Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia is set on its path to be a globally renowned university by 2025 or known as GRU 2025 in its blueprint. Due to this, various international initiatives have been planned and executed by the university toward achieving this overriding goal. One of the projects undertaken under this mission takes place in the actual classroom setting involving the teaching and learning process. This venture is named Global Learning and is placed under the Centre for Innovative Delivery and Learning Development (CIDL), UiTM. Its main focus is to bring international connection and live interaction directly to the classroom. This undertaking aspires to deliver world class education and at the same time, benefit students so that they can be competent graduates globally. With the acceleration in online learning and virtual meetings, Global Learning is even more relevant because UiTM students can now have international speakers in their classroom without having to leave their space.
Realising the benefit of such an innovation, UiTM Kedah Branch, Malaysia, via one of its English language classrooms, has successfully conducted a Global Learning session for its students. The English language subject is ELC650 or known in full as English for Professional Interaction, is offered to the degree students of various disciplines. This subject exposes a variety of workplace communication issues to the students and deal with a wide range of topics such as how to behave professionally, how to write emails and how to conduct formal group discussions. For the planned Global Learning session, 34 students from the classes of KAM2285C and KAM2285D who are pursuing their Bachelor of Administrative Science took part. The session took place on 3 January 2023, Tuesday, from 6.00 pm to 8.00 pm. The invited speaker was Mr. Abdul Bari Khan, is a senior lecturer at the Institute of Southern Punjab, Multan, Pakistan. The topics covered by Mr. Abdul Bari Khan were Consideration for Professional Interaction, Professional Etiquette, Politeness & Concept of Face. The session was conducted using Webex. The organising team for this session includes Syazliyati Ibrahim as the group leader, Rafidah Amat as the moderator, Dr. Nursyazwanie Mansor, Nur Hidyati Zolhani and Nurazila Abdul Aziz as the committee members.
All in all, the students gave positive feedback and managed to garner valuable insights from the invited speaker. The experiences shared by the speaker who hails from Pakistan have been able to expose the students to different perspectives on workplace issues and allow them to compare their future workplace scenarios with the ones in Pakistan.