PGSS SKA was pleased to conduct the first online structure course “Data Science in the Construction Industry” on 6th January 2022 (Thursday) through Cisco Webex platform. Dr. Zafira Nadia Binti Maaz, senior lecturer from the Faculty of Built Environment and Surveying was invited to become the speaker. Her interest focus on researching big data for the construction industry and cantered upon instilling big data awareness. This online structure course was promoted 2 weeks before through media platforms, such as PGSS official Facebook and Whatsapp. This program was opened to all UTM students, including undergraduate and postgraduate students. A total of 48 students have participated in this structured course.
This course aims to:
1. To expose students to data science, its wide range of applications, management between stakeholders in the construction industry
2. To explore areas of research for the construction industry and qualitative method approach in research application
The Cisco Webex meeting opened from 9 a.m. for participants to log in, and the opening ceremony was conducted at 9.05 a.m. After the moderator finished the speaker introduction, this session was handed to the speaker at 9.15 a.m. The speaker started the presentation through introduced the example of big data, which include Youtube, Shopee, and MySejahtera app. The speaker uses “Petajakarta”, a flood- monitoring platform as one of the examples of the advantage of using big data. The speaker also presented the potential of data science in the current and future construction industry. A ten-minute break was given at 10 a.m., and the course resume at 10.10 a.m. on the introduction of qualitative research design. The speaker explained the theory and methods to design qualitative research as another approach that could be used for future research. The Q&A session started at 10.45 a.m. The closing ceremony was conducted after the end of the photo session, and the program ended at 11.00 a.m. Positive comments such as informative, educative, and interesting were received from the feedback form.
