HELP Tech Day showcases talent of students in Data Analytics
THE main aim of the annual HELP Tech Day is to engage and expose secondary school students to key emerging technologies, and for 2018an Analytics Challenge was successfully held involving 12 schools and 101 students from all over Malaysia at HELP University (HU).
The Faculty of Computing and Digital Technology (FCDT) of HU was the key driving force behind this initiative to equip and educate young students on the importance and relevance of big data and analytics, and how it affects and impacts their 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; The Analytics Organisation: Challenges & Directions and so the topic was used as a main thrust of a competition involving secondary school students.
Dr SienVen Yu, Dean of the Faculty 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.
As we recognise that technological literacy is an essential skill for successful living in the 21st century, we aim to equip and educate young students with the essential technology skills in order to improve their learning, productivity and performance.” The Analytics Challenge began with a two hour interactive, hands on workshop to introduce how visualizations can be used to communicate data. Secondly, to develop data literacy, the students had to actively explore and analyze data to interpret information and finally draw conclusions by using bubble charts, scatter plots and bar charts. Finally, in the Analytics Challenge competition between students from various schools, the winners were those who could use their newly acquired analytics skills to effectively produce visualisations from the data provided.
Among the many schools, including home-schooling institutions, that sent teams to participate 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.
According to student Puah Jin Hong from Kwang Hua Private High School,
“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. I look forward to attending workshops to improve my knowledge,”said Jin Hong.
Nur Intan Solehan from SMK La Salle, “It was a fun and great activity. I learnt a lot of things and how exactly part of the analytics course looks like. It was beneficial to me and my friends too. Considering that this kind of job is in great demand, it’s really beneficial to be able to join this analytics challenge.”
Riswin Singh, teacher of Mathematics and ICT at Ivory Training Academy, an institution conducting home-schooling, believes such workshops and analytics challenge allows students to mix with each other and become friends in the long term while learning new technologies.
Lim Bee Lian, a computer teacher from Kwang Hua High School, Klang said it was important to let students know that this type of analytics exists and it is not enough to be good in just one or two subjects. It is important to have IT knowledge and also the gaining of soft skills by interacting at workshops.
Dr Sien said she was impressed that most of the students were able to grasp the fundamentals of data visualisations within such a short time. The prizes were awarded in three categories, Gold, Silver and Bronze; and five winners were selected foreach category.
The winners in the Gold category were Lim Yu Kang, Soo Weng Ming and Pua Jia Hong, all three from Kwang Hua Private School, Cheong Bing Zheng from SMK Taman Sea and Thum Yi Wen of Jit Sin Independent High School.
In the silver category were Lim Xin Hong, 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.
The bronze category winners were all from Chong Hwa Independent High School composed of Tham Jun Lynn, Yu Jun Wei, Leong Kok Jeong, Foo Wei Chuen and Ting Zhen Yu.
The 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 of a HELP IT programme, worth RM18,000.
For more information, call 03-27162000, email marketing@ help.edu.my or visit http://www. help.edu.my