Our Student Research Forum (SRF) is an integral activity in the SOASCIS learning experience. The two or three years of research study at SOASCIS is designed to not be a solitary and lonely journey, but insha Allah we hope it to be, for our students, an enriching learning experience. Each week SOASCIS students take turns to present their preliminary findings, and also share their research experiences and challenges, with their colleagues. The objective of the SRF is to facilitate continuous knowledge exchange and further enrich the students’ knowledge through a diversified portfolio of research initiatives, and thus broaden their body of knowledge. Students learn about each other’s research activities and share their strategies for overcoming conceptual obstacles and other methodological issues. The SRF is an organised collaborative space to encourage students to help each other find solutions to their challenges via rigorous research-oriented interaction and sharing of knowledge and experience.

The SRF also provides our students the opportunity to develop their presentation skills in an open but informal forum and receive feedback from each other, which can help them synthesise their ideas based on the evidences they have gathered thus far; helping them marshal their materials in order to communicate their ideas more clearly, which will increase the impact of the students’ research by compelling them to consider aspects they might not otherwise have addressed.