Enhancing The Learning Process of Engineering Students Through External Mini-Hydro Power Generation Contest in Kanazawa Technical College

This paper discusses the impact of an external contest on the teaching and learning outcomes at Kanazawa Technical College (KTC). KTC offers their electrical and electronics students to compete in a mini-hydro power generation contest annually to promote hand-on education. The study presented herewith was conducted to investigate the effect of off-campus activity in technical learning process in Japan, and subsequently to promote this activity to Malaysian universities. Qualitative study design using observation, participant-observation and interview methods were used where the team of students and instructors were selected randomly. Through the study, it was observed that students show positive attitude in improving technical knowledge, soft skills such as communication, presentation, team work, implementation and independent attitude. The knowledge obtained from the successful implementation of enhancing engineering students' learning process via technical competition at KTC will be use to propose similar external contest at the Faculty of electrical engineering (FKE) at University Teknologi MARA (UiTM). Recommendation for future research is to analyze existing external contest in Malaysia.