In conjunction with the National Training Week (NTW) 2023, UTAR Centre for Corporate and Community Development (CCCD) joined hands with Human Resource Development Corporation (HRD Corp) to organise two training courses on 23 May 2023 at UTAR Kampar Campus.

The NTW 2023 is a week of nationwide training events and activities that bring together organisations and individuals to experience a wide range of learning and development opportunities. It is currently ongoing from 22 to 28 May 2023. HRD Corp aims to provide 10,000 courses for free.

The first training was conducted by Faculty of Arts and Social Science (FAS) academic Diong Fong Wei, who is also an HRD Corp Accredited Trainer. The training was titled “How Much Do You Know About Social Media?”. During the training, Diong enlightened the participants about the many aspects of social media such as types of traditional and modern media; benefits and drawbacks of using social media; real-life cases of social media issues, and ways to publicise events using social media.

When explaining the impact of social media towards society, she said, “Social media is making people more disconnected than before. Many people are addicted to social media nowadays. The biggest problem lies with the users because most people could not practise self-control. Social media has undeniably brought many advantages to society, yet, what came with them was a multitude of new issues as well. With more and more users using social media as an alternate channel to vent their negative emotions, it is inevitable that cyberbullying would find its way into society.” Diong then gave a detailed explanation of the forms of cyberbullying and its preventive actions.

The second training titled “Building a Fun and Positive Learning Environment” was conducted by FAS academic and HRD Corp Certified Trainer Aruna Raj Devarajoo. She kick-started by elucidating on self-concept and communication; self-image and self-esteem, which also saw the participants gaining information on ways to improve their self-esteem. Aruna also talked about impression management, which participants learnt of it to be ways that people use to attempt to control how they are perceived by others.

The highlight of Aruna’s training was using humour to make learning more fun, effective, and engaging for the students in the classroom. She listed that there are four kinds of humour styles, namely affirmative humour, self-enhancing humour, aggressive humour, and self-defeating humour. According to Aruna, humour is known to have the ability to increase student engagement, boosts morale, improve memory retention, and break down barriers between teachers and students. However, she also advised participants to use humour in the classroom with caution by first knowing their audience, keeping jokes appropriate, using real-life examples, and being themselves. She then shared various ideas that participants could use in the classroom to bring about a fun and positive learning environment through humour.

At the end of the training, participants were able to recognise self-concept and apply effective communication skills in a classroom setting; understand methods to make the classroom livelier and facilitate learning; assess students’ needs and effectively utilise humour as a strategy to secure students’ attention, and to identify appropriate and effective humour strategy to use in teaching and learning.