BSc (Hons) Information Systems (Data Analytics)’s very own club, the Sunway Analytics Society has successfully coordinated a Low Code-a-thon with the sponsorship and collaboration of Asia Online Publishing Group (AOPG) and Jet Workflow. The event was held virtually on various online platforms such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams throughout the last quarter of 2021.

As the first virtual low coding competition by the Sunway Analytics Society, this competition’s main notion was to present the theory of low code and introduce the concept of “Now, Everyone Can Code!”. The objective of this event was to reach out to more people as the club believes that programming and data analytics are among the crucial skills needed in this era of digitalization. In addition, the competition focuses on enhancing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), hence this key criterion was included in the problem statement of the competition as well. Besides that, this event was intended to cultivate the theory of low code among students and encourage more students to participate in a coding competition.

The Low Code-a-thon kick-started with a training session provided by Jet Workflow to educate the Sunway Analytics Society’s organising committee on the Jet Workflow software to ensure that everyone was familiar with the functionalities of the software to provide guidance and assistance to the participants. Once all the Board of Directors were familiar with the methodologies proposed in the Jet Workflow software, the founder of the company, Mr Jin Chong issued a certificate to indicate that everyone was equipped with the necessary knowledge before proceeding. At this point, the Sunway Analytics Society swiftly announced the Low Code-a-thon 2021 to all members and further reached out to students at both Sunway University and Sunway College.

A few weeks after the announcement, the Low Code-a-thon 2021 began with a series of events:

• The Story of My App: How Did I Become a Software Developer Talk - hosted by Mr Jin Chong, the founder of Jet Workflow, to share some knowledge and experience on application development.
• Low Code-a-thon 2021’s Launching Webinar - hosted by Mr Andrew from AOPG, Mr Jin Chong from Jet Workflow, and Associate Professor Dr Angela Lee from Sunway University, to launch the entire competition.
• Jet Workflow Workshop - hosted by Sunway Analytics Society’s Board of Directors, to give participants more insights on the software.
• Not a Normal Design Thinking Workshop - hosted by Professor Lau Sian Lun from Sunway University, to give participants a better idea of how to come up with a designation for an application.
• Pitch Perfect: The Ultimate Pitching Workshop - hosted by Ms Cindy Chow from Sunway University, to allow participants to understand the methodologies of pitching a proposed application.
• Low Code-a-thon 2021’s Award Giving Ceremony, hosted by Mr Andrew from AOPG, Mr Jin Chong from Jet Workflow, and Associate Professor Dr Angela Lee from Sunway University, to announce the winners of the competition and mark an end to the entire series.

With the aforementioned series, new concepts were introduced to the participants, allowing them to gain better insights into the proper flow of proposing an appropriate designation, creating the actual application, and finally, pitching the idea.

The Low Code-a-thon 2021 was intentionally designed in a way to comply with real-life scenarios to better prepare participants for career expectations in the future.

At the end of the competition, three winners and seven consolation prizes were awarded. Students gained a lot of knowledge through the exposure and experience from the four workshops conducted.

The Sunway Analytics Society is beyond delighted to announce that BSc (Hons) Information Systems (Data Analytics) degree programme students were the winners of the championship, whereas second and third place was from the Bachelor of Software Engineering (Hons) and the BSc (Hons) Information Technology students. As a token of encouragement and appreciation, all participants who did not make it to the final round were granted RM100 to their Grab wallets.

With that, the Low Code-a-thon 2021 officially came to an end, fulfilling the objective that was set out and paving the way to more participation from students as well as more awareness from the general public towards programming and data analytics. The hope moving forward was for such a competition to be opened to all universities across Malaysia. 

Associate Professor Ts Dr Angela Lee Siew Hoong
School of Engineering and Technology
Email: @email