Page 175 - rise 2017

The Andragogy of Teaching Animation in Malaysian Universities: An Approach to Promote Social,
Cultural and Ethical Awareness While Enhancing the Aesthetic Values.

Juhanita Jiman

Multimedia University, Selangor

Abstract
This paper aims to demonstrate how androgogical approach can help educators to facilitate animation
students with better understanding of their acquired technical knowledge and skills while introducing
them with crucial content and ethical values. In this borderless world, it is important for the educators to
know that they are dealing with young adults who are heavily influenced by their surroundings.
Naturally, educators are not only handling academic issues, they are also burdened with social
obligations. Appropriate androgogical approach can be beneficial for both educators and students to
tackle these problems. We used to think that teaching pedagogy is important in all level of age,
unfortunately pedagogical approach is not entirely applicable to university students because they are no
longer children. Pedagogy is a teaching approach focusing on children, whereas andragogy is specifically
focussing on teaching adults and helping them to learn better. As adults mature, they become
increasingly independent and responsible for their own actions. In many ways, the pedagogical model
does not account for such developmental changes, and thus produces tension, resentment, and resistance
in individual. (Knowles, 1984)[1]. The ever changing technology has resulted animation students to be
very competitive in acquiring their technical skills, making them forget and neglecting the importance of
the core values of a story. As educators, we have to guide them not only to excel in achieving knowledge,
skills and technical expertise, but at the same time, show them what is right or wrong and encourage
them to inculcate moral values in their work.
Keywords: Andragogy, animation, artistic contents, productive learning environment

Introduction
Malcolm Shepherd Knowles (1913 – 1997) was an American educator, famous for introducing the term
Andragogy as a term for adult education. According to Malcolm Knowles, andragogy is the art and
science of adult learning. In Greek, androgogy means man-leading in comparison to pedagogy, which
means child-leading. Adults’ attitude of learning is perceived to be totally the opposite as compared to
children’s way of learning. We have to use different approach while working with this group of students,
especially when we are dealing with artistic and content creation matters. Before 1950, all research was
focused on children and there was not much evidence about adults’ learning process. The term
"andragogy", although known since 1833 when the German Alexander Kapp used it to address to a
theory of Plato, however, in modern education, it appears only after the early 1960s, when it was used to
express the well-defined characteristics of adult learners that influence not only their learning interest, but
also their learning ability, compared to those of younger children. Teaching animation in Malaysian
tertiary level institutions is very interesting and challenging. Since the development and the rise of
multimedia industry in the mid-90s, many private and public higher learning institutions begin to offer
and encourage more students to learn animation. Prior to this, animation is being taught and learned
informally through exchanging experience and experimentation with various media. Eventually,
animation course was first introduced formally in Malaysia through Multimedia University in the late
1990s with the aim to expedite the multimedia and entertainment industry, as well as providing talent
pools for Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) in Cyberjaya and Malaysia at large. Animation then was a
new and ‘BIG’ thing to Malaysia. Soon after that, the number of higher learning institutions offering such
courses in their programme of studies is increased, as this encourages more students to study this course
and concurrently help to develop the animation industry in the country. As Jiman and Mohamed point
out,

‘… [The] active numbers of students taking such courses in local and foreign universities, the
country is confident that animation industry in Malaysia will substantially develop further in a
very near future.’ [2] (Jiman & Mohamed 2002)