BEng, MSc, PhD, SFHEA, MACM, MIET Reader in Software Engineering
This page outlines key Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) projects led by Dr Ling Ma, including links to relevant resources and materials.
Joint Teaching and Learning Centre: Evolving the UK-China Transnational Education
The Joint Teaching and Learning Centre (JTLC) between Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) and Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications (BUPT) was established in 2020. The centre is a platform to promote excellence in teaching and learning, and also to share best practices for transnational education.
The JTLC organised national and international events to gather colleagues to share experiences, discuss challenges and explore opportunities. The JTLC established working groups to address common issues and propose new education and assessment models, and funded a number of projects to enhance our teaching and learning. The ongoing results will be used to further enhance the TNE sector and to benefit our global students. Our research findings and solutions can be widely adopted in other TNE higher education institutions. It will have long-term impacts on future ways of TNE teaching and learning.
Flexible mode of final year project supervision, assessment and management in a UK-China TNE context
A final year project is an important outcome to demonstrate student success at their graduation. The final year project supervision, assessment and management faced huge challenges in UK-China transnational education (TNE) programmes in recent years because of the rapid and significant changes in both countries.
Our flexible mode of the final year project management adapted to various changing situations, ensured minimum disruptions to students, provided ideal solutions for supervision and assessment, supported a large number of students, supervisors and examiners. These solutions can be widely applied in the future and to other higher education institutions.
Cross-course collaboration between Software and Hardware modules
In collaboration with Dr Matthew Tang, we designed an innovative approach at programme level to help students understand the relation between software and hardware modules. This project won the QMUL Westfield Fund for Enhancing the Student Experience 2016.
The objective of this project is to provide a coherent learning experience for students and a collaboration opportunity for lecturers. Students complete a collaborated coursework to reinforce concepts from both software and hardware modules. Details of this project, with full report and poster, can be found at QMAcademy website as a case study.
This approach aims to give students immediate, constructive and continuous feedback in the large group coursework assessment. Dr Ling Ma was awarded the JP Teaching Innovation Award 2017- 2018.
It divides the submission and demonstration into three stages following the Agile process. At each stage, each group is given a one-hour assessment and feedback session with interactive demonstration and Q/A. Students have more opportunities to develop their communication and presentation skills. Individual contribution is fairly recognised and it further enhances their team working skill. To make the marking and feedback consistent among lecturers and Teaching Assistants, extensive training is provided at all stages.
Dr Ling Ma initiated an approach in 2015 to incorporate law elements into engineering projects, in collaboration with law lecturers. Over 50 projects have successfully completed under her supervision.
In 2018, JP students Jin Han and Jingyi Zhu graduated with first class honours. Their final year projects were under the supervision of Dr Ling Ma and law lecturer Bindu Chib. Their paper entitled “A Data Visualization Toolkit for Intellectual Property Law Research in China” was published at IEEE VIS 2018 Conference, Berlin.
In-Laboratory teaching and blended learning
This in-laboratory teaching and blended learning approach combines lectures, labs and assessments into one session, which gives the students more practice and hands-on help in class. This method has proved to be more effective than traditional instructional teaching methods. It has also improved students’ satisfaction and academic performance.
This project was initiated with Dr Laurissa Tokarchuk and Mr Kok Ho Huen. It won the QMUL Draper’s Prize of Innovative Teaching in 2011. It was presented at the QMUL’s annual Teaching and Learning Conference in 2011.
CONTACT
Email: ling.ma@qmul.ac.uk
Phone: +44 (0)20 7882 7343
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-ling-ma Office: E307, Engineering Building, Mile End Campus
Address: School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science, Queen Mary University of London, Mile End Road, London, E1 4NS, UK