UAE’s Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) has launched a project which aims to help students determine their university specialization that suits their skills and capacities, within the UAE’s schools.

The project ‘Our Future’ is launched in cooperation with the Ministry of Education and HTC Mena.

‘Our Future’ is a virtual reality system, designed to overcome difficulties faced by school students when they reach the stage of determining their future specialties and careers. It aims to guide and motivate students using proven scientific methods, to identify the student personality and competence.

After the evaluation phase, the system recommends the most suitable professions to the student and its current and future need in the UAE labour market. Accordingly, students can experience the virtual reality of the profession; explore its environment, mechanism, workload, and key tasks. After completing ‘Our future’ experience, the student will receive a road map with recommendations on required skills, universities, and suggested companies to reach their professional and academic goals.

 TRA will work in collaboration with HTC and the Ministry of Education, on launching the project in all UAE schools. HTC will provide the VR devices that will be used in the launch stage. The launch began at Al Safa Secondary School for boys and Al Sufouh Secondary School for Girls.  

Hamad Obaid Al Mansoori, TRA director general, said: ‘’ ‘Our future’ project is part of the future making efforts, and the generations’ preparation to build that future in the best possible way, based on the students’ skills, interests, and capacities since the early school stages.”

“The project is a practical example of how to utilize modern technology and digital intelligence to help the young generation to choose the university specialization that suits their capacity while taking into account the sustainable development needs in the country. The launch of this project reflects the importance of partnership between the government sector, represented by the Ministry of Education and TRA, and the private sector, represented by HTC.

“This initiative is an addition to a series of previous initiatives launched by TRA in the field of education, including ‘Betha’ initiative, and ‘knowledge seeds’ aimed at discovering national skills and competencies in the ICT field, and then developing and refining them to meet the needs of establishing the knowledge based economy,” Al Mansoori added.

 Marwan Al-Sawaleh, Undersecretary of the Ministry of Education for Academic Affairs for General Education, said that the project integrates with the ministry’s continuous efforts to encourage students to discover their future directions and aspirations with regards to the future careers and jobs they wish to occupy.

He indicated that the ministry organizes a series of programs and events throughout the academic year in order to raise students’ awareness on the importance of selecting the best courses in the university stage, as well as the consequent job opportunities and occupations that meet the future aspirations and ambitious plans of the country.

Nikitas Glykas, President of HTC Middle East Africa, said: “We are thrilled to be collaborating with the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority and Ministry of Education on this revolutionary program to support students identifying their future profession. HTC Vive is a first-of-its-kind VR platform built and optimized for room-scale experiences and true-to-life interactions.

“We are amazed by the endorsement of Virtual Reality and Vive by the UAE governmental institutions as an important tool in tutorial and training programs like Our Future. HTC is committed to delivering these experiences to students in the UAE and pushing the boundaries of what VR can deliver to the world of education.”- TradeArabia News Service