By Iylia Marsya Iskandar
GOMBAK, 1 March 2021: Despite limitations of the Teaching and Learning process posed by the pandemic, the Kulliyyah of Islamic Revealed Knowledge and Human Sciences (KIRKHS) calls for students to acquire experiential learning especially in dealing with the community on the ground.
In his keynote address during the KIRKHS Get Together session held online this morning, the Dean of KIRKHS, Prof. Dr. Shukran Abd Rahman shared that the kulliyyah has introduced synergised academic activities since last semester to encourage experiential learning.
He said: œIn these academic activities, 16 lecturers have attempted to synergise their teaching and learning processes with their research and publication activities.
The 16 lecturers worked hand-in-hand with their students in generating knowledge and in sharing knowledge with the community and these have led to positive and desirable deliverables such as videos, publication in journals, edited book and newspaper articles.
The Dean urged for more academics to take part in the synergised academic activities this semester.
He added: œThrough this activity, we can link the students’ assignments with their secretariat activities.
This is where the kulliyyah hoped to fund the student activities, at the same time to help fund class assignments, because before this, our academics might have utilised their own funds to run assignments that involved participation of the community which helped in their experiential learning.
As the new semester commenced today, the Dean took the opportunity to express his hopes to all KIRKHS students. Here are the highlights of his speech:
- Acquire as much knowledge as possible including explicit and tacit knowledge from various sources
Tacit knowledge is the knowledge that cant really be found in literature. They are available through interactions with your lecturers, fellow classmates, seniors and students of other kulliyyah.
- Develop skills “ people skills, job-enabling skills and all life skills
Try to develop as much skill as possible that will help you fare well when you are in the community later. Life skills include how to relate with people, with your classmates, lecturers and others of international background.
- Enhance abilities: Involve in various self-development activities
Acquire as much experience as possible; the curriculum has been designed for students to gain as much experience as possible including industrial experience, research experience, community experience and self-development experience. Students need to involve themselves with secretariats or extracurricular activities where they will develop themselves and acquire more experience to be better individuals before joining the community.
- Learn and internalise good characteristics. Be a good agent of change, improvement and development
IIUM aims to produce agents of change and an improvement and development through human sciences and Islamic knowledge principles. The principles are not only to be memorised or written during examinations and in assignments but also to be applied and used to address social issues.
The first-ever online virtual KIRKHS Get Together was held online via Zoom Application and live-streamed on YouTube with attendance of over 200 participants among academics and students of the kulliyyah. ***