Kota Kinabalu: Another remarkable achievement was announced by Keningau Vocational College (KVC) as three 18-year-old students recently published a research paper in an international journal.
The research paper of the KVC Construction Technology programme students was published in the International Journal of Multidisciplinary: Applied Business and Education Research on September 23, focusing on a structural damage assessment study.
College director Nordin Akup congratulated the students for being able to conduct research on a community service that they themselves led and successfully published it in a peer-reviewed academic journal.
He said it is vital to equip students with research and writing skills.
“This will enhance their credentials as vocational students as well as their life prospect either in the business world, in the labour market or at universities,” he said in a statement.
Team representative Nur Qamariah said this research, conducted together with Ara Billa Biton and Avyda Tang Pei Chin, could shed more light on their plan to launch their own proposed social startup, First 2 Fix.
She said it is an initiative to assist rural communities in home repair and maintenance.
“The research was conducted during a fieldwork trip to a decrepit wooden stilt house… for community service.
“Prior to the restoration work, we visited the home to carry out damage appraisal and identified to what extent that the fixtures and the different parts of the house had decayed and traced these conditions to their root causes.
“This enabled us to formulate the repairing plan better by focusing on the most critical repairs,” she said.
Qamariah said the team wrote a proposal for the research before developing the assessment instrument based on the condition of the home and finally analysed the findings elicited from their respective evaluations.
The research project was supervised by four teachers, namely Jovinia Danil, Dayang Amidah Amin, Dayang Siti Khatijah and Dr. Sirhajwan Idek.
