Session: Students Track (UCTS)

Background

UCTS embarked on a Service-Learning journey in 2018 and funded a research project that established partnership with the Bawang Assan and Machan communities to host local and international service-learning students. Later on, in 2020 UCTS and the World Fuzhou Association established a new SL program “Cultural Assimilation in Digital Interactive Museum (CADIM)”, for digitization of the exhibits and processes of World Fuzhou Gallery in Sibu, Malaysia. Although the pandemic poses a challenge to field research, the journey of learning continues and the CADIM project established new partnerships of eService-Learning with the students from Malmö University Sweden, University of Turku Finland and Namibia University of Science and Technology, Windhoek Namibia.

Panel Discussion

In this forum the students of UCTS and community partners of the Service-Learning program will reflect on how the community-based project and field experience connects to their learning activities, skills, values, and their wider civic responsibilities. The session will also provide insight into how community members and students can work together and leverage their assets to meet the community's development and students’ academic goals.

Panelists

David Lim is a student of Bachelor of Computer Sciences in UCTS. He is a Mobile App Developer and Game Designer. David was part of the CADIM project and also eSL program with local school and international partners Turku University, Finland and Namibia University of Science and Technology, Namibia. During his spare time, he builds software projects for fun.

Toh Eng Heng is an entrepreneur started his business in Song, Sarawak. He graduated from the School of Computing and Creative Media, University College of Technology Sarawak in 2020. He is one of the first students who joined the Global citizenship and Sustainability Program and joined the students group of Cornell University to work with Bawang Assan community in Sibu, Sarawak. He developed the Internet of Things (IoT) for rain detection at the longhouse. The final project began as a data collection project to capture rain patterns, but during an interview with the community, he discovered that they used it to determine whether Bawang Assan is currently raining heavily or drizzling. Using this information, the community will decide whether to stop for a cup of coffee or to wear raincoats on the way back from Sibu.

Cheng Haw Yih is a descendant of Fuzhou. He is currently doing his internship in University College of Technology Sarawak, Sibu. He worked as the project coordinator in IPID-Asia Chapter and engaged as a tutor with the HCI Service-Learning program. He is currently planning to take a Master degree and he is interested to explore co-designing technologies with underserved communities. He loves music and musicians

Moderator

Khairunnisa Ibrahim is a lecturer at the School of Computing and Creative Media in UCTS. She earned her Master of Science (Research) from the Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS), Malaysia. Before joining UCTS, she was attached to Universiti Teknologi MARA as a faculty member. As a young academician, she is optimistic about Service-Learning as a pedagogical approach for teaching and application of theoretical concepts in real life situations.