ST News Literacy Champions event empowers lecturers in understanding students’ POV

Lecturers who participate in the programme receive curated resource packages individually tailored to the modules they teach and free ST subscriptions to be able to better integrate the news into their daily teaching.

Attending lecturers said that they found the event helpful in learning about how to use news in the classroom.

Charlotte Char, a lecturer at Republic Polytechnic’s Centre for Foundational Studies, said: “It was a great opportunity to find out more about how to engage young people with the news.

“We already use some video content in our classroom, but we may want to have another look at the type and length of the videos that we use as a hook for our lessons.”

Rebecca Lim, a lecturer at Temasek Polytechnic’s School of Humanities and Social Sciences, added that she noticed the way her students consume the news had been changing.

She said: “Sometimes, it’s a struggle for (our students) to read long-form articles so I really liked the suggestion of using videos as a hook so our students engage with different forms of media.”

For James Sharpe, a lecturer at Ngee Ann Polytechnic’s School of Film and Media Studies, the session was reassurance that “the direction that the industry is headed in is in line with the young journalists in the mass communication diploma and the content they want to create”.

He added that the session was also a chance for him to connect with other educators: “Educational institutions tend to be quite siloed so being able to come together and hear questions from like-minded educators is very fascinating and positive.”

ST editor Jaime Ho said: “We’ve been working with polytechnic and ITE lecturers over the past year with the aim of making news and current affairs more relatable to younger people.”

“We’re of course deeply aware that as with others, younger Singaporeans will get their news from a wide variety of sources and formats, especially on social and video platforms. We’re therefore collaborating with these lecturers to help young people evoke an interest in the world around them, and to understand how to engage on each of these platforms through which they get their news.”