_{Bridging Concepts and Reality: The financial planning workshop} 

The “Learning beyond the Classroom” project organised by the Economics Department of the SACE International (SACEi) programme which came to an end recently was a great success. The primary aim of the programme was to reinforce the concepts learnt in the Economics lectures by allowing students to make connections between theoretical concepts and the real-world, beyond the confinements of the classroom.

Among the activities that were held were a field trip to Gardenia Bakeries, a financial awareness workshop for youths and an open-day where students set up booths to bring campus-wide awareness on various economic concepts.

One of the students who participated in the “Learning beyond the Classroom” project, Sim Yik Chyin, said that she gained a lot of knowledge and awareness of the world of economics. She added that the project had paved a valuable avenue for her and her classmates to demonstrate their ability to apply economic concepts, principles and models to real world issues.

Another student, Muhammad Hazuan Sakri also believed that the project had enabled him and his peers to gain more insights on how economic concepts and theories that are learnt during lectures and tutorials can be applied to real life scenarios. For instance, he said, that concepts such as ‘delayed gratification’, and ‘financial intelligence quotient’ were applied during the financial literacy workshop.”

The Head of the School of Pre University Education, Dr. R. Sivabala Naidu said that the school places a lot of emphasis to real world learning to future-proof the students.  He praised the Economics lecturers in SACEi for developing the project with ample opportunities for collaborative and cooperative learning which had also fostered comradeship among the students. He added that more of such projects are on the drawing board for other subjects that are offered in the prestigious Australian Matriculation programme. 

_{Enhancing Interpersonal Skills:  The main approach in the project was collaborative learning}