New programme allows Republic Poly students to design career, life goals

It will help them discover strengths and interests earlier, and tailor their courses

- Sandra Davie

Students entering the polytechnics yearly have more than a hundred diploma courses to choose from across the five polytechnics.

But at 16 years of age, not many of them have a good understanding of their unique strengths and talents and many end up picking a course that does not match their education or career aspirations later.

Republic Polytechnic (RP) is looking at solving this problem of "mismatch" by putting its students through a programme that will help them discover their strengths and interests earlier.

From 2025, under the Designing Your Life (DYL) programme, incoming RP students will be guided by their lecturers who will use a design thinking approach developed by Stanford University in the US to explore and plan their personal and career goals.

The programme will take students through the process of figuring out their life goals and job preferences by approaching the challenge the way a product designer would. They will be taught to approach problems with curiosity, reframe dysfunctional beliefs and prototype ideas to figure out what would be the right fit for them.

Once they have identified some fields that interest them, students will then be guided to tailor their three-year diploma course to explore their interests and hone their natural talents.

By April 2025, about 800 RP lecturers will be trained as mentors, and they will continue to engage students for two years after they graduate, guiding them in the formative years of their career.

RP principal Jeanne Liew said the polytechnic, which takes in 4,000 students a year, is in the process of updating its curriculum to offer a wider range of learning options, so that students can tailor their educational pathways based on their aspirations and strengths.