Ghazala Bilquise

Sitting and enjoying my evening tea, I couldn’t help but think of the amazing class that I had with my Organizational Behavior students this morning. The class I had with my students today took off from the previous lesson in which our discussions had ended to a new term “Multiculturalism”. Since that class last week, my students have been tweeting their findings and sharing their opinions on this topic with their classmates and me. Before today’s class began I was amused that to find out that my students and I had contributed to nearly 156 tweets, watched 8 very interesting videos and listened to 5 podcasts while going about our daily chores. It was amusing because I was thinking about past where I was the information provider to the class. I was then solely responsible of finding and sharing information with students. Now I’m learning from them. How times have changed! Now with the help of technology my students are always learning and collaborating with each other. Learning is not c...

Each teacher has various beliefs about how students learn effectively and these beliefs and values they hold, lead them to adopt certain actions. These become a teacher’s practical theory about teaching and learning. A teacher’s belief originates from their cultural background and experiences - experiences they had while they were students and experiences they have with their students while they are teaching. So it’s safe to say that a teacher’s practical theory keeps getting refined and enhanced as they progress. My practical theory has evolved a lot since I first started teaching. I have come from a background where learning is nothing more than just memorizing. As students we were required to memorize everything from scientific formulas to historical events with no sense of deep understanding. Teachers adopted a style of teaching where they talked and we listened. There was no concept of projects or activities in class. I was just an average student. In college I had a different e...

My most memorable learning experience was 5 years ago in a workshop called the instructional skills workshop . This was the first workshop I attended as a faculty at Dubai Men's College. This workshop was organized for faculty to improve our teaching and learning methods. It was an intensive four day workshop where we were required to organize 3 mini-lessons of 10 minutes each on any subject of our choice and deliver it to the other participants(They say teachers make the worst students!!). It sounded simple enough, until I found out that each lesson should contain 5 elements called the bridge, learning objective, pre-test, participatory learning and post-test. This seemed quite challenging in such a short period of time. And to make matters worse, each lesson was going to be recorded!!! A feedback session with the facilitator followed after each lesson with open and honest feedback comments.. ouch.. honesty hurts! This was my first impression of the workshop. However, when I got i...

Hi, My name is Ghazala Bilquise. I'm married and have two wonderful daughters. I've been working at DMC as an IT faculty for nearly 6 years now. WoW! how time flies!! Before that I used to be a programmer and then a vocational trainer. I hold lots of qualifications and certifications in IT so I thought it's about time to get something in teaching. Moreover, I can see the difference in students and their way of learning as I teach new students every year. I believe that we need to change our teaching methods and practices to teach this generation. Through this course I hope to learn how to teach students of the 21st century. I hope to interact with others and get lots of ideas of what works and what doesn't. Most importantly, I hope to learn some new skills in teaching and learning.