A group of students from Sekolah Rendah St Paul’s Seremban was invited to The University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus to use microscopes as a result of a project to set up Microscope Activity Kit loans by the Royal Microscopical Society, UK (RMS) in Malaysia.
This was led by Dr Susan Anderson from the School of Medicine at The University of Nottingham, UK who worked with the RMS to create the Microscope Activity Kits. The event with the primary school students at UNMC marked the launch of Microscope Activity Kit loans programme in Malaysia.
According to Dr Anderson: “Microscopes are a great way of getting students enthusiastic about science as it encourages discovery and using these microscopes, students can also create their own experiments.”
The activities lined up for students included activities on nutrition and crime scene investigations. The students were also given the opportunity to explain their experience using the kits. They described, interpreted, detailed and problem solved during the experiments.
“The objective of this exercise is to help students consider science as a creative and enjoyable subject where they can discover. This will hopefully give them a head start to consider science as a subject and later on to consider further studies and ultimately science as a career.
“The other objective is to encourage school teachers to combine science with other topics such as arts, literacy, maths, technology as they all work well with science when you are using a microscope.” Dr Anderson added.
Dr Anderson said that it was such a great pleasure coming to Malaysia and seeing the students use the microscopes and to see how interested and engaged they were. She shared that she also had similar experiences with students in the UK and Ireland.
Professor Ting Kang Nee and her colleagues from the Department of Biomedical Sciences at UNMC saw the potential in using these microscope kits to make learning more interesting in Malaysia. Professor Ting was very excited when the RMS agreed to send 16 microscopes to UNMC. This RMS-Nottingham joint effort will enable children in Malaysia to reap much benefit from this project. “These microscopes are available for loan to local schools. Teachers who are interested to use these kits to supplement their teaching activities are invited to contact us. In the near future, we are looking into holding workshops for school teachers to develop more learning activities. It was pleasing to hear from the students that they enjoyed the activities thoroughly and learned a number of different skills.”
The students of SRK St Paul were accompanied by their teachers for this trip to UNMC. This activity was organised in collaboration with Department of Biomedical Sciences at UNMC, School of Medicine at The University of Nottingham, UK and Royal Microscopical Society, UK.
(Article image caption: Dr Anderson explaining the use of the miscroscope to the students)
(Thumbnail image caption: Students looking into the microscope with enthusiasm)
-ends-
More information is available from Professor Ting Kang Nee on kang-nee.ting@nottingham.edu.my or Josephine Dionisappu, PR & Communications Manager on +6 (03) 8924 8746, josephine.dionisappu@nottingham.edu.my
Notes to editors: The University of Nottingham has 43,000 students and is ‘the nearest Britain has to a truly global university, with a “distinct” approach to internationalisation, which rests on those full-scale campuses in China and Malaysia, as well as a large presence in its home city.’ (Times Good University Guide 2016). It is also one of the most popular universities in the UK among graduate employers and the winner of ‘Outstanding Support for Early Career Researchers’ at the Times Higher Education Awards 2015. More than 97% of research at The University of Nottingham is recognised internationally and it is 8th in the UK by research power according to the Research Excellence Framework 2014. It has been voted the world’s greenest campus for four years running, according to Greenmetrics Ranking of World Universities.
Impact: The Nottingham Campaign, its biggest-ever fundraising campaign, is delivering the University’s vision to change lives, tackle global issues and shape the future.
Posted on 8th February 2017