View source for Priorities:Khalifa University of Science and Technology Student Priorities

= Students Priorities of Fall 2020 =

The main goal of brainstorming and prototyping is to build a better environment for our university students to enhance the innovation and entrepreneurship of the university ecosystem. Therefore, we are required to identify the major issues that students face at Khalifa University. After, generating the major problems that students face in many different aspects in the end we combined all of the wild problems and we came up with conclusions of four major problems that students face in our university in the year 2020 that are: -

# The majority of freshman students are shy to speak and get socialize and work with other people.
# The difficulty of communication between freshmen students and instructors during the pandemic period.
# The major challenge affecting university students is the use of digital resources as maker spaces for their development. The coronavirus has made it hard to use the facilities to optimize and implement their ideas and projects.
# The difficulty of students attending virtual labs during a pandemic.

= Project No. 1: Interpersonal Skills and Self-Development Course =
Amna will be in charge of the first project that is the Interpersonal Skills and Self-Development course. This course is being given to undergraduate students in every semester of freshman level. The interpersonal skills and Self-Development course is critical especially to a freshman student who recently joined the university. The main objective of the course is the more developed student social skills the more chances to satisfactorily deal with the demands of different environments and interlocutors. That being the case the university should include interpersonal development as part of its academic goals. The course is required to be led by people who are knowledgeable in this field. For example, students success department as well as the center of teaching and learning which we believe that they can support and offer guidance to this project for the benefit of their students.

= Project No. 2:  "Help" App =
In this project, we decided to create a way that facilitates the student to access any category or department that he/she is looking for and get their contact information easily. So, the third prototype aims to ensure that students can easily reach any member of Khalifa University. Whether they need help from student services or instructors or even if they would like to contact older students to share their experiences. Besides, it appears for the student if that member is available or not. This idea is going to build as an App that only accessible to KU members. Which makes it easier for the students and instructors to reach it and secure at the same time. 
To begin with this project, the idea should be presented to the Center for Teaching and Learning and see how it can be done, and check if there are any complications. As well as, getting the contact information from all university members and take their permission to added in the list. Then, the project requires support from the IT department and people who responsible for developing the Blackboard page to get the new tab added and accessible for the students and the instructors on Blackboard.

= Project No. 3:  Digital maker space =
The major challenge affecting university students is the use of digital resources as maker spaces for their development. The Global Pandemic has made it hard to use the facilities to optimize and implement their ideas and projects. This problem has led to consider other opportunities to enhance remote utilizations of the program. 
So, what we are trying to do is making students’ projects on digital forms instead of tangible by Having applications which will be provided by the instructors to the students which will have everything that is provided in the maker space areas but in the online form by which students can have their digital projects, as they can convert it to a 3D module.


Project No. 4: = virtual lab training


Virtual labs are a new innovative approach to learning especially in this pandemic time. Some students may find the shifting from traditional to virtual labs is a kind of challenge. The idea of this project is to provide general technology skills training to students who have virtual labs that require software installation. This training will have all the information that university students need in order to know how to deal with such labs as well as it will allow the students to have a better understanding for how to download the software, how to use it, and how to be well-prepared for their tasks during online labs.


= Students Priorities of Fall 2018 =

The chief goal behind our brainstorming and prototyping is to build a better environment for university students. Whether first years or seniors, we sought to identify what major issues students at Khalifa University were facing. We opened up new tabs of blank sheets in our heads and filled them out with plenty of ideas, some of which seemed too simple and others way to complex. At the end of it all we combined what wild ideas we had and came up with conclusions to four problems:

#Lack of student focus during labs
#Lack of self expectations among students
#Lack of social interaction between students
#The difficulty of transitioning from a high school atmosphere to university atmosphere

In order to implement a solution to each of our ideas, we spread out across campus discussing how our ideas can be restructured to best-fit students’ needs.

Ruba and Buthaina, held two projects in hand: the LabAID idea as well as Workshops&nbsp; on emotional intelligence which starts by helping students build self-confidence and higher their self-expectations as well as focusing on achieving a specific goal despite daily distractions. LabAID is a resource design around laboratories. It helps better understand what the lab session talks about and includes a demonstration of the experiment. Also, it has questions about the sessions to help see if students are aware of what the lab presents as well as worksheets for students to record their data.This builds a strong foundation to a future of innovators and entrepreneurs who have the curiosity to experiment , leanr new things and apply what they learn.

Maryam was at first in charge of facilitating students' engagement through communication systems. The goal seemed to be at first to categorize emails based on what their subject is so that students wouldn’t have to regard emails that are non-academic as junk mail. Afterrwards, the idea developed to beome a KU application instead which aims to help students distinguish what events are going around campus. It also allows them to be more interactive with their interests.

Hajer juggled the biggest of projects; the Freshman Year Experience program, or what we would like to call "Freshmen Success Program". The project is designed to facilitate the transition from a high school atmosphere to university atmosphere where responsibilities pile up for incoming students. This ease happens through&nbsp; helping students interact with one another socially, from talking about academics or just saying friendly “Hello”. The program also benefits freshmen by introducing them to the campus through sending notifications about news around campus or upcoming events and workshops to get acquainted.

Moreover, the talks we had with around campus played a vital in our process since it was through those conversations that we knew how to improve our ideas and how well they would be accepted after implementations. And to aid in implementations we looked at various resources around campus which included the IT department for technological aid such as designing apps and creating webpages, the Health and Social Sciences department to further develop the Leadership with Emotional Intelligence course, and the Freshman Year Experience team at Khalifa University to pitch out idea and encourage its completion.

Below we list the key tactics required to bring this project to life:

= Project number 1: LabAID. =

The first step to be done for this project is to present it to the lab instructors and professors and see how it can be modified .As well as, investigating on how it can suit the different types of labs available. Then, this project requires support from the IT department to get this website available or instead, we can contact the people responsible for developing the Moodle page.

The person who would be in charge of the project will need help from the student success department, as well as the center of teaching and learning which Dr. Mark is in charge of. Both , we believe, can provide support and guidance to this project.

= Project number 2: Workshops on emotional intelligence. =

Inroducing workshops that are held over three days every semester, these workshop can even be led by trained students. The main goal behind the workshops is to encourage students to utilize the most fundamental aspect of EI, which is introspection and post activity reflection. In other words, starting within the individual to then branch out and describe how he/she is willing to interact with others and be a representative of their society&nbsp; The wokshops require to be lead by people who are knolwedgable in this field, for instance Dr. Glenda and student leaders who will be trained by her to lead such workshops in the future and also make it more student friendly in a way to use necessary EI skills to address the needs of the students.

Having student leaders to the workshop is highly importnant because students are the only ones who understand the needs of the students in such complicated socail instutution as a university.&nbsp;

Dr. Glenda has recently introduced a leadership with emotional inteligence six weeks course, and that's from where student leadership groups to the workshops can be formed.&nbsp;

The help of the student services department will also requires in organizing such workshops.



= Project number 3: Facilitating Students' engagement through communication systems. =

This project needs the support of the IT department who can even provide us with more suggestions on how it can be optimized and improved. Thinking more about it, we realized also that we will need an artistic opinion in from people who are passionate in art and colors which is why seeking the opinion of the students from the art club seems like a great approach.

= Project number 4:FYE =

Since this project is focusing more on the freshmen students, the support of the STEM program (prep program) faculty will be much needed. These people from organizers, to teachers know are the closest people to the new students and are aware of how significantly the FYE program would contribute to the new students university experience.
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