MUHAMMAD AFZAN IRFAN BIN NORDIN (MIC190024)

MUHAMMAD AFZAN IRFAN BIN NORDIN (MIC190024)              6 & 13 MARCH 2020

GIG1005 SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT
Reflective Essay

      Social engagement is definitely a good medium for every students practising their communication and leadership skills throughout its session. For us, biomedical students, we were at lost for the first time this subject was introduced by Dr. Puah. My team and I were given a task to conduct a workshop about DNA for SMK Lembah Subang students. Personally, I was quite worried if I was capable to handle the program especially when it needed a high confidence and teamwork from each member of the group. We were asked to facilitate the workshop for two days of two different weeks which were on 6th and 13th March 2020. Our team leader, Adlina Athirah, had divided and given us tasks and I was selected to be one of the facilitators for the hands-on session.

     The first day of the workshop began early in the morning at 7.30a.m.. My team and I went to the school by Grab cars. As soon as we arrived, some of us were quite nervous but very excited at the same time. We conducted the workshop of module named ‘The Secret of Life: DNA’ in the school’s science laboratory. Around 50 students were involved. My partner, Alieff and I were quite amazed when we were told by their teacher, Puan Elliana that the students were not in science stream class instead they were in art and business class. We were wondering if they will gain the input that we tried to provide as they did not have much basic knowledge about this course. As what I expected, the students in the group were having difficulty to understand the presentation. They did not even really have any idea on what nucleus is. So, I tried to explain it to them from the beginning hoping that they would at least understand what is DNA.

    The excitement was risen during the hands-on session. In this period, the students were required to do some experiments on extracting their own DNA and fruits DNA. They were very focus and showing a full effort to complete the tasks. They were all spirited to answer all of the questions during the quiz session. It was a struggle for the first day of the workshop. On the next session, we conducted another module named ‘DNA Fingerprint Lab’ in which it involved the same group of students. There was not so much awkwardness as they remembered some of us and felt comfortable compared to the previous session. For this session, it was quite hard as there were too much information for them to digest but I was really impressed because the students at last manage to understand the input. They were again showing their full excitement and determination during the hands-on and quiz sessions. As for the last day, we ended the program with photo session with all the people involved. I felt quite sad to leave although we only met for a short period and maybe for the last time ever. Nevertheless, it was fun and meaningful for each and every one of us.

     Indeed, Social Engagement is beneficial for every student by gaining an opportunity to interact with other people and conduct a program. The knowledge and experiences from this subject are very useful in the future especially when we want to join any volunteering project. Not just that we can share our own knowledge to other people, but we can also make more connections and networking between them.

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