An abstract prepared by Mr Pinaki Dutta, Senior Lecturer of the Business School, has been accepted for presentation at the Leisure Studies Association Conference to be held from 8th to 12th July 2008 at Liverpool John Moores University, UK.

This year’s conference topic is on “Community, Capital and Cultures: Leisure and Regeneration as Cultural Practice”. More about the conference @ http://www.leisure-studies-association.info/lsaweb/2008/Main.html

We are pleased to announce that two of TMC’s Higher Diploma in Mass Communication graduates who progressed to Liverpool John Moores University for their BA (Hons) Mass Communications degree have achieved first class honours awards. They are Ms. Norazlina Wagiman and Ms. Ruth Martinelly. Congratulations on their achievement!

In response to feedback from staff and students, all of TMC proprietary Diploma and Higher Diploma programmes are now modular. The academic year has been broken into 4 semesters, each of 10 weeks duration.

Units will now be delivered on a modular basis. This means that full-time students taking either the Diploma or Higher Diploma can now expect to take 3 units a semester on average. Part-time students will typically take 2 units a semester. This coupled with the changes in assessment will simplify delivery, reduce the stress on the students and improve the students’ learning and performance.

The change in assessment leads us to a more effective student centered learning approach. Many of the units will now be assessed using coursework/project(s) and will not have an examination component. All Diploma programmes will be assessed by means of coursework only while the Higher Diploma programmes will have a mixture of both coursework and/or examinations.

As part of this change, we are also moving to a lecture/tutorial system, e.g. full-time students will have a 90 minute lecture followed by a 90 minute tutorial. This will enable lecturers to better monitor student’s progress, increase the level of student participation and improve the learning experience since students learn much more by doing rather than listening.

In addition, a compulsory non-credit Study Skills and Research module has been introduced to the curriculum to develop students’ independent learning skills and to prepare them for the degree level studies.

The new academic structure will take effect from October 2007 with close monitoring on students’ performance and feedback.