ISDEV DIRECTOR ADDRESSES ON THE BONDAGE OF THE HEARTS

An attentive audience at the packed conference room of C23

As usual, the ISDEV Monthly Graduate Supervision for March was divided into two sessions. It was held on 25 March 2014 at C23, School of Social Sciences. The first session was the Tarbiyyah Pengarah ISDEV delivered by Professor Muhammad Syukri Salleh. The second session continued with an introductory explanation of ATLAS.ti (computer software program) by a RISDEV (Postgraduate Research Mode) student, Razali Othman. 

Prof. Syukri giving his monthly address on "Pautan Hati" (Bondage of the Hearts)

For this month's Tarbiyyah Pengarah ISDEV, Prof. Syukri addressed ISDEV members on another element of importance to the ISDEV fraternity 'Pautan Hati' (Bondage of the Hearts). It is a continuity of his address on the need for ISDEV members to venture out with "Oceanic Intellectual" capability thus enabling ISDEV to be a "Magnetic Institution" by attracting all those who are passionate about glorifying Islam especially through the academic route into ISDEV. According to Prof Syukri, this 'Pautan Hati' is more effective than the attraction of magnets as it brings about a sense of belonging and a safe haven to all its members. But to attain this 'Pautan Hati' Prof Syukri stressed the need for the process of tazkiyyah al-nafs (cleansing of the heart).

Razali Othman (centre) introducing his presentation on ATLAS.ti

In the second session, Razali Othman took his turn to deliver his explanation and shared his experience as well as knowledge of using ATLAS.ti (computer software program) to all ISDEV members. According to him, the purpose of ATLAS.ti is to help researchers uncover and systematically analyze complex phenomena hidden in unstructured data especially in dealing with a qualitative research (text, multimedia, geospatial). The program provides tools that let the user locate, code, and annotate findings in primary data material, to weigh and evaluate their importance, and visualize the often complex relations between them. He then gave a practical lesson by showing how ATLAS.ti was able to consolidate large volumes of data and keep track of all notes, annotations, codes and memos which he gathered during the empirical part of his PhD research. His explanation and examples received several questions from other RISDEV students who are keen to apply ATLAS.ti in their research.

A detailed explanation provided by Razali using the data he collected for his PhD thesis