PR students from Professional Media Workshop module under Mr. Hardip Singh Rekhraj, Senior Lecturer, School of Media & Communication worked closely with micro entrepreneurs that were grappling to recover from the economic drought. Students were orientated on the devastating impact of the pandemic, which stirred their conscience to identify eight deserving businesses that could benefit from a wide coverage of PR on various news platforms. Unlike usual group work, students were exposed to Agile Project Management and the classes were grouped into teams to increase team efficiency.
The student teams underwent intensive media-relations coaching, which involved stakeholder management with senior editors from the mainstream print media, producing newsworthy collaterals (pitch letters, pitch decks, newsworthy features, etc.) and exploring further opportunities in broadcast and digital media. Typically, skills above are only acquired in the first two years of working at a PR agency. This accelerated form of learning will increase employability significantly.
This learning journey gave the students the opportunity to create interesting and data driven news articles highlighting the hardships and micro entrepreneurs were experiencing during this tough times. This PR exercise by the students gave the opportunity to raise funds up to RM 150,000. The students were highly motivated and this gave them a lot of learning experience.
