MEMBAKUT SABAH, 3-4 AUGUST 2019 – You may experience or have been in a classroom in which you were asked by your teacher to read certain chapters from a textbook and then answered questions at the end of each chapters. All textbooks have answers in the back, and if you were lucky the teacher may assign you questions that have answers so that you could verify your answers in the back. And most days looked the same, you did your homework and then looked for the answers in the back of a textbook. How that this kind of teaching method will engage millennials?

Millennials, the current generation of students, were born between 1980 and 2000. Although some Millennials have dropped out of or graduated from academia and entered the workforce, most are still in our school systems. On average, they spend almost 7 hours each day engaged which their mobile gadgets, watching videos, updating status in social medias, playing online games and replying instant messages. Again, how do we engage them in the classroom?

In helping teachers facing these problems, on the 3^rd and 4^th August 2019, Sabah English Aspiration Society (SEAS) in-collaboration with Centre for Engineering Education (CEE), Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) organized an active learning workshop specially designed for Sabahan teachers in-conjunction with the SEAS English Camp 2019 at SJK(C) Pei Yin Membakut, to expose active learning approach in engaging millennial learners.

The objective of this two-day workshop is to explain the needs for teachers to shift to student-centred learning (SCL) methods in classrooms, to recommend an effective method for engaging 21^st century learners that can be used in classrooms, and to expose best practices in modifying and designing new learning and teaching activities suited for their own classroom implementations and settings.

Two active learning experts from CEE UTM headed by Dr. Syed Ahmad Helmi Syed Hassan and Assoc. Prof. Dr. Mohd. Kamaruddin Abd. Hamid facilitated this workshop attended by 20 teachers from schools, vocational colleges and the district education offices. According to Dr. Mohd. Kamarudin, director of the workshop, ”This is the second time, where SEAS and CEE UTM conducted the active learning workshop for Sabahan teachers since 2018.” In this workshop, participants were introduced to several active learning activities that can be effectively used in every classroom using book-ends approach. This simple but effective design of a typical classroom approach is divided the class into three segments; advanced organizer, intermittent discussion, and closure focused discussions, in between lectures.

According to Dr. Zainab Kassim, SEAS President, “Several series of SCL workshop for teachers will be organized in Beaufort since SEAS already given support from Head of Beaufort District Education Office.” Prior to the workshop, SEAS delegate had visited Mr. Budreh Hj. Ahmad, Head of Beaufort District Education Office, in his office to discuss future planning for English Camp and Teacher Workshop especially for Beaufort district.