To help student associations effectively manage and develop their autonomy, strengthen exchanges between college extracurricular activity supervisors, and jointly seek solutions to student autonomy related issues, the Youth Development Administration (YDA), Ministry of Education (MOE), held the “2019 College Extracurricular Activity Supervisors Convention” on March 4-5, which was attended by over 130 college extra-curricular activity supervisors.
The convention agenda was divided into four sessions on “Student Autonomy Issue Sharing”, “Student Autonomy Workshop”, “Group Discussion” and “Concluding Forum”. Apart from offering opportunities for deeper discussion on extracurricular activity supervision and student autonomy, student speakers at the “2019 College Student Association Communication Platform Forum” were invited to share the results of their dialogue with the Deputy Minister. In addition, Dr. Chen Ming-kuo, author of the “2018 Taiwan College Student Association Current Status Survey”, was invited to share the current developmental status of student associations, and give the college extracurricular activity supervisors a more complete understanding of student autonomy.
According to a self-assessment by college extracurricular activity supervisors, during the process of interaction with student associations, the four areas most in need of improvement were “team leadership and interpersonal communication”, “student rights and school rules”, “knowledge of academic affairs and civic literacy” and “ground rules for meetings and participation in campus affairs”. In light of this, YDA included these issues in the “Student Autonomy Workshop” program given by invited experts and academics. In addition, regarding the current challenges faced by colleges in counseling students, the convention also included the three discussion issues of “financial literacy and management”, “campus conflict resolution” and “skills transfer and training”. By breaking into small groups for discussions guided by experienced facilitators with rich experience in counseling autonomous student organizations, the college extracurricular activity supervisors talked about their problems together, and proposed feasible solutions.
In today’s concluding discussion, college extracurricular activity supervisors told MOE officials about the problems they had dealing with the process of student autonomy. Lo Ching-Shuei, director general of YDA, MOE, said he hoped that by holding the two-day convention, through the energy of observational learning and experience transfer, consensus building and progressive extracurricular activities, the participants could think out-of-the-box about student association counseling, and change their relationship to become partners, so as to jointly respond to the recent rapid development of student autonomy, campus culture and other trending issues.