AEROFAIR 2016: Post-Event

The Competition Day of the AEROFAIR 2016 Program, with the theme "Promoting Aerospace Science and Activities in Secondary Schools", has been successfully completed on Saturday, 24/9/2016, marking the completion of this program for this year.

All of the participants from 19 secondary schools in Penang who applied into this program attended the event. The total number of participants were 35 teachers and 186 students. The event was organized by 26 staffs and 49 student volunteers from the School of Aerospace Engineering, USM. The Competition Day event was officiated by Tn. Hj. Zulkafli Kamaruddin, as the Ketua Unit Kokurikulum, Jabatan Pendidikan Negeri.

Highlights of the AEROFAIR 2016 program can be read in the following posts (more information will be updated soon):

1. AEROFAIR 2016 Competition Day: results and photos
2. AEROFAIR 2016 Briefing Day: information and photos
3. Videos by secondary schools for the Multimedia Competition
4. An article on the AEROFAIR project

Through this AEROFAIR 2016 program, the participants were able to bring the aerospace science and activities to their own schools. This allowed them to expand the impact of this program to other students as well, who were not involved directly with the AEROFAIR program.

Such a case was evident especially for SMK Simpang Empat, seen through their submitted video for the Multimedia Competition, where the participating teachers and students had organized a series of seminars and workshops to teach other students from their school as well as those from the neighboring schools about their aerospace activities. The submitted videos from other schools have similarly shown thorough learning process experienced by their students.

The next challenges of our AEROFAIR outreach program are on how to improve the flying vehicles used as platforms of outreach, to scale-up the impact to more students and schools, and to replicate the exemplary actions of the schools above to other schools, in terms of their ability to engage other students through a culture of sharing and continuous learning at the school level.

Shown above is the group photo of the participants, the organizers, and the officers from supporting institutions, taken after the officiating ceremony in the morning. The group photo of the organizing committee members is shown below, taken after the end of the event in the afternoon.

For more photos of the event during the AEROFAIR 2016 Competition Day, please visit this photo album.

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AEROFAIR 2016: Competition Results

We present here the results from the four competitions of the AEROFAIR 2016 Program, conducted two days ago on Saturday, 24/9/2016.

Each winning team received one trophy and certificates for all members. In addition, special prizes (entrance tickets to the technology hub Tech Dome Penang) were awarded to all the students and the teachers in the winning teams (first, second, and third place winners) for the Indoor Flight and Water Rocket competitions, and the first prize winners for the Exhibition and Multimedia competitions. Congratulations to all the winning teams. Congratulations also to the other teams who have put their best efforts in these competitions.

Special mention is given to SMK Simpang Empat, the biggest winner of the AEROFAIR 2016 program, for winning the first place prizes in the Water Rocket and Multimedia competitions, and the second place prize in the Exhibition competition. Their video below shows the exemplary dedication to this AEROFAIR 2016 program given by their teachers and students, who have conducted workshops and seminars on Indoor Flight and Water Rocket not only to other students in their school, but have also invited other students from neighboring schools to benefit from these activities. Kudos to them!!!



For photos of the winners and various activities during the AEROFAIR 2016 Competition Day, please visit this photo album.

Indoor Flight Competition:
1st place: SMJK Perempuan China, Georgetown (with a flight time of 1 minute and 14 seconds)
2nd place: SMJK Jit SIn, Bukit Mertajam (with a flight time of 1 minute 3 seconds)
3rd place: SMK Bakti, Tasek Gelugor (with a flight time of 58 seconds)

Water Rocket Competition:
1st place: SMK Simpang Empat, Simpang Ampat
2nd place: SMK Bukit Jambul, Gelugor
3rd place: SMK Saujana Indah, Nibong Tebal

* FYI, the Water Rocket competition for each team was evaluated based on the distance of their rocket to the target and the team's presentation.

Exhibition Competition:
1st place: SMK Sungai Acheh, Nibong Tebal
2nd place: SMK Simpang Empat, Simpang Ampat
3rd place: SMK Datuk Onn, Butterworth

* FYI, the Exhibition competition for each team was evaluated based the following four aspects: exhibition content, oral presentation by students either in Bahasa Malaysia or English, creativity in the exhibition material, and the quality of graphics in the poster presentation. Four judges from the School of Aerospace Engineering USM evaluated this competition.

Multimedia (Video) Competition:
1st place: SMK Simpang Empat, Simpang Ampat
2nd place: SMK Jawi, Sungai Jawi
3rd place: SMK Bukit Mertajam

* FYI, the Multimedia competition for each team was evaluated based the following four aspects: video content, school activities recorded in the video, students' participation shown in the video, and video creativity. Four judges from the School of Aerospace Engineering USM evaluated this competition.

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AEROFAIR 2016: Video Competition

For the Multimedia (Video) Competition of AEROFAIR 2016, we have received 8 video submissions from the participating schools.

We are very happy and pleased to see that the two AEROFAIR projects (Indoor Flight and Water Rocket) have promoted workshops and learning activities as shown in these videos. It's also exciting to see that many more students, not just the participants, are also involved in these activities. We hope that the efforts and excitement shown by the students, and also their teachers, in these videos will help introduce and promote these activities to more students and schools in the future.

Enjoy watching these videos!

SMK Simpang Empat, Simpang Ampat:


MRSM Balik Pulau:


SMK Saujana Indah, Nibong Tebal:


SMK Valdor, Sungai Bakap:


SMK Jawi, Sungai Jawi:


SMK Bukit Mertajam:


SMK Sungai Acheh, Nibong Tebal:


SMK Datuk Onn:


Update on 26/9/2016:

Students from SMK Valdor would also like to share this second video from them, on the Indoor Flight activities at their school:

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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.

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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.

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