KUCHING – The inaugural STEM Challenge Sarawak event organised by Swinburne University of Technology Sarawak Campus (Swinburne Sarawak) saw students from Hong Kong secondary schools dominating the top spots under both categories.
A total of six teams participated in the competition comprising teams from local schools SMK St Joseph, SMK Datuk Patinggi Haji Abdul Gapor and SMK Kuching High, as well as teams from Hong Kong namely Shung Tak Catholic English College, Lok Sin Tong Yu Kan Hing Secondary School and Pui Shing Catholic Secondary School.
The STEM Challenge Sarawak 2018 was the first ever to be organised in Sarawak by the university with the objectives to increase students’ knowledge in the field of information technology as well as to highlight its importance and applications in our daily lives. It was held as a follow-up to a series of STEM workshops organised in local schools since April this year, focusing on various themes such as Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence, Data Science and Mobile Web Development.
The competition was divided into two categories under Data Science and Internet of Things (IOT), and the students were required to create ideas to solve several problems related to these categories.
In the IOT category, the participants were judged on three major aspects namely technical, problem-solving and communication. The category was won by Shung Tak Catholic English College with their invention to monitor traffic congestion and parking lots, and track waste level by using the combination of sensors, camera and object detection algorithm. SMK Kuching High was placed second, followed by Pui Shing Catholic Secondary School in third place.
Meanwhile, those in the Data Science category were evaluated based on three criteria namely the feasibility of their data science solution, attractiveness of the mobile web page they have developed and the quality of their presentations. Once again, the Hong Kong students stole the spotlight where Lok Sin Tong Yu Kan Hing Secondary School won first prize with their data science solution encompassing data transformation, various statistical analyses and data visualisation. Shung Tak Catholic English College and SMK DPHA Gapor won second and third prize respectively.
The competition was organised by Swinburne Sarawak in support of the state government recognition of the importance of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects of studies. Sarawak’s Chief Minister Datuk Patinggi Abang Johari Tun Openg in particular, has been putting a lot of emphasis on digital economy and ICT as these can help the state and country to develop and progress.
Swinburne Sarawak offers three-year computing courses in Information and Communication Technology (ICT), and Computer Science. The ICT course has majors in Software Technology and Network Technology, while Software Development, Cybersecurity and Internet of Things are the three majors that fall under computer science course.
The courses are externally vetted and accredited at the professional level by the Australian Computer Society, ensuring it meets the highest standard of the profession and the industry. Moreover, the university is a CISCO Academy Partner where it houses a dedicated lab equipped with almost half a million Cisco equipment for teaching and learning.
For more information about Swinburne Sarawak, visit the university’s website (www.swinburne.edu.my), Facebook page (@swinburnesarawak), Instagram (@swinburnesarawak), Twitter page (@Swinburne_Swk) or YouTube channel (Swinburne Sarawak).