"Global ha jo" sold ice flakes during the Daedong festival in order to raise money for the children in third world countries. Photo provided by Global ha jo.

Students practice variety of hands-on activities to benefit society

A total of 400 group activities had been organized in 33 Share Leadership classes last year. Groups composed of eight to ten students chose one subject area and materialized it with a topic in which they are interested.

One group chose a topic about the distortion of history, which specifically deals with Japan’s act of distorting modern history.

“We picked out and summarized contents that we think are necessary to know by reading related texts, receiving help from professors and carrying out a survey to examine how much people know about distorting the history,” Yoon Soo-jin (Philosophy, 2) said. “Then we made a relevant video and showed it to other students at school.”

Another group of students created a project entitled “Getting closer to Hanbok” to transcend the beauty of the Korean traditional outfit, Hanbok.

“We not only wanted to introduce the beauty of Hanbok to foreigners but also to the general public by wearing it on the streets,” Heo Sung-sil (Social Studies Education, 2) said. “We occasionally wore Hanbok at school and uploaded photos of us wearing the outfit on our newly created Facebook page for this project. Also, we made three videos showing the beauty of Hanbok.”


However, some students mentioned there were some drawbacks in the process of carrying out their plans for the activities due to the problem being a one-off, instead of a long-term project.

“We originally wanted to give donations and use our specialty in physical education by tutoring physical education at local community centers, but we were unable to carry out our plan, and had to change it five times due to time constraints and limitations,” Ko Min-jeong (Human Movement Studies, 2) said. “Many institutions rejected our proposals because they wanted volunteers who could consistently offer service to the students.”

There were other numerous project topics ranging from daily matters to high-leveled socially conscious problems. Some of the themes were purifying rivers, creating braille maps for the blind and recycling plastic cups on campus.

Relative evaluation brings question to original purpose of Share Leadership

 
Despite the good intentions of Share Leadership, there are still some issues and complaints about the course due to the grading system. Students questioned the relative evaluation system on Share Leadership. They claim that it contradicts the purpose of the course by evaluating students on their activities for sharing. Based on their beliefs, the evaluation method made the time and effort they put in to planning and advertising the project meaningless.

“Students were only tied to get better grades than others within the relative evaluation system and there was no motivation to think or realize what sharing really is,” Choi Yoon-young (International Studies, 2) said.

Share Leadership criticizes the exceedingly heated competition on modern society, and yet students are relatively evaluated, forming a competitive composition.

“I think Share Leadership evaluating students objectively and relatively is a paradox,” Joo Soo-yeon (Orchestral Instruments, 2) said.

On the other hand, there are those who do not think absolute evaluation system is necessary for Share Leadership.

“Other classes are graded relatively too so the relative evaluation system did not seem like a serious issue to me,” Lee Ji-hyun (Science Education, 2) said. “If you receive good grades, you will be satisfied; yet, you will be disappointed if you earn bad grades. My peers did not have a big problem with the evaluation system either.”

The professors of Share Leadership acknowledge such issues regarding the grading system.

“Share Leadership requires students to collaborate rather than excel individually,” professor Yang said. “Thus, an evaluation method that does not go against the examination on communal coexistence is demanded. The current relative evaluation method has the need to be applied with the qualities coinciding with the education objectives of Share Leadership.”

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