The Research and Consultancy Committee of the Information Technology Department conducted a webinar titled “The Secret to Academic Research Excellence” on 14 November 2021 through MS Teams. The webinar was delivered by invited speaker Dr Celestine Iwendi, distinguished ACM Speaker and senior lecturer at the University of Bolton, United Kingdom.
Dr Celestine has authored over 60 peer-reviewed articles. He has served as a chair at top conferences and workshops and has delivered over 25 invited and keynotes talks in several countries. Therefore, he was invited to deliver a talk on how to improve the research performance in the department.
The guest speaker shared valuable information and tips on writing and publishing research articles throughout the session. Moreover, he emphasised the impact of citation indexing on research excellence and the quality of the research.
The talk lasted for one and a half hours, with a QA session at the end. Fifty-seven participants attended the session and rated it at 4.22/5.
The students of Information Technology Department at UTAS-Ibri participated in the Oman Collegiate Programming Contest (OCPC), organised by Sultan Qaboos University (SQU). The programme was conducted over two days, from 5 to 6 November 2021.
The contest goals were to gather all Oman institutes in one place, to improve the students' programming skills, teamwork skills, and to mimic international contests.
UTAS-Ibri students who participated in OCPC are Aryam Al Maamariyh and Said Al Qassabi, and their coach was Ms Sara Said Al Shukaili, under the team’s name “Ibri Programmers”.
The team ranked as one of the top ten teams, among 46 teams from 22 institutes. The top three winners will participate in the higher version of the contest, the Africa and Arab Collegiate Programming Contest (ACPC) which will be conducted in Egypt.
The nature of the contest is an algorithmic programming contest for college students where they must solve problems given by one of the programming languages: C, C++, Java, Python, or Kotlin.
The contest was a challenging one, designed to get better performance. Valuable experience was gained, including knowledge about the contest, a special training programme for the students to be aware of the questions, their difficulty level, and how to write efficient solutions
The Project Committee in the Information Technology Department organised a training programme in Writing a Systematic Literature Review for the students who are undertaking their course project. The programme was presented by Dr. Amal Al Abri and lasted for two hours.
The aim of this programme is to educate the students on the objectives of conducting literature review giving an example of wring a systematic one. The training programme covered the following:
- What is a literature review?
- Why do we do literature reviews?
- Objectives of the literature review
- Outcomes of the literature review
- Steps to follow
- The systematic literature review
- Characteristics of systematic literature reviews
- Process of systematic literature reviews
The attending students gained experience learning the approach used for writing the literature content for a project. The programme achieved good feedback overall.
The Project Committee of the Information Technology Department conducted a training programme on ER Diagram and Database Design for the course project students to train them exclusively in software project design for the Software Development and Software Engineering specialisations on 28 October 2021 from 2 to 3:30 PM through MS Teams. The webinar was delivered by one of the members of our IT family, Mr. Mangesh Wanjari, an Information Technology lecturer. He explained the concepts of the ER diagram, its importance, and how we can use this as a tool to demonstrate our project design. The speaker also gave a practical demonstration of accomplishing ER Diagram design tasks using a software tool. The programme was well-received by all the attendees.
The program received good feedback from the students.
The Course Project Committee coordinator of the Information Technology Department organised a training programme on software requirement analysis for Diploma and Bachelor course project students of Software Engineering Specialisation by Mr. Saravanan on 21 October 2021 from 2.30 to 4 pm.
This training programme focused on the software development life cycle, software requirements, various methods to identify software requirements, functional requirements, and non-functional requirements.
As a part of the programme, a sample case study (IT Help Centre Management System) was discussed with students to identify the functional and non-functional requirements. Thirteen students attended and benefited from this training programme.
At the end of the session, all the students were requested to identify functional and non-functional requirements for their respective course projects.
The overall feedback provided, was very positive.
On 11 November 2021, the Research and Consultancy Committee organised a webinar titled “The Role of Patents in Encouraging Innovation in Academia”. The webinar was delivered online by Clarivate senior consultant, Mr Rohit Singh Gole, via MS Teams.
Mr Rohit is an experienced consultant with expertise in technology development and forecasting, including patent portfolio development and management, patent protection, market development, and technology commercialisation.
The webinar was intended to deliver an orientation toward copywriting and patents. The guest speaker started the session by defining the innovation and intellectual property concepts.
Afterwards, he explained the differences among patents, copywriting, trademarks, and trade secrets. Mr Rohit also demonstrated some successful case studies on how patents have improved research and innovation. Moreover, he also explained how to file patents and the significant requirements and the expected challenges. Lastly, the guest speaker concluded the session by demonstrating strategies for successful patent filing.
After an informative and well-structured presentation, the guest speaker allotted some time for the questions and answers session. Fifty-four staff members and students attended the webinar, which lasted for one hour, and concluded at 3 PM. The full video recording is available online via the following link: https://cutt.ly/xTSm34Y
The program received good feedback.
The Student Research Committee of Business Studies Department, UTAS, Ibri conducted an online workshop on “Primary Data Collection and Analysis” on 18th November 2021 from 11:00 am to 12:00 pm for senior and graduation project students. The purpose of the workshop was to give training to the project students on primary data collection and analysis by using different software. Mr. Asif Mahmood, an accounting lecturer, Business Studies Department, handled the session and demonstrated the students how to collect primary data for their research studies. He also gave real life examples in order to explain the techniques in a proper way. At the end of the workshop, the presenter clarified the doubts raised by students and answered their questions. Around 14 students participated in the workshop.
Areej Jaafar, in her presentation at UTAS-Ibri, on 11.11.2021, shared her perspectives on self-limiting beliefs. She focused her presentation on three questions: How are the self-limiting beliefs blocking your ability from living your best life? Where do self-limiting beliefs come from? How to overcome self-limiting beliefs?
She was of the opinion that can often creep into our thoughts and lower our self-regard (respect and acceptance for ourselves, despite any shortcomings). She also added that it is possible to consciously change how we think about ourselves, reframing unhelpful beliefs and building more confidence to achieve goals and positively move forward in life even in challenging times.
The presentation engaged the audience with the pointers that led to self-introspection.
Profile of the Speaker
Areej Jaafar, an office manager, working for Data United General Trading & Contracting Co. in Kuwait, Certified Trainer from Bristol Science Academy & awarded as a Distinguished Members from Toastmasters International. Areej joined Toastmasters in 2013, a member in multiple clubs in Kuwait and a Club in Greece and has been associated with them to date.
The Student Research Committee of the Business Studies Department conducted an online workshop on “Sampling Techniques in Research” on 28th October 2021 from 11:30 am to 12:30 pm for senior and graduation project students. The purpose of the workshop was to give training to the project students on sampling techniques. Dr Muhammed Faisal, an HRM lecturer, Business Studies Department, handled the session and demonstrated to the students how to select suitable sampling techniques for their research studies. He further elucidated the sampling procedure with real-life examples. At the end of the session, the speaker clarified the doubts raised by students and answered their questions.
The Help Center of the Business Studies Department conducted an online workshop on “Self-motivation and Study Life” on 28th October 2021 from 11 am to 12 pm targeting the university students. Ms Maimona Al Wahaibi, an author in human development, delivered the workshop and shared her own experience with students. The main purpose of the workshop was to train students to apply different techniques for self-motivation and personal development while studying at the university. More than 50 students attended the workshop. At the end of the workshop, the speaker answered some of the questions raised by students.
