28 February 2014 – International Medical University (IMU)’s Foundation in Science (FiS) students held an exhibition on their Cross Boundary Studies projects at the University’s campus in Bukit Jalil. For this week-long Cross Boundary Studies projects, the students had to go through brainstorming sessions of diverging and converging the ideas they had for each stage of creative problem solving skills. They were guided in this process by a lecturer assigned to supervise them for the entire week. Commenting on process of the project, FiS student, Ng Qi En said:
“I had so much fun during today’s discussion of the acceptance finding. We even made a video to show the processes of collecting data and we are going to show it during the exhibition.”
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Cross Boundary Studies is taught in Semester 1 and 2 of the Foundation in Science programme in IMU. This subject is project-based, with no End of Semester examination. In the Semester 1 project, students are placed in groups of 5 or 6 with a total of 12 groups. Students then identify problems and possible solutions to the topic area that they have chosen. Looking into the learning environment within IMU, the topics given include classroom, design, space utilisation, technology, health and hygiene, resource management, environmentalism and occupational safety. Another student, Yeap En Leon said:
“My experience gained from leading the team not only trained me to be a better leader but also to learn more about people’s behaviour and acceptance towards certain things.”
Cross Boundary Studies is a subject which teaches the students to read, observe and learn beyond the boundaries of the regular subjects. Here, they are taught the 6 steps to creative problem solving skills. While implementation of the solutions found is not enforced in the Semester 1 project, they would be implementing it in the second semester.
Artwork of one of the students. How talented!
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“Learning Cross Boundary Studies is not only about finding ways to solve problems, but to find out the best solutions and how it affects everybody”, said FiS student, Nicholas Chin. Another FiS student, Husna binti Ad Suhadak said “I realised that it is important to have this subject in our syllabus. Teaching us how to cross the boundary means thinking out of the box, being open minded, creative and decisive.”
All in all, the students had a fruitful and fun time learning to solve ‘problems’ and thinking out of the box.
More information on the Foundation in Science programme
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