More than 100 students from Foon Yew High School, Kulai participated in the one-day programme in Melaka campus recently. The programme was jointly organised between the Faculty of Business (FOB), Faculty of Information Science and Technology (FIST) and National Marketing & Enrollment (NME).

FOB hosted ‘Reach Within, Shape Your Varsity Potential’ programme for 84 students, and it aimed to enhance the Senior Middle Three students’ critical thinking, communication, creativity and collaboration skills. The students were divided into groups to complete various tasks in a limited time frame including a race where they were exposed to various MMU facilities and i-Biz lab. In addition, they were also taught on how to develop their profile in social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and many more. It was a very rewarding session as the students learnt how to express themselves well in the digital platform.

Meanwhile, FIST introduced the overview of Bioinformatics to another 27 students through a fun-filled programme with four modules: ‘Seeing your DNA’, ‘The Genetic Code Challenge’, ‘Internet Banking Security Threats’ and ‘Let’s Scratch’. 8 staff from FIST were assigned to facilitate the activities. In the first Module, the students were able to learn about the amazing “Molecule of Life” whereby they had to extract DNA from the cells in the inner lining of their own cheeks. In Module 2, the students were brought to FIST’s SMART learning lab to gain more lessons about Bioinformatics and its importance.

In Module 3, basic topics of security threats associated with online banking had been introduced with hands-on demo, and quiz. The students also learned to develop an Artificial Intelligence (AI) programme called Chatbot that can stimulate a conversion with a user. Chatbot is useful in the banking industry as it simplifies the interaction between human and computer. All in all, the students enjoyed the experience and they were able to hone their scientific thinking skills together with teamwork skills through these activities.