Sunway’s team is the winner of Big History

Demonstrating an excellent knowledge of history and science, a team of young students from Sunway College emerged as the champion in the Big History inter-campus quiz challenge, beating 18 other teams from local colleges and universities. Organised by Astro’s History Channel, the competition was held at Petrosains, Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre and officiated by Deputy Education Minister I Datuk Mary Yap.

Sunway team, named Team Sunway Professional 4 comprised of four college students from the Foundation in Arts (FIA) – team leader Yim Soon Keat, Avery Choke Kar Sing, Muhd. Hazim bin Dahuli and Ria Heryani Binti Mumfahir. As the champion, the team member each received a certificate, a Kindle Fire, an Apple TV and an MPH voucher worth of RM50.

From left: Avery Choke Kar Sing, Ria Heryani Binti Mumfahir, Yim Soon Keat and Muhd. Hazim bin Dahuli

The competition held in conjunction with History Channel new series, ‘Big History’, tested participants’ knowledge on history and science. Questions were based on 10 episodes of the documentary. “To prepare for the competition, we were assigned a few episodes of the series each, so each of us became an expert of different topics”, said Yim. The team acquired the highest points in answering multiple choice questions through a self-prepared tablet connected to the Big History server.

Ria, the only girl in the team said that winning the challenge was unexpected as the team members were some of the youngest among the participants who were mostly university students. “Perhaps our team work and FIA experience drove us to success. I am already close with the boys because of the various group projects and assignments in class. The Sunway College FIA syllabus is rich as it encompasses general knowledge beyond textbooks, which is like a start-up engine for us to learn big history and win the competition.”

The team is grateful for their lecturer, Pamela Ethel Savage for introducing them to the competition. In addition to becoming closer together as friends, Avery said “We’ve learnt to think more scientifically and critically from the challenge. With that in mind we have also learnt to be more appreciative, and not to take things for granted, as in the end, everything can be closely interconnected.”

The Foundation in Arts is one of five pre-university programmes offered at Sunway College that prepare students for successful undergraduate studies in Sunway University as well as other local and international institutions.