional challenging questions to stretch them further. The use of ALERT (Assessing Learning in Real Time) system at end of most learning topic allows learners to provide feedback on what they have learnt and raise question they might still have, to enable tutors to follow up and respond to those who still need clarification or further assistance.
The author will further share his recommendations for an effective and engaging blended differentiated learning which include using multiple types of instructional materials, leveraging on technology to identify online learning behavioural patterns and mixing up group composition in aspect of ability during in-person tutorials. The author reckons the education research paper will benefit technical institutes who wishes to implement differentiated blended learning in the teaching and learning of mathematics to mixed-ability learners.