VIRTUAL TOUR
2012
1 AugTeaching and Learning System Development Using the Praxis Approach
The School of IT had recently organized a technical workshop for its entire IT academic staff and students conducted by Lance Nelson the Chief Information Officer of UCSI University.
Lance who has had more than 10 years of experience in using a proprietary tool called POSSE which is not commonly used in Malaysia. According to Lance, there are less than 5 POSSE experts in the whole of Malaysia and all of them are working in UCSI University.
The two and a half hour workshop session for both the IT academic staff and students was organized for the purpose of exposing them to the technology used and system architecture for the newly launched Integrated Information System (IIS) developed by Lance and his team. According to the Head of School of IT, Ms Chloe Thong, the technical workshop was organized by the school with the purpose of exposing the academic staff and students to the technical aspects of IIS.
"The school exposes them to the real life system so that they have the opportunity to learn and apply their IT knowledge and skills in their final year independent project."
She added that the students and academic staff are urged to form a partnership with Lance and his team for system development and enhancement. Students are encouraged to participate in this project as part of their final year independent project, and learn how to enhance the system. The project supervision will come from both academic staff and industry (co- supervision). By participating in real life IT projects, students are more employable and ready for the industry; this has been the mission of the School of IT in providing industry-relevant courses and producing industry-ready graduates.
"Students were taught about the third normal form of database design within the classroom, which is a standard for developing database tables, however, in the IIS project students are exposed to the fifth normal form of database design, therefore students gained good exposure to real life IT projects, which added value to classroom teaching", added Chloe.
Below are the comments from lecturers and students:
| Name of students/lecturers | Comments |
Tiang Yee Hoong | The workshop is useful for my final year independent project. It gives me a rough idea on what POSSE is and how it works. I've thought of doing radio frequency identification (RFID) for my IP and when Mr Lance mentioned about attendance and RFID I've gained some idea on what to do on my IP. I might use these tools for my IP. |
Ong Huey Fang Head, Business Information Science & Diploma in IT Programme | The workshop is useful for me as an IP student. It gives me a rough idea on what POSSE is and how it works. |
Gee Meng Yew | First of all, it is a very good workshop as it explains how the IIS system in UCSI University works. However, I would recommend that this workshop should be open to all the students as the speaker said, this system is easy to learn and develop even for a person with no IT background. I also thank UCSI University for giving us the opportunity to join the IIS development team and for allowing us to use it as the final year project. I will seriously take this as a consideration of my final year project title. |
Gayathri (lecturer) | IIS Workshop - I find that this workshop is more beneficial for the students. The content of delivery focused on the database structure and how the workflow / business processes have been developed using an intermediate software that is able to process information in a large scale. The workshop is good for students who are interested to complete IP or intend to work for IIS. |
