Thumbs up: Khalifa (second from left) with his students (from left) Danniel, Danish and Elisha.
TO promote media and information literacy within their community, three students at Keningau Vocational College (KVC) in Sabah came together to create a board game.
Their project, titled “Clickbait: What Will Your Story Be?”, recently earned them an RM1,000 grant in a media and information literacy competition – comprising RM500 for being one of the top 30 teams and an additional RM500 for winning the best team prize.
Organised by Media Education For All (ME4A), the Projek Pandai Media competition was open to university and secondary school students in South-East Asia.
The entry, submitted by Elisha Carmen Erick, Danniel Imannuel Sanadi and Mohd Danish Shah Abdullah, was among the 113 vying for the top prize.
From there, 10 finalist teams were selected to showcase their projects at a virtual summit held on Jan 26.
The Sabahan team beat out the competition with Elisha’s presentation winning the judges’ approval.
Expressing her joy, the team leader said the trio took part in the competition as they believe in coming up with innovations that can help the community.
She shared that they opted to use a board game to promote media and information literacy as they had always been interested in board games.
“It was from there that we thought we could innovate a board game that educates people on how to distinguish accurate and false information in the digital world,” the 16-year-old told StarEdu.
“So far, our game has educated students in Keningau and Tenom while also maintaining the fun elements needed for the gameplay which were carefully integrated by Danniel and Danish,” she said, adding that the board game cultivates critical awareness and imagination.
She also shared that as a nod to the students’ background, the card sleeves of the board game contain snapshots of Malaysian cultural atmospheres that are linked to Sabahan heritage and identity.
The team’s mentor Khalifa Affnan, who is the KVC Information and Communication Technology Unit head, attributed the students’ success to their hard work and diligence.
He said the students had come together to work on the board game since the final weeks of November last year.
Then, over a period of four days in January, the students simulated a few rounds of their board game to 100 participants to gather feedback and analyse how players would fare in the gameplay.
Khalifa said empowering students to understand and critically evaluate media content is important for navigating the vast amounts of information available online.
“By taking the lead in promoting media and information literacy, students not only enhance their own digital skills but also contribute to creating a more informed and responsible society,” he said.
He added that he looks forward to the next phase of the Clickbait board game.
“I am confident that the team will continue to make a positive impact in promoting media literacy among students,” he said.
Elisha said the team plans to use the RM1,000 grant on materials and product merchandise to refine the gameplay in hopes of having the board game marketed.
Congratulating the team on their win, KVC director Nordin Akup expressed his hope that the team will continue to expand and promote the project so that it can benefit the wider community.
The ME4A movement is facilitated by education social enterprise Arus Academy.
Farhan, 21, a student in Selangor, is a participant of the BRATs Young Journalist Programme run by The Star’s Newspaper-in-Education (Star-NiE) team.
For updates on the BRATs programme, go to facebook.com/niebrats.
