Towards Excellence in Teaching
Sunway University College’s School of Computer Technology (SCT) lecturer, Lyon Laxman has a knack for lifelong learning and the inner drive for bigger tasks that even the Vice-Chancellor of Sunway University College, Professor Jarlath Ronayne is personally impressed with.
Lyon was awarded the certificate of “Exceptional MSc Project” by Rinicom Ltd, a privately owned technology company in the United Kingdom, for his outstanding M.Sc project paper.
Besides winning the prestigious industry award from Rinicom Ltd, Lyon also took part in a competition with fellow student, Klen Copic Pucihar from the Department of Communication Systems at Lancaster University. Together, they bagged the first prize in “The Vodafone WidSets Challenge 2008″ beating several other participants.
Their “Game Four in the Row” – a multiplayer game whereby one can challenge, play and chat with another player anywhere in the world across the mobile network industry, made it’s way to the top.
Lyon Laxman
According to Lyon, the international mobile web technology competition was initiated by Vodafone Betavine and sponsored by Forum Nokia with the aim of encouraging student’s innovation in mobile Web 2.0 technologies by providing a showcase for their ideas and working models.
Lancaster University’s Secretary for the Associated Institutions, John Dickinson, who presented Lyon with the certificate from Rinicom during a ceremony at Sunway recently said he was very pleased with Lyon’s outstanding achievement.
“It demonstrates that the quality of the academic staff here are on par with Lancaster University,” he added. “We would love to see more Sunway staff coming to Lancaster University for post-graduate studies, which is the kind of staff development we wish to see and which was why we embarked on this partnership with Sunway.”
Revealing the secret of his success, Lyon said it is the result of sheer hard work and the urge to pursue lifelong learning. “With today’s fast changing world, we cannot afford to be left behind in technology,” he said. For this reason, Lyon decided to further his studies and recently completed his Master of Science at Lancaster University.
During the course of his studies, Lyon spent most of his time at the new Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) Centre at Lancaster University, otherwise known as InfoLab21. The lead supervisor for his project was Dr Mike Kosch, while Dr Paul Coulton and Dr Philip Benachourn filled in as fellow supervisors.
Lyon said “With my vast learning experience at Lancaster University, I have implemented at Sunway for the benefit of my students. I am teaching them how to write good technical and scientific reports, use referencing and avoid plagiarism.”
The third and final semester of his MSc programme was mainly spent at Sunway, where he completed his project paper. “It was also the most challenging semester,” he said. “I had to finish my project paper within six months.” His project was to produce a Marketing and Recruitment Video for Sunway and SCT targeted at Malaysian and Indonesian students. So impressive was his work that even Lancaster University’s staff, Sandra Irving had asked him for permission to use some of his mini project materials for their Open Day profiles.
Lyon is Sunway’s first academic staff to go to Lancaster University to do the Master of Science at Lancaster University, since its affiliation with Lancaster University started in Sept 2006. Lyon’s whole duration of study in the UK was fully sponsored by Sunway University College.
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