Passage to ASEAN Initiative – A Regional Student Engagement Programme
This initiative started about 2-years ago as a way of engaging with other institutions in Asia for student mobility. Its model had been built around engaging students in short-term regional mobility, which however, became impossible due to the pandemic. This year, the P2A was developed as a series of discipline-based ‘Virtual Mobility’, a new pilot initiative for hospitality and tourism students, and themed as “New Normal, New Future”. P2A has run over 5 sessions, involving close to 70 students and staff from four universities: Sunway University (Malaysia), Duy Tan University (Vietnam), Binus University (Indonesia), and Dong-A University (South Korea). Sunway University was joined by Professor Perry Hobson, Assoc Prof Dr Daniel Chong Ka Leong, Dr Teh Pek Yen, Ms Suhaini Ibrahim, and Ms Hairani M Nur, along with over 15 students.
As part of this initiative, Professor Perry Hobson, Professor of Tourism and Special Adviser on Tourism Education also organised and hosted a ‘Talkshow’ , along with one faculty member from each university. The Talkshow presented unique perspectives and future of the industry to develop interesting and engaging sessions with its audience. With online webinars becoming a norm in recent times, it is important to keep students engaged with interactive sessions that piqued their interest. The use of technological aid has indeed become more prevalent. Hence, education and learning would also need to be delivered in an innovative way to keep online sessions lively - this is where narratives and storytelling can make learning processes engaging.
The final closing session was group presentations (comprising participating students from different partner institutions), where students in their respective groups were required to prepare and present on selected topics revolving around the theme of this programme such as sustainability, entrepreneurship, technology trends, social responsibility, and perspective on future job opportunities. The ideas and concepts presented were indeed impressive, and the students were able to produce professional video presentations within a short span of time.
