Update: AEROFAIR 2016

Dear students and teachers participating in AEROFAIR 2016,

Program Agenda
The Competition Day for the AEROFAIR 2016 is coming close, in less than a month. We have prepared a more detailed agenda of that program, as shown below (the agenda has been updated on 23/9/2016):

As shown in the agenda, we will have a special session with all the teachers to get their feedback on the AEROFAIR program and the aerospace-related activities at their schools. This session is hoped to produce clearer views on the impact of our AEROFAIR program on students' motivation towards STEM subjects, and its potential in the future to be expanded into larger scales for other students.

Submitting Names of All Participants
We would like to request all of the participating schools to send the names of all of their participants (10 students and 2 teachers), as have been mentioned previously at the beginning of the program.

Please specify the competitions that each student will be participating in (there should be 5 names for the Indoor Flight competition and another 5 names for the Water Rocket Competition). You can send the participants' names and your school names, by Friday, 9 September 2016, to our secretariat office at one of the email address below:

1. Pn. Fakriah Jamaluddin (Tel: 04-5995903; email: fakriah@usm.my)
2. Pn. Che' Fauziah Hanim Mohd Saad (Tel: 04-5995951; email: aehanim@usm.my)

For your information, all 19 schools have submitted their participants' names to us:

1. MRSM Balik Pulau
2. MRSM Kepala Batas
3. SMK Perempuan China, Georgetown
4. SMK Permatang Tok Jaya, Butterworth
5. SMK Saujana Indah, Nibong Tebal
6. SMK Seri Nibong, Nibong Tebal
7. SMK Datuk Onn, Butterworth
8. SMK Jawi, Sungai Jawi
9. SMK Bukit Mertajam
10. SMK Penanti, Kubang Semang
11. SMK Jit Sin, Bukit Mertajam
12. SMK Sungai Aceh, Nibong Tebal
13. SMK Convent Bukit Mertajam
14. SMK Valdor, Sungai Bakap
15. SMK Simpang Empat, Simpang Ampat
16. SMK Bukit Jambul, Gelugor
17. SMK Convent Bukit Mertajam
18. SMK Bakti, Tasek Gelugor
19. SMA Mahaad Al-Mashoor Al-Islami, Balik Pulau

Submitting Videos on Schools' Activities
We would like to remind each participating schools to submit a video to us about their activities related to the AEROFAIR program by Tuesday, 20 September 2016, four days before the Competition Day. Details of this Video Competition has been described in this previous post. The video needs to be uploaded into YouTube first, then the link is sent to us through one of our secretariat emails above.

As a starting point for your own video, you can refer to the AEROFAIR 2015 video (see below) made by a USM Aerospace student, and uploaded into YouTube.

Read more...

An Article on the AEROFAIR Project

Our work on the AEROFAIR outreach project has recently been published and presented at the Regional Conference on Engineering Education (RCEE 2016) on 9 August 2016 in Kuala Lumpur. The article is "Outreaching and Engaging Students with STEM through AEROFAIR". The PDF file of the article can be downloaded from the given link.

The article looks at the issues related to STEM in Malaysia, particularly on students' diminishing interest in the fields and the major challenge in Malaysia to fill up sufficient capacity of about 500,000 skilled workforce in STEM by the year 2020. At the current rate, there will be a huge shortage of almost 48% from the target.

Our approach to contribute towards this issue is by promoting STEM to secondary school students through outreach programs and engaging them with hands-on activities related to aerospace engineering. Learning modules and resources are also developed to assist students participating in these programs.

Two outreach programs have been organized in our AEROFAIR project, which are further discussed in the article. Future works toward the goal of promoting STEM are also described to build a more sustainable effort in reaching out to more students to be involved in our outreach programs.

The summary of the article is:

One critical issue facing Malaysia’s aim to become a developed nation by 2020 is in the possibility of attaining only half of its targeted capacity of workforce in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). This national challenge of motivating students towards STEM presents opportunities at many scales and levels, one being the urgent need for tertiary STEM institutions to conduct outreach programs to attract prospective students. This paper presents the development, implementation, and outcomes of AEROFAIR, a long-term outreach project by the School of Aerospace Engineering at the Universiti Sains Malaysia designed to promote STEM to secondary school students through hands-on activities related to aerospace engineering. Discussion on these activities focuses on indoor flight, a new outreach platform introduced in Malaysia through this project. The project has been organized into two consecutive outreach programs, each consisting of a half-day workshop and a half-day competition event participated by more than 240 students and teachers. Surveys were conducted to assess the outcomes of each program. Feedback from participants largely indicated positive impact of the activities in generating interest towards STEM, but recommended a few suggestions to improve the physical and organizational aspects of the programs. Recommendations from AEROFAIR 2014 had been implemented in AEROFAIR 2015, resulted in better students’ learning outcomes and in producing longer flight times during the competition. Further improvements will be incorporated in organizing the next AEROFAIR program in 2016, with the main aim of scaling-up the impact of this outreach project.

Read more...