BEST HARVEST IN MANY MANY YEARS: Year Two BC and MC students, March Batch 2011
Lecturers and teachers are like farmers metaphorically speaking. Bad or average harvest is never satisfying to both parties. Besides, it is also hard to predict the outcome or end-product. Multiple factors are at work in influencing the final outcome of students’ performance. Be it in the field of farming or lecturing we have to innovate in order to obtain different results.
Over the many years of teaching creative subjects, I had always wondered why my students lacked creative thinking ability. This ability is extremely vital for students in subjects like Advertising Copywriting offered as a minor unit in the undergraduate degree programmes. Some affirmative action had to be undertaken. Students had a bag load of excuses for producing sub-standard creative work for this unit. Among the excuses were:
- burdened by too many assignments in the other units
- not sure why we must take Advertising Copywriting unit when we are Broadcasting students
- our English is weak
- we do not know how to think creatively
The above responses have been addressed. The number of course work items in this unit has been reduced to two items (group project & final exam) from the original four items (individual, group, mid-term & final exam). The group project did not require more than 12 pages. Students were required to keep it short, relevant and interesting (modeled on actual advertising campaign idea presentation in the industry).They could choose some of the pages of their group assignment to be in point form format too. Lecture and demonstration on how to apply creative thinking techniques were provided in the early part of the lecture and tutorial sessions. As for language proficiency there are many English elective units which they can take up. Besides they also have access to dictionaries and thesaurus. They were told that Advertising units were relevant to them because they can work in film production houses which specialized in television commercials.
In summary it appeared that students performed badly because of their negative attitude and perception (too many excuses). Students were not willing to take the challenges and were not passionate about reaching out for the stars. Their poor performance has nothing to do with abilities or IQ but with attitude. They are too emotional over the workload in their course of study and lethargically resign to merely complete their assignments just to fulfill the requirements of the subjects they have signed up for. The working world out there will definitely not tolerate lethargy and negative attitude or even work apathy. Against what the real world is looking for in new graduates, my students were completely and critically out of step!
Something had to be done. Change must happen and it is never too late to change. As lecturers we cannot give up on our students. If we did that it would tantamount to neglecting our responsibility to mold students according to the needs of the society and prospective employers.
It is common knowledge that our students are only interested in incentives. To illustrate this, let us assume a talk by an industry expert on copywriting techniques is organized; most likely student attendance will be poor unless an incentive of 5% marks is given for attendance! It is evident that students are attracted by incentives. Taking this as a cue the Advertising Copywriting unit’s coursework was altered to make it more hands-on. A total of 70% of the marks were allocated to one group assignment and four individual assignments .The balance of 30% was allocated to final exam. Incentives were added to each of the four individual assignments. For example the the best idea on the firs assignment on M &M’s was awarded a big pack of M & M’s worth RM21. One incentive was given to an overall best student and a set of pens worth RM70 was given. Prizes were contributed by the lecturer and tutor of this course. Many may not agree with this stimulus (incentive) – response approach but we have to start somewhere and refine the methodology along the way.
Giving small incentives like this did result in motivating students to compete. Competition is important because it creates interest and moves students to do whatever possible to overcome either imagined barriers as well as real barriers. In the many years I have taught this unit, I never saw better ideas than the ones produced by this Batch of BC & MC Year 2 Sem 1 students. Somehow the incentives created enthusiasm and interest. Needless to say the lecturer and tutor’s interest, dedication and rapport played an important role too. This batch also produced a creative prodigy – Tham Kar Kit. This student was truly excellent; he had everything that would make him a great copywriter in Malaysia some years from now provided he makes copywriting his career. His corporate TVC idea in the group project was a great idea. There were also other students with good ideas too. You can see them all in the pictures below. As the saying goes it takes two (lecturer/tutor & student) with some innovation to make things happen. This batch of students will remain etched in my mind for a long time more.
Omega Watch idea by Harivarmmal Perumal (Best idea)
Omega Watch idea by Foong Wai Leng (2nd Best)
Firefly: Wong Mei Yin (Best Idea)
Overall Best Student : Tham Kar Kit (superb flair in writing)
Wong Mei Yin (Best Idea) for Firefly receiving prize from Mr Zachray
Omega Watch idea by Harivarmmal Perumal (Best idea)
Overall Best Student : Tham Kar Kit (superb flair in writing)
receiving prize from Mr Thinavan
End.
