First published: April 2003

The current Diploma in Business Studies has an Infocomm Specialization where students learn relevant IT skills that complement their business knowledge and equip them for the knowledge-based economy. The students are savvy with IT applications and are trained to hone their requisite professional skills as well as integrate and apply their knowledge. The core coverage in the Infocomm specialization is e-business systems, Internet-enabled multimedia, networking, servers and database management systems, information and knowledge management systems and enterprise resources planning.

The motivation behind the Reformative Training Program was the desire to engage our students in community service by applying both academic and technical skills, thus encouraging active citizenry. This program was undertaken as part of an Academic Excellence Team (AET) project.

Project Adoption and Strategy

The team received a request from the Prison Aftercare Supervision Section under the Prison Department of the Ministry of Home Affairs, asking for volunteer instructors/befrienders to work with reformative trainees. This group was selected as the defined community.

The strategy was to launch a pilot project under the platform of the Work-Integrated-Learning (WIL) module of the Infocomm elective in the Diploma in Business Studies, working in partnership with the Prison Aftercare Supervision Section, where the students could reach out to the reformative trainees.

This pilot project comprised of a 6-week training module where selected WIL students became IT trainers to a group of Reformative Trainees.

Work-Integrated-Learning (WIL)

WIL is an existing module in the Infocommunications and E-Commerce specialization stream offered in the Diploma in Business Studies. It offers students enhanced experiential learning opportunities.

Service-Learning (S-L)

Service-Learning is a learning and teaching approach to developing youth through the experience of serving their community. Hence, it can be pedagogy which integrates academic courses with service to communities in need, allowing students to take full advantage of their opportunities to develop their intellectual, ethical, and perceptual capacities in ways that demonstrate to them the benefit of their education. It employs experiential facilitation methods to draw out and reinforce learning points from engaging in meeting real community needs, and is premised on experiential learning as the foundation for intellectual, moral, and civic growth.

Service-Learning is a learning and teaching approach to developing youth through the experience of serving their community.

Background to RT Project

The Reformative Training Program was initiated by the Prisons Department in their continual efforts to strengthen the developmental aspects of Reformative Trainees (RT) including social skills, academic coaching, hobby promotion and special interest activities.

It is a relatively new program, started after the Prisons Department shifted from its location at Changi Prison to the current CISCO Centre II. The objective is to help the RT boys fit into society and have interaction with students of similar age groups, as well as other befrienders. Hopefully, the students can be a role-model to the boys.

There are at any one time about 200 boys, ages between 16-21, deemed amenable by courts. Their sentences can last to 48 months. Usually the residential period is 18-36 months with the remainder of the sentence under a supervisory period, where the boys are allowed to go home, but with a curfew time imposed. Some of them are re-taking their ‘N’ and ‘O’ Levels. There is one boy currently in Ngee Ann Polytechnic and another in NUS. The rest are either working or looking for jobs. They have to report to the Prison Aftercare regularly. Their offences are mainly gang-related and petty, such as illegal assembly, housebreaking and motor theft. They are classified as low-risk offenders.

Some of the AET team members, together with the Director SDA, Director and Deputy Director BA, visited the Kaki Bukit Prison School on 27th Feb 2002. We were hosted by the management of Prisons Aftercare, who gave us a very informative introduction to the vision, philosophy and objectives of the Prison School, as well as a conducted tour. The trip helped us to better understand our role as volunteer instructors/befrienders.

Curriculum

Using the Service-Learning approach as well as from progressive realization of the skill levels of the RTs, the student trainers were actively involved in tailoring the curriculum on a weekly basis.

The teaching methodology and broad topics were planned with the trainers as follows, but some changes were made along the way:

• 2 trainers per session with 8 trainees
• Problem-based approach with simple projects given at regular intervals
• Find out the special needs and interests from the trainees
• Grouping of trainees for project works
• Include Service-Learning plans
• Making the lessons fun
• Evaluation of student learning

Practical Project

All six training sessions were held at the office of the Prison Aftercare Supervision Section at CISCO Centre, Jalan Afifi.

Authors

Team Members were Lecturers from the School of Business and Accountancy, Ngee Ann Polytechnic.
T. Elangovan (Facilitator)
Joyce Tang (Team Leader/ S-L Facilitator)
Chee Hock Wah (Member - WIL Coordinator)
Lim Wei Kong, Steven (Member - Editor, Strategy and Resource)
Pang Loke Wee (Member - Development and Sourcing/ S-L Facilitator)