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UNIMAS, through ISITI, has been selected as one of the partners of MICROCASA, which is an Erasmus+ Programme headed by Saarland University. UNIMAS representatives, Prof. Dr. Narayanan Kulathuramaiyer and another project member, AP Dr Johari Abdullah, recently attended the launching of MICROCASA and the first project meeting conducted on 6 – 7 March 2023 at Saarland University in Saarbrucken, Germany.

 

MICROCASA comprises of a consortium which is composed of 11 partners, including, for the European side, 5 European Universities with complementary competences, the Italian NARIC Agency and the quality assurance expert company. The representative group of 6 Southeast Asian University includes central agenda-setting national Universities, as well as Universities with regional development missions. Malaysia is represented by two universities, which are Universiti Sains Malaysia and Universiti Malaysia Sarawak. The total grant amount for the project is Euro 789,000.00 for a total duration of three years (36 months), commencing on 1^st March 2023. The session at Saarland University mainly served as the official launching of the project, as well as to allow for a discussion on the work packages for the team members, and also to get to know the members of the project from various institutions.

 

MICROCASA is the first international project aimed at sharing the European experiences and building institutional capacities in Southeast Asia to co-create, promote and deliver short competence-oriented educational units leading to micro-credentials with the goal of solving various economic and social problems. Focusing on different aspects of micro-credentialing, for instance course content co-creation, educational technology, transparent quality assurance, technologies for issuance and verification of digital micro-credentials, the project builds a comprehensive set of competences and technical capacities in Southeast Asian Universities.

29^th August 2022, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS) had handed over the Self-Sustainable Community Mapping Platform to the Kampung Buayan community, located at Penampang, Sabah. The project funded by the university started in September 2019 where a team led by Associate Professor Dr Tan Chong Eng, senior research fellow of the Institute for Social Informatics and Technological Innovations, UNIMAS, engaged with the Buayan community for a participatory project. UNIMAS first established a partnership with the community more than ten years ago whereby the university was granted funding to replicate the successful eBario project to four other sites in Borneo. The eBuayan telecenter was successfully deployed in 2010 and there were a number of projects and activities until the decommissioned of the VSAT five years later. According to the site leader, Professor Dr Jane Labadin, the internet connectivity as well as the electric power has been a challenge and the community cannot be left out in the quest for advancement. More so during this post-pandemic era, the community need to remain resilient. Leveraging on their strengths which are their culture, values, traditions and heritage, the community has expressed their needs in documenting their community knowledge on a map and this would be a solution for future values. Hence, the platform has addressed these needs. This system platform consists of both software and hardware solutions that is specifically designed to overcome the various challenges in rural environment such as inconsistency in power supply, difficulty in technical support and low in ICT literacy. The system enables 24/7 service provision to serve the Buayan community in cultural mapping through a highly efficient and cost effective solar powered server platform that is friendly to rural transportation. The platform has been built to achieve a higher level of reliability and dependability with minimal technical support required. The usability of the software system is designed for easy operation and handling by local community with only basic ICT literacy. Owing to the hosting of community cultural data is within the community premise hence a high level of protection on local indigenous information privacy could also be achieved.

Ketua Kampung Buayan, Mositol Sondigon, expressed his gratitude to UNIMAS and collectively with his community will ensure rich content available for their new generations. The Buayan community aspires the relationship fostered with UNIMAS will remain for future collaborations.

From 5.00 to 6.00pm on 5^th of August 2022, Friday, making the most of your creativity by adopting different viewpoints was one of the activities held at the talk. The audience is then engaged in a joyous interaction to discuss their perceptions about what they think a problem is. As emphasized in the talk, you should broaden your views by thinking like a child and letting go of restrictions.

"Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower." -Steve Jobs