Bronze in learning innovation competition

A team of nine students from the Faculty of Arts and Social Science (FAS) was awarded bronze award in the International Learning Innovation Competition (PIP) held at Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM) from 30 to 31 July 2019.

Organised by UUM’s University Teaching and Learning Centre, the competition aimed at providing a platform for university students as well as for the academics to share their best practices, highlight innovation and creativity in teaching and learning as well as recognising the work of academics in the culture of innovation practices. The competition attracted more than 300 inventions locally and internationally.

The winning team comprised of Psychology students Cheong Wei Teng, Chew Xu Yin, Choo Hui Juin, and Lim Ooi Sheng; and English Education students Phang Biao Li, Tan Kelvin, Tan Wilson, Tee Xue Ting and Teoh Ching Hann walked away with a bronze award and a certificate of achievement each.

The products that were created and displayed by the team were a poster, called "Interroll" explaining how an interactive learning application can help young school students improve their English, a website, designed by Tan Kelvin to teach young school students different sections of English, and a card game named “Gruno”, a prototype card game designed to help specific areas of English, such as preposition, conjunction and interjection. 

One of the teammates Teoh enthused, “We feel that the competition was indeed a great and memorable experience. Despite having an endless amount of assignments, we find the experience valuable as our work managed to grab us an award in the end. It was indeed a tough competition.” He added, “Motivation is one of the key factors of learning a language, if we can boost students' interest in learning English, there might be hope in improving the standard of English among Malaysians.”

On behalf of the team, he added, “We would like to extend our special thanks to the lecturers from FAS, namely K. Sanggari, L. Komathi and Wirawahida binti Kamarul Zaman for their endless guidance and support throughout the process. We would also like to thank UTAR for giving us the opportunity to be part of this important competition. Not to forget thank you to our course-mates and friends from other faculties in supporting and assisting us throughout the competition.”

There were various organisations involved in the competition including primary and secondary schools, public universities, private universities, community colleges, polytechnics and various government agencies.

The winning team (from left) Choo, Lim, Cheong, Chew and Teoh with their lecturer Sanggari (middle)

From left: Cheong, Tan Kelvin, Teoh, Choo, Lim and Chew at the competition