Priorities:Khalifa University of Science and Technology Student Priorities

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:

1. Lack of student focus during labs
2. Lack of self expectations among students
3. Lack of social interaction between students
4. 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 Leadership with emotional intelligence course. The course associated with this idea is designed to help students paint a futuristic picture of their life after university. The course starts by helping students build self-confidence and higher their self-expectations as well as focusing on achieving a specific goal despite daily distractions. 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. 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  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:

Contents

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: Leadership with emotional intelligence.

This project can take place in two ways:

1. Integrating this course with the Leadership and HR management course by improving on the syllabus and adding topics on improving emotional intelligence or Introducing a new course called Leadership with emotional intelligence.
2. Inroducing workshops that are held over three days every semester, these workshop can even be led by trained students.

For the first option, the approval of the professors teaching this course is the first thing that should be done. These people include Dr. Robert and Dr. Gina.For the second option, a course similar to this has been recently introducted to students under the supervision of Dr. Glinda El Gamal. As explained in the invitation email, it is a six week course and at the end the students would receive a certificate of acheivement.  Haing already thought of a similar idea before, we added this in the landscape canvas and decided that it could be the starting point to our project. The main challnege would be to first to encourage students to participate in it , work with Dr. Glinda to make the course more interactive and most importantly remove the restrictions available. Such course should not have limitations such as a minimum gpa of 3.0 and the number of seats availble should be more than just twenty and the priority shoul not be given just to senior students but to all students equally.

Intoducing workshops require the help of a person who is knolwedgable in that field ,such as Dr.Glenda , who can help us make it appealing and attractive to the students .

In all cases, it will be required to collaborate with student council, for better communication with the administration.

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.