On 11th November 2022, a Friday Afternoon Dialogue (FRD) was held at ULPL Auditorium, Polytechnic Kota Kinabalu, Sabah. The organising committees comprised of the FRD Committee of the Academy of Language Studies, UiTM Kota Kinabalu, Sabah Branch and the Research, Innovation and Commercial Unit, Department of General Studies, Polytechnic Kinabalu, Sabah. The latter was the main organiser of the event. The event began at 2.30 in the afternoon and ended at 5.30pm.
Based on the best practices of researchers and scholars, FRD is an informal event aimed for academic brainstorming and discussion between academicians during Friday afternoons when there are no classes being conducted. This is APB Sabah UiTM’s first FRD event since the pandemic. The previous one was conducted in 2019 in UiTM Sabah. This year, the team co-organised the event with Polytechnic in an effort to encourage a culture of research and innovation among academicians.
The event gave administrators and lecturers the opportunity to engage with one another and expand their knowledge on the topics being shared. FRD also provided a platform which lecturers could connect with to work on common interests in innovation and research. Additionally, the FRD enabled the lecturers from both organising institutions to practice healthy competition and keep up to date with the latest developments in the academic field.
The afternoon programme saw a host of topics being shared by lecturers from APB, UiTM Sabah and Polytechnic Kota Kinabalu. The earlier slots were presented by UiTM lecturers. The first presenter shared on using music as an alternative method of teaching reading in English to students. A group of researchers also shared a presentation entitled, “Online Writing Assessment: A Boon or a Bane?” Afterwards, the sessions were science related and the topics shared were award winning innovations in the fields of virtual reality and online application. A lecturer shared on utilising virtual reality in handling high voltage protection equipments. The last presenter shared on “Engineering Science App” where students could learn topics related to engineering virtually by downloading an app created by the researcher. All the presenters answered questions from the crowd of 40 attendees after their respective sessions.
The organisers provided refreshments throughout the event which gave the attendees the chance to mingle and make connections. Feedback forms were shared with everyone at the end of the event and positive comments were gathered. Critical feedback given was crucial for the continuous improvement of FRD. In all, the event was a success and has paved the way for Polytehcnic Kota Kinabalu and UiTM Sabah to collaborate on more academic programmes in the future. It is with great hope that FRD organises more events such as this in the near future.