Goh Kai Xin (MIC190009)

GIG1005 SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT

Reflective Writing

Goh Kai Xin (MIC190009)                                                                    Date: 14 Mac 2020

     Before getting myself involved in this course, I have never experienced such activity where we go out of the campus trying to reach people outside and deliver knowledge to them. At first, I thought it would be a boring and rigid event because all we are going to do is just presenting some slides and play some games in order to make sure the students understand the contents and……that’s all. Even though it is so called social ‘engagement’ but I did not really feel engaged with the other groupmates as we were quite blur at the beginning. All we did were just follow the instructions and do what we were asked to. The jobs were divided among us and we actually did the works separately in smaller groups. We prepare teaching slides, quizzes and gifts besides attending the internal workshop. Thus, it was just like an usual group assignment of any other subjects. 

I did not feel anything special until we were really at the school waiting to meet those young people. Standing in front of the school gate I felt a bit awkward yet familiar. Its been three years since the last time I visited a secondary school but everything there just makes me recall my secondary school life. Our group has carried out two workshops at SMK Lembah Subang on 6 Mac 2020 and 13 Mac 2020 respectively. During the first workshop, I was one of the presenters. It was quite challenging to explain the content for the students to understand as their school syllabus are Malay language-based while the slides we prepared were in English. Furthermore, they are not sciences stream students so they have no much previous knowledge or understanding on the topic which is DNA. Therefore, it was challenging in helping them to understand well and to enjoy the whole learning process. Through the presentation I realized that I should be more prepared beforehand. For instance, I should have translated the scientific words into Malay for them to understand better and also be more casual at the time energetic while presenting the slides. Luckily, they manage to get what we were trying to convey and involved themselves in the quiz session actively. During the hands-on session, the experiment was successful as the students were excited and amazed by the result they got. 

On the second day, things become more ease as we have the experience in handling the students.  The topic for the second workshop is DNA Fingerprinting. This time the slide is more simplified and as a result the students were able to catch the meaning while jotting down notes for reference to prepare for the quiz session. As for the hands-on session, it was not easy for the students to apply immediately what they have learned on that day. So, it took a bit longer time for them to understand the concept of DNA fingerprinting via DNA cutting and electrophoresis. At the end of the activity, I was shocked but happy that the students from my group actually requested to take a picture with us. Generally, this programme was a blast. 

Through out the whole activity, I realized that it is not a simple thing for us to match other people’s way of thinking and point of view in the effort of convincing them to understand meanwhile believe in what we said. Thus, we should work around and be flexible while communicating with others. Besides that, this activity makes me want to join more outreach activities in future because it was so satisfying and delightful when many people actually work together to make an event successful. One more thing is that after this activity we seem to be more unite and tacit among all the facilitators. In a nut shell, I hope that everyone had gained something from this meaningful activity like I did and that it becomes a good memory to recall.  

(650 words)