I am a nerdy teacher and instructional designer
I was born and raised in South Africa and was lucky to have access to technology from a young age. We had all sorts of machines from the Famicom to the Commodore 64 to the first Pentium and more. Being a nerdy guy, I have dabbled in many tech-related things but I have a deep love for psychology and education as well.
After high school, I tutored STEM subjects and English for a long time and gained a great reputation. This led me to the Chinese community. I started learning Mandarin and started focusing on language teaching in particular. In 2016, I moved to South Korea and started working for a branch of a giant chain of private academies. It was a bit of a culture shock seeing how much stress and anxiety the students in South Korea have to live with on a daily basis. The following year I got a job at a government-owned learning institute in a rural area north of Seoul in a city called Paju. The teaching methodology was far more focused on the students having a fun experience while being immersed in an English environment. I began to explore the benefits of engaging, interactive learning methods which pointed me towards e-learning.
Towards the end of 2018, I became the Adult Education Coordinator and started working on materials with e-learning aspects such as interactive games and software tutorials. The success of my new approach led me to become the Chief Instructional Designer for the company. Since then, I have been designing, creating and authoring solutions for multiple clients (including my own managers).
I am an Instructional Designer, teacher and father, and I am going to continue my journey in researching the latest methods and applications while implementing exciting products and solutions for my clients.
My Education
My undergraduate education is in clinical psychology and linguistics from the University of South Africa. I completed my B.A. in the double major with distinction and continued on to complete my honours degree in clinical psychology. My B.A.(Hons) focused on cognitive gerontology and my dissertation was based on short-term and working memory in older adults. I used the knowledge I gained to increase my skill at designing lesson content for adult learners.
I completed my master’s degree in Computer Science at the University of Hertfordshire. I focused heavily on application development and e-learning. For my thesis, I wanted to create a way for students to supplement their language learning using an immersive educational game. I was interested in knowledge retention, effects on speaking confidence and user experience. My thesis won an award for being the best project in my graduating class and I achieved an overall distinction for my degree.
At the moment, I am pursuing my doctorate in games for wellbeing at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. My main aim is to research how we can design and create fun, engaging learning material in the form of serious games that can supplement normal studies. You can find my research profile here: http://gameresearch.uoc.edu/investigadores/terence-govender/
