Three lessons from exhibiting final-year projects online

Hello, I’m a dean of the IT department, Siam University, Bangkok, Thailand. In the next couple of minutes, we’re going to be showing you the tools, or the experience of our students, in our IT department to fulfil their requirements. 

This is a compulsory requirement, by the way, for our fourth-year students to exhibit their final projects online. Actually, they’re not online, but this year we’re going do it using our online tools, like Google Meet and Facebook Live.  

What they have done in the past is they’re going to have to go physically rent out the exhibition hall from the art gallery somewhere downtown. This costs them a lot of money, and of course it’s not possible during the pandemic time in Bangkok.

So, what we have done is the students, my students, of course, they just try to utilise the tools like Google Meet and Facebook Live to exhibit projects online.

What they have learned are three things:

Number one, they are really – and this is what we have learned as well – they are really comfortable with using tools rather than face-to-face communication.  

It’s not actually a good thing, but I’m pretty sure that, OK, this is how the millennial responds, you know, to those tools, you know, online or versus offline and so on.

Number two is that they gain wider audiences, you know, worldwide rather than just only in Bangkok.  

Number three is that they got  direct responses from many people. Unlike,  you know, you just physically show your projects somewhere downtown, you’re not going to get direct responses and, you know, real-time responses that fast.  

OK, so, see, I am pretty sure that you know with the pandemic there are, of course, pros and cons about it. But we just try to maximise, you know, using the tools as much as we can in Thailand.  

I certainly hope you enjoyed the video and perhaps you can, pretty much, if you have any questions, please let me know. Thank you very much, to conclude, and goodbye.

This video was produced by Dechanuchit Katanyutaveetip, dean of the IT department at Siam University.