Prepared by: AP. Dr. Rossilah Jamil

Azman Hashim International Business School (AHIBS) offers three industrial-driven undergraduate programmes, i.e. Bachelor of Accounting, Bachelor of Management (Technology), and Bachelor of Management (Marketing). Our learning ecosystem involves students gaining knowledge and skills of their disciplines and also being exposed to beyond classroom experience to build their soft skills. 

Thanks to our dedicated and caring lecturers, our students are encouraged to participate in various competitions and activities elsewhere. We call these stretch assignments, which are learning projects that can push their limits and expand their knowledge and skills repertoire.  

Before the pandemic, our marketing students joined competitions to pitch their marketing plans to real companies. An example is the PROTON ‘Intelligence that Inspires Challenge’ in conjunction with the company’s new product launching. AHIBS team competed alongside students from other universities in front of a panel of judges comprising of PROTON top management, marketing practitioners, and the media.

Such involvement provides experiential learning for the students to apply their marketing knowledge learned in class, design a marketing proposal, and polish their presentation skills to convince potential clients. Evaluation criteria set by the judges helped the students to ensure their marketing ideas are original, realistic, and feasible in a real setting. Under the team’s mentorship, Dr. Grace Thoo Ai Chin, the team was listed as the top six finalists. 

 “Recalling back our team’s journey, it was a really tough 4 months. Tiring but exciting journey. We thank Dr. Grace for her support and guidance. Without her help, we wouldn’t make it that far. She invested so much time, energy and money in this competition. We are really grateful.”

– Ngang Jin Ming (PROTON Challenge Team Leader)

Four teams from AHIBS Students Leadership Programme, were recently sent to the virtual Southern Youth Leadership Conference 9.0 (SYLC) organized by AIESEC. AISEC is a part of a global network for youth leadership backed by the United Nations. For three weeks, the students went through a business challenge programme on entrepreneurship and business skills that included a mentoring session from industry and academic practitioners.

Two teams, led by Muhammad Hasef of Team E4 (Bachelor of Management (Technology)) and Muhammad Hafiz of Team Hustle (Bachelor of Management (Technology)) made it to the final round and nailed the Final Live Pitching Competition. Team E4 won 2nd Runner up place and received a cash award of RM1000, while Team Hustle received a consolation prize of RM500. One of the students, Muhammad Hafiz was announced as ‘The Best Presenter’. The teams were mentored by Dr. Sabrinah Adam. 

AHIBS students have been part of the UTM teams to represent Malaysia for local and international MonsoonSIM competitions. MonsoonSIM is a business simulation and gamification education platform with a large user database to allow learners to interactively learn various business aspects. Learners make business decisions based on live data streaming for analysis and reflections. 

Students compete in teams to run a virtual company with assigned resources and KPIs while simultaneously learn relevant business concepts and skills. Dr. Mohamad Shah Kassim, the advisor, had brought the students as far as Hong Kong to join the International MonsoonSIM Enterprise Resource Management (MERM) Competition.

MonsoonSIM is part of the Bachelor of Management (Technology) curriculum whereby 20% of the total assessment is obtained from mini-competitions conducted within a six-hour workshop. The MonsoonSIM learning framework has won two awards, the New Academia Learning Innovation for Education 4.0 Award and the University-Industry Teaching and Learning Network Award in 2018.

AHIBS is looking forward to mobilizing students to more stretch assignments in the future once the pandemic restrictions ease.