For the past few days, 9th June 2009 till today, 12th June 2009, Republic Polytechnic has been hosting the PBL Symposium.

What is this all about? Basically, this Symposium is to allow people from all over the world to learn more about PBL and share their views on PBL. Republic Polytechnic is proud to be the host for the PBL Symposium once again this year and it is certainly a privilege for me to be able to serve alongside with the rest of the Student Body from the X-Synthesis and Student Ambassadors in this event.

So what exactly is PBL? It actually stands for Problem Based Learning which is adopted by Republic Polytechnic in a large scale. In this Symposium days, delegates from different countries get to investigate how to effectively adopt this teaching method and implement it well in their countries.

I was being placed as a Presentation Helper for all 4 days. In the first day, my main role was to be in the presentation venue. I have another partner working with me. Both of us were to split ourselves to the IT half and the Admin half. The IT half is responsible for collecting 2 Laptops, 1 Charger, 1 Presentation Pointer and 1 empty Thumbdrive. As for the Admin Half, we were supposed to take note of the attendance and assist in giving out the feedback form at the end of the session. We were also required to get the backup thumbdrive from the Conference Secreteriat (if any) and to ensure that the delegates coming for the session are wearing the symposium tags. Both of us are required to stay in the presentation venue for the whole of the presentation to ensure that things run on smoothly.

From the second day till the end of today, I was placed as the Lift Lobby Usher. In this role, I was kind of in charge for the Presentation Helpers. I was then required to hold a walkie-talkie and ensure that things run on smoothly inside the rooms and ensure that required set ups are done appropriately. Things like microphones (for lecture theatres), laptops, and thumbdrives are part of my duty that it is being set up and prepared for the presenters. On top of that, I have to usher the delegates to the presentation venues and ensure that they are coming for the right sessions.

All in all, I added a few more steps to it in my last day and last session of it. I ensured that all speakers have at least one bottle of water and that if the delegates were to ask us for water, we wouldn't be saying "sorry, we don't have" but instead, to be able to produce the bottle of water for them.

Today was the most hectic day for me. I have been speaking into the walkie talkie so many times that my friend was telling me "I keep hearing your voice over the walkie talkie you know?". I know that as the situation was very chaotic in the sense that things didn't really run on very smoothly. I had to run all the way back to HQ to get water for my speaker as she asked for one. From then on, we started packing water not only for the speaker, but also the delegates. I had lots of things going on my side during the day and have been the person that they were calling, at least, kind of, as compared to the past few days.

All in all, things that I thought could be improved would be that if we had more wireless microphones, we could ensure that the presentation helpers have a microphone each and stand at the sides of the room. This would help ensure that delegates sitting at the side of the room would be able to ask the speaker questions.

I have managed to gain a lot of valuable lessons from this symposium and till now, when I stand at the lift lobby, I couldn't help to ask the people coming out of the lift "Good morning/afternoon Sir/Madam, which session are you looking for? ... This way please...Have an enjoyable session" or "Good morning/afternoon Sir/Madam, are you looking for xxx session? ... This way please...Have an enjoyable session". Great joke! But although my feet hurts everyday after my symposium duty ends, it was all worthwhile.

Labels: Events, Lessons learnt, School

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