3 is not a crowd!

Since there are only 3 of us, we shall offer F7, F8, F9, P1, P2, P3, P4 and P7, altogether 8 papers in ACCA. We unanimously agreed that we shall only offer papers where we have very strong lecturers. Any new member joining us must be from students’ recommendation and we do not want any student to be disappointed with any under-performing lecturers.

I told everyone that we are willing to wait for the right candidate. Let’s not rush it! Let’s get it right!

Sivasathish voiced his concern that some students may want to opt for a different combination of Option papers as some might prefer P6 instead of his paper, P7. Since students may prefer more technical papers like P4, P5 and P6 instead of purely discursive paper such as P7. He suggested including Sivanair in our team.

I too have long heard of Sivanair’s reputation for Taxation and Advanced Taxation. My students just loved him.

With his trademark humorous expression, he can explain taxation very well like in a layman’s language and yet without losing touch of the complexity issue. I would definitely welcome him to our team. Anyway, we need a fatherly figure in our team too.

Initially, he can’t join us because he has just renewed his contract with another prominent college. His timetable is already packed. All three of us were utterly disappointed!

But it seems that heaven is on our side, the said college decided to stop offering the programme unexpectedly, freeing Sivanair with extra spare time now.

Finally, he joyfully accepts Sivasathish’s offer.

Now, we have added another 2 papers, making our total papers offered 10.

Yup, you can say the Perfect 10 to start with…

F6 Sivanair
F7 Joe Fang
F8 Sivasathish
F9 Oviyan
P1 Sivasathish
P2 Joe Fang
P3 Sivasathish
P4 Oviyan
P6 Sivanair
P7 Sivasathish

We are hoping that more lecturers would be willing to join us for other ACCA papers to complete our ACCA Lecturing team.

Yes, the college is within walking distance from LRT! (Part 3)

Some few months back, I join a dinner meeting with my Brother and another college owner. It was out of pure coincidence that my Brother asked me to join them for dinner; just right after my class as the college is also around the proximity.

During the meeting, I understand that the college owner is keen to offer CPA Australia courses as he has good connection in Australia. He is looking for lecturers and if possible a good team to run the show. At that time, I thought it might be a good idea too. After all, I can handle one of the papers, Financial Reporting, which is the toughest of all 6 papers in CPA. I said I will take it up.

I have totally no idea what this leads to but with some foresight now,

I have found… a COLLEGE.

Thinking to myself, things are beginning to become clearer now.

A good team of lecturers, ALL in ONE COLLEGE!

Isn’t that what all students are looking for? No more timetable clashes! No more having to skip some classes to attend another! No more premium pricing or price fixing! No need to sign up with different colleges for different papers! No need to pay additional registration fees! Don’t have to battle the rush hour traffic running from one college to another!

Now you have everything right under ONE roof.

Just ONE college; The ideal college; The perfect location;

A college for the STUDENTS.

Where we gather all the great lecturers under one roof.

In that moment, analyzing all of the separate and seemingly unrelated events that took place,

Taking cue from Steve Jobs famous quote,

“All the dots just CONNECT!”

Without wasting time, I arranged to meet him, the college owner again. Strange as it was, I should have just asked if he is interested to run ACCA on the phone, rather than arranging a meeting, right?!

I thought so too but anyway, we met at Starbucks. I sold him my vision of gathering all of our team members to conduct ACCA. We will run CPA later too.

He agrees immediately.

And, I what’s app my team members and they too agree on the spot.

So, that was how we started…

Well, some of you may be guessing the location. Unfortunately for now, we can only tell you that…

COLLEGE IS A SHORT 5 MINUTES WALK FROM KLCC LRT!

Taking education to the future (Part 2)

Few months passed, everyone has been busy lecturing.

My former lecturer, now Associate Professor Say Sok Kwan and also the Dean of Faculty at Tunku Abdul Rahman University College (TARUC) proposed that I contribute video lectures to the university’s e-learning platform.

I would be delighted and I came up with a proposal. Tried to gather a few lecturers who would be interested to contribute and finally only managed to get two; one of them is Oviyan and the other is my former student, Gan. Well, sad to say, the project didn’t materialize.

Anyway, that didn’t matter. What really matter is that at least we tried. Most lecturers are not ready for video production yet. I believe e-learning is the way to go in the future!

My acquaintance with Oviyan goes way back to Dec 2013. We also have common students, my P2 and his P4. One day, one of them shared Oviyan’s Youtube videos on my fb wall. I find the videos awesome and at least we have lecturers moving into video production kind of thing. I didn’t know, I thought he was a lecturer elsewhere, probably in UK but it is not as it seems. He has been lecturing in Malaysia and some neighbouring Asean countries for some years; over a decade at least.

We chat over fb messenger and were sharing ideas on e-learning capabilities, video recordings, and many other online facilities available to lecturers. It turned out that he also provides video lectures to his students. His friend is helping him to administer the password access.

At one time, our students even thought I was the friend helping him on the video password access. Honestly, we still think that there is further room for improvement where e-learning is concerned. Nonetheless, the existing platform is considered good enough, only that it takes too much precious time administrating the password access and most lecturers can’t spare their time.

Let’s fast track to sometime during mid-May 2015, Oviyan sent me greetings of “Happy Teacher’s Day.”

Very thoughtful, I thought. We receive plenty of Teacher’s day greetings from students but not many of us send such greetings to our colleagues.

Wait a minute! I suddenly think of him as my colleague when we have never even lectured in the same college before. That set me thinking and I suddenly have a glimpse of the future.

How it all began (Part 1)

The day was January 2015. As the new semester unfolds, my ACCA classes have just started. Everything was just the usual, nothing new, and classes were like normal. It is always that when things look like the usual that a change is already coming, waiting to reveal itself…

I received a WeChat message from Sivasathish asking for my timetable at Malvern College as we often share common students taking both our papers. Little did I know that at one time my P2 students were also in his P1 and P3 classes and because our revision classes were conducted on the same days, he has to conduct 2 separate revision classes. He is so kind as to suggest that he will accommodate my time despite having such hectic schedule himself.

I felt that I should be the one accommodating him instead but many times and in fact all the time, I just have to accept the timetable handed to me by the college. As often as it has been, our timetable always clashes.

But unfortunately, my revision class and next semester’s timetable is not out yet. To make him feel better, I also told him that I am recording my live classes and have made available the recordings to all my students in the event that our classes clashes. But then again, we know for a fact that students prefer the live classes than recordings.

Right then, I can only hope for the best…

There wasn’t much we can do or perhaps,

just perhaps,

maybe there is something we could do. But somehow, we never thought of it then.