Eliminating shyness through co-curricular activities towards enhancing the career development of engineering students

摘要

The purpose of this study is to find the most effective strategies for eliminating shyness amongst engineering students through co-curricular activities. As shyness causes negative impacts towards students' development, it becomes a major concern for lecturers and student affairs departments to find strategies that can solve the problem. However, shyness cannot be eliminated solely through the formal classroom learning. Ironically, co-curricular activities provide a good platform to develop students' potentials, but previous research failed to analyse the specific co-curricular activities that can decrease the impacts of shyness. This paper seeks to address this gap. 102 articles were reviewed and 6 articles were used to suggest co-curricular activities that can reduce the impact of shyness. Finding shows that co-curricular activities such as debate, choir, sports team, physical activities and exercise, career and technical student organizations and entrepreneurship clubs and societies are found to be the core activities that can enhance the social and communication skill, participation in the teaching and learning, self-esteem and career development of shy students. The recommendation activities can be used by the student affairs departments to eliminate shyness amongst engineering students by ensuring their active participation in the respective clubs.