Showcasing talent in data analytics
HELP UNIVERSITY (HU) recently ran an Analytics Challenge during the annual HELP TechDay, which involved 12 schools and 101 students from all over Malaysia.
The annual HELP TechDay was aimed at engaging and exposing secondary school students to key emerging technologies.
The Faculty of Computing and Digital Technology (FCDT) at HU was key to driving this initiative to educate young students on the importance and relevance of big data and analytics, and how it affects and affects daily lives.
The importance of analytics was reflected in HU’s choice of topic for its 21st Strategy Seminar held during the Annual Convocation 2018, which was “The Analytics Organisation: Challenges & Directions”.
Dean of the faculty Dr Sien Ven Yu said, “The challenge was designed to provide students with new and unique technological skills to prove how data can make a difference in making important decisions.”
Dr Sien said technological literacy is an essential skill for successful living in the 21st century, and the faculty aimed to equip and educate students with the essential technology skills that improve learning, productivity and performance.
The Analytics Challenge began with a two-hour interactive, hands-on workshop to introduce visualisations as a way to communicate data.
Secondly, to develop data literacy, the students had to explore and analyse data to interpret information and draw conclusions by using bubble charts, scatter plots and bar charts.
In the Analytics Challenge competition, winners were chosen among those who use the newly acquired analytics skills to produce visualisations from the provided data.
The schools, which include homeschooling institutions, that participated were SMK Sultan Abdul Samad, Chong Hwa Independent High School, Ivory Training Academy, Jit Sin Independent High School, Tsin Jin High School, SMK Bandar Sri Damansara 2, Kwang Hua High School and SMJK Pei Hwa.
Kwang Hua Private High School student Puah Jin Hong said, “This type of event is interesting because through these activities, we can gauge what sort of expertise and resources a university has and whether we should study there.”
Nur Intan Solehan from SMK La Salle said, “I learnt a lot of things and how part of the analytics course looks like. Considering that this kind of job is in great demand, it is beneficial to be able to join the challenge.”
Mathematics and ICT teacher Riswin Singh, from home-schooling institution Ivory Training Academy, believed the workshops and analytics challenge allowed students to develop friendships while learning new technologies.
Kwang Hua High School computer teacher Lim Bee Lian pointed out the importance of students knowing that analytics exists and it is not enough to be good in just one or two subjects.
The prizes were awarded in gold, silver and bronze, with five winners selected for each category.
The gold winners include Lim Yu Kang, Soo Weng Ming and Pua Jia Hong from Kwang Hua Private School, Cheong Bing Zheng from SMK Taman Sea and Thum Yi Wen of Jit Sin Independent High School.
In silver were Lim Xin Hong and Chao Hao Wei from Chong Hwa Independent School, Lim Wei Hang and Tan Zi Hua from Jit Sin Independent School and Tey Tat Tze from Confucian Private Secondary School.
Bronze category winners were all from Chong Hwa Independent High School – Tham Jun Lynn, Yu Jun Wei, Leong Kok Jeong, Foo Wei Chuen and Ting Zhen Yu.
Top scoring students, Soo Weng Ming from Kwang Hua Private School and Cheong Bing Zheng from SMK Taman Sea were awarded scholarships for the first year in a HELP IT programme worth RM18,000.
The faculty offers the Diploma in Information Technology, the Bachelor of Information Technology (Hons) and the Bachelor of Information Technology (Hons) in Business Information Management and Mobile Computing.
FCDT offers a six-month postgraduate certificate in Software Engineering and students can transfer these credits earned from this postgraduate certificate to complete a master’s degree in Software Engineering from International Technological University in San Jose, California.
■ For details, call 03-2716 2000, e-mail marketing@help.edu.my or log on to http://www.help.edu.my