From teacher to mentor with NIE

ITE educator Peter Tan has gone from guiding students to leading fellow colleagues

By Rachel Tan

July 7, 2019

Mr Peter Tan has always strived to design and develop high-quality course materials, including e-learning content, for his students at the Institute of Technical Education (ITE) College West. A colleague’s recommendation to enrol in the Master of Arts in Instructional Design & Technology offered by the National Institute of Education paved the way for him to reach his goal.

In 2016, Mr Tan took up the course part-time while lecturing at ITE College West. At first, he was taken aback by the seminar-style lessons. He was unprepared for the extensive amount of reading and preparation work. Nevertheless, Mr Tan persevered and found the experience rewarding.

“My classmates and I felt that the seminars have helped us to learn from one another through discussions, improve our communication and presentation skills, and increase our motivation and confidence levels,” he says.

The programme also taught him valuable practices that he took back to his own classroom.

“I present the content in bite-sized formats with increasing order of complexity, use case studies to expose students to real-life situations, let students experience small successes to increase their confidence, and use peer teaching to promote active learning,” explains Mr Tan.

He was also trained to design, develop and evaluate e-learning content through observation, interviews and surveys. His e-learning content was well-received by his students and enabled them to study at their own pace.

The 49-year-old graduated last year and is grateful to ITE for providing him with the educational assistance for the programme. He credits his career progression to senior mentor at ITE Headquarters to his master’s qualification and experiences. His main duties now include training new lecturers, organising events for professional pedagogic sharing, as well as innovating and devising specific methods of instruction tailored to fields ranging from engineering to hospitality.

“The new role provides me with more opportunities to share my knowledge and experiences with new lecturers from the three ITE colleges,” he says.