Masterskill taking the lead in monitoring weak students’ performance

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KUCHING: Over the weekend, 39 staff members, consisting of programme coordinators, lecturers and operation personnel from Masterskill College Kuching Campus attended a workshop on ‘Monitoring Weak Students’ Academic Performance Ability’.

It was conducted by an expert in education training, Datuk Dr Prof Leonard Andrew De Vries, who is most notably recognised for his in-depth studies on Asean 2015 Integration. He is a former professor in University Science Malaysia in Penang, and holds two PhDs, a Master Degree in Education and few degrees majoring in the extensive segments of education.

During the workshop, Dr Leonard stressed on the urgent need for ‘fervent listening skills’ between lecturers and students whenever they communicate with each other.

“In Asia and particularly in Malaysia, we need to have more ‘thought leaders’ who have the high thinking capability rather than good leaders who merely just talk,” he said.

He added that ‘thought leaders’ were mostly Americans and Europeans while Asians were just followers.

He said students needed to develop interpretation skills based on what was taught by the lecturers during class, besides comprehending the lectures and learning how to use the knowledge gained.

“Lecturers must be able to merge or integrate the key concepts of academic discipline study with professional study in their teaching plan and add that knowledge and skill to meet specific needs in society. At the end of the day, the college is preparing students for career situations for instance world of working as health professionals,” said Dr Leonard.

Julia Cliffton, programme coordinator for Environment Health of the college said that the workshop was very inspiring as it provided them with a check and balance in their daily task of teaching and an insight into how to better their academic delivery to young adults.

The objective of the workshop was to ensure that Kuching Campus through its team of academicians achieve its goal of providing an excellent academic delivery system capable of catering to specific needs of good, average and weak students studying in the campus.

Meanwhile, Masterskill believes in employing the best academicians as part of its teaching team and prides itself for having a good line-up of academicians in the campus.

“We have a good mix of lecturers, some of them having worked in the healthcare industry for over 20 years and holding commendable positions in hospitals before. There are also well qualified expatriate lecturers, bringing a wealth of health sciences knowledge from India to teach our students here,” said Dr Iskandar Abdullah, deputy dean of Kuching Campus.

Enrolment for the April 2012 intake is now open for registration. Scholarships for Pre-University — Foundation in Health Sciences are available. For further details, please contact 082-688777 or visit its website www.masterskill.edu.my

While in town, Dr Leonard met up with Dr Iskandar, Tony Tan who is the acting centre manager and several lecturers and operation staffs of Kuching Campus.