Chanapa Noonark

Chanapa Noonark graduated with a bachelor's degree in Mass Communication from Chiang Mai University, Thailand. After her undergraduate education, she worked as a public relations consultant at a PR agency. Later, she spent two years earning her master's degree in Communication Arts at the Chulalongkorn University in Thailand. In 2015, she worked as a lecturer for Sukhothai Thammathirath Open University (STOU) in Thailand.

Noonark believes that education is important to improve people’s quality of life and plays a key role in country development. She believes that all citizens should have access to equal opportunity in education. In Thailand, there are many citizens who are educationally disadvantaged. In 2009, the research of The National Statistical Office of Thailand showed that 54 percent of the workforces have a low level of education and 17 percent of citizens need to study in order to raise job skills and increase their work opportunities. (Todsorb, 2012).

In 2015, Noonark had a chance to teach at the School of Communication Arts, Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University (STOU) in Thailand, which provides public higher education with a distance learning system for all (e.g., adolescents, adults, older people, unskilled labors, the rich, the poor, individuals with disabilities, and prisoners). There are differences of age, careers, knowledge and experience. The discipline of Communication Arts focuses on communication skill and mass media usage, and provides students with practical skills based on technology tools, but the learning system offers limited time to practice. These are teaching challenges to reach learning outcomes and get an equal education for learners.

Noonark has started setting teaching goals and have found many ways to overcome this challenge. These goals include passing on knowledge and critical thinking skill to learners, helping them gain an understanding of knowledge application with a code of professional ethics in their lives, encouraging media literacy in students, and listening to student feedback with learner-centered instruction.

The first teaching objective is for students to gain Mass Communication knowledge and critical thinking skills. In the STOU learning system, students use printed materials, online platforms, and workshops for learning. Textbooks need a thorough description with figures, pictures, and graphs to enhance their understandings including questions and answers in the end of each section. Moreover, E-learning is an online learning platform to help students’ self-paced learning and easily access content from anywhere. For example, Principles of Advertising and Public Relations engages students by presenting PowerPoint slides of lessons, Live Chat with instructors, quizzes, and web boards.

Noonark takes the feedback of students about the teaching activities and materials to inform her future lessons. Students previously said that textbooks contain too much details. Thus, she refined the contents in each textbook chapter by removing unnecessary details and increased captions of clip videos with the URL Address which students can access via the internet.

Noonark's curriculum also requires students practicing Communication Arts skills for 3 – 4 days. In a limited time, she used group discussion to precipitate deep comprehension. For example, the writing for public relations course expects students to write Press Releases efficiently. Students in each group had to analyze the structure and language of a News Release. This method also sharpens their critical thinking which is more efficient than just my lecture. Then, they had to practice Public Relations News writing with a determined topic. Nevertheless, some students didn’t understand clearly because the topic of the assignment was about businesses transaction. She took extra time to practice with them until they could do it completely. Later in the semester, she refined topics of the assignments to be a part of everyday life such as family communication or community. This tactics can articulate their writings with understandings. This is because responsibility of teachers is just not only teaching, but following and pushing them to reach learning outcomes.

Noonark's second teaching goal is that students can apply the knowledge to their real lives. Although they do not work in the Mass Communication field, communication skills are involved in their daily life. A way to reach this goal is learning by doing. For example, in the Media Production for Public Relations course, learners had to produce a radio commercial production in defined topic. She investigated their work process closely, gave suggestions and let them express their ideas without intervention totally. Ultimately, they could learn how to make a radio commercial with their actual understanding. A student who is a small restaurant owner told Noonark that she brought all knowledge to promote her restaurant. Another piece of training is confident public speaking. It helps them know tactics to persuade audiences. The students have more confidence and become guest speakers in their organizations. For instance, a student who was a prisoner becomes a guest speaker to motivate others to overcome education’s obstacles.

The final goal is to boost media literacy skills. Nowadays, people often share misinformation and spread negative comments on social media. Thus, Noonark wants students to understand how to use social media suitably and take action in their lives. She articulated an assignment with current situations and daily life issues. For example, in the Writing for Public Relations course, Before they created a communication plan to build awareness of sharing misinformation to the target audiences, she talked to them about their experience and behaviors which made them misunderstand and how that effected to others. Shared stories let them understand more about media literacy issue. She noticed in a group chat of Line application that sometimes, they shared a lot of misinformation, but some students warned their classmates to check the information deliberately. That is the result of media literacy teaching that learners are aware of using social media. Moreover, it is a proof that they reached her teaching goals.

Noonark make sure to always stay aware of being an instructor. She believes that her responsibility is not only providing knowledge to learners, but also listening to them. For example, in all courses, she always asks about their problems, dissatisfactions, and suggestions. They would feel trust, and feel free to express their feelings and perspectives. It assists to improve my teaching and their learning outcomes. As a teacher, she expects her students can achieve their learning goals. Her destination in the future is still keeping these aims and finding new ways of teaching that are up-to-date and useful for learners. She still believes that everyone can get an education and lifelong learning.