Divine Word University hosted a successful Open Day at the Madang Campus on Sunday (6th May, 2018).
The 2018 Open Day, described by the judges as “the best” in a while, saw students making effective use of modern information and communication technologies (ICTs) at their disposal.
The students, reflective of the ICT-proliferated age they are growing up in, used the various capabilities of technology to display the academic, research and community engagement activities of their faculties and departments.
The Open Day is an annual calendar event of DWU, hosted at the Madang Campus, where students are given the opportunity to showcase the University through interactive displays of their academic, research and community engagement activities to the public.
The event enables the public, including partners in the public and private sectors and potential future students, to learn and know about the University and its students’ work.
At the end of the 2018 Open Day, a winner for the “best faculty display” had to be picked, and the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) was the pick of the judges. Among the attention-grabbing displays by the students in the four departments in FASS – Communication Arts, Governance and Leadership, PNG Studies and International Relations, and Social and Religious Studies - was an innovative use of a hologram and a simulated television talk show on the topic of APEC which Papua New Guinea is hosting this year.
The hologram created by second year Bachelor of Communication Arts student Anton Selve demonstrated the imminent future scenario of an ICT-driven university education where lecturers would be teaching more students online and less in the classrooms. This is the direction DWU is embarking on with its strategic push for online teaching and learning mode and the blended mode (combined classroom and online teaching and learning) under its Third Decade Strategic Plan 2016-2026.
Already many of the key academic activities at the Madang campus, such as examination and tests, administration of assignments and sharing of lecture notes and readings, are done online. This is due to DWU’s trend-setting policy decision to give laptops to students on full registration several years ago and the availability of 24-hour wireless internet connectivity on the campus.
The simulated television talk show on APEC hosted by the FASS students on Open Day was a joint effort of students of International Relations in the Department of PNG Studies and International Relations and their counterparts from the Department of Communication Arts (Journalism).
The other three faculties – Faculty of Business and Informatics, Faculty of Education and Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences – also made effective use of ICTs in their displays.
Members of the public received vital information about the different academic programs in the university and how they related to society at large. One such example was the income tax calculation booth set up by the Business-Accounting students and this concerned personal income tax and tax rebates.
According to the Bachelor of Business-Accounting students, many ordinary people knew little or nothing about how their income tax was calculated and did not even know they were eligible for school fee rebates from the Internal Revenue Commission. To help the public, the accounting students had in place a personal income tax calculator booth for the visitors to check out their taxes and potential for school fee rebate.
The members of the Faculty of Education did their displays that highlighted the importance of education for life and national development.
While the Faculty of Education is the biggest in the University in terms of student numbers, majority of the students are in separate campuses in Wewak and Rabaul respectively, leaving Madang campus mostly to post-graduate students.
Students in the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences also did their level best to promote health and well-being in their displays.
Their colleagues from the DWU-affiliated Lutheran School of Nursing nearby conducted spot-checks on people’s vitals such as blood sugar levels, blood pressure and signs of obesity. Ends/
(Professor Nembou and guest speaker for Open Day and BSP branch manager Barry Namongo listen to senior student Bilu Kasanda explain one of the displays of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences)