Inculcating Life Skills among College Students through Films

Abstract

The present job scenario demands aspiring professionals to be highly focused and targeted in the area of their work, expecting them to be proficient in their one-to-one dealings with their peers, superiors and subordinates. It requires them to be highly skilled in this technology-driven world, demanding them to be proficient in life skills such as interpersonal, leadership, time management, negotiation, critical thinking and problem solving, which would enable them to deliver the best in their personal and professional life. One of the effective methodologies to develop life skills among the college students is through storytelling. Cinema has proven to be a successful medium to develop and sustain life skills among university students. As said by Syed Sultan Ahmed who uses cinema to teach life skills to students, “A lot of knowledge in the past was acquired from books. But today, we live in a world where a lot of content is relayed by the audio-visual media. It is the only medium that children can relate to and are naturally drawn to them”.1 The paper attempts to explore the concept of life skills as understood and experienced by university students as part of their course structure. It deals with the concept of inculcating life skills among university students with a special emphasis on the case study of students at BITS, Pilani through certain specific course modules. This paper specifically focuses on the observations of the course Short Film and Video Production, and the findings show a substantial difference in their understanding and practical implication through the course modules selected as a part of course assignments.