KOTA KINABALU: A local college team has come out on top globally for designing a three-pronged technique to tackle disinformation on Covid-19.
Keningau Vocational College all-female team "Nokuro Sumandak" emerged as one of the five winners of Global Media and Information Literacy Youth Hackathon.
The team was listed on the Unesco website as among the winners in the "community innovation" category, in which their project was described as "an initiative that aims at tackling 'disinfodemic' through classroom activities by integrating media and information literacy in students' learning, created in response to the Covid-19 forced home-schooling".
Led by Alesyah Asa, 18, the group is also the only Malaysian team in the competition. Other team members are Nur Syahirah Ariffin, 18, Gabriella George, 18, and Nezatul Fazlyin Zainal, 19.
Co-organised by Unesco and the South Korean government, the competition challenged youths to design innovative solutions to address social challenges and tackle disinfodemic in light of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.
It was supported by IBM, the World Health Organisation, the United Nations Population Fund, the European Commission, Sweden, and the Unesco Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development.
Speaking to the New Straits Times, Alesyah said her team created a technique called AIE to help schools tackle the spread of false and misleading information related to the coronavirus.
"The AIE stands for accumulate, investigate and evaluate, with each respectively using the KWL table, Q-matrix chart and six thinking hats as assist tools."
The third-year civil engineering diploma student from Nabawan explained 'accumulate' would help an individual receive better information by recalling and jotting down issues related to Covid-19, which they had read.
Having some knowledge on the issue, the project encourages an individual to question more about the topic, such as how the virus is spread and what should one do upon close contact with an infected person.
"This is when an individual has to do his or her own 'investigation' such as checking on confirmed cases. The Q-matrix chart is utilised here to help guide in designing own questions for more answers and research.
"Finally, to 'evaluate' is to look into the issue from different perspectives instead of a single viewpoint, such as how the people, in general, feel about the pandemic, its effect, and actions taken by the government.
"The six thinking hats tool in the evaluation will examine an issue from various perspectives," said Alesyah, adding that the project could be turned into a training programme for teachers and activity for students.
Having won the global competition, the team will gain the opportunity to pre-launch their project globally, hold interviews with potential sponsors and partners, as well as recognition through Unesco press release, among others.
Keningau Vocational College director Johari @ Jaibet Sabin said students needed to continue to explore new areas following the team's latest achievement.
He said the college did its best to tackle misinformation about Covid-19, adding that many students and teachers had earlier fallen for unreliable news on social media.
"However, the Education Ministry and other government services responded by launching public service announcements on the danger of spreading false news or contributing to this in any manner.
"At our school, the counsellors continuously update social media pages and our Telegram groups with the latest news from credible sources and offer their services to teachers and students who suffer paranoia, panic, anxiety or abuse."